Knowing a group of people with similar interests can be more than just a social thing. There are often other benefits as I have once again learned. This week I received an email from one of the other members of a group I attend. He sent a reference to the Hiren’s Boot CD. Although I trust my friend, who is a professional and a security nut, there is no way I would click on his suggestion (The one I just copied for you to click — you trust me, don’t you?) without checking it out a few independent ways first. My suspicions were heightened because I remembered the name from several years ago when I heard of it as a hacking tool that came bundled with software that might not have been licensed exactly right. So I sent my misgivings back to my friend and he said that HBCD was featured in the latest issue of PCWorld. Meanwhile I had found several sites explaining what it is all about. So, feeling somewhat comforted, I downloaded this extremely interesting and useful compilation.
This post is not about HBCD. It could be, but it is about something more esoteric. It is about the transfer from piracy to mainstream. I am thinking that all significant new technology includes a pirate phase in its transition from lab to commonplace. HBCD is a nifty package that I might have overlooked because of an apparently outdated (and maybe invalid to start with) mental image of what the package is for. In the weird way I sometimes think of things, it reminded me of cable television.
Those readers who call themselves mature or seniors might remember that when cable companies started up, their initial markets were not as universal as they are now. They provided television signals in places that were generally not served well by broadcast video. That is, they really acted as repeaters of existing data rather than generators of new data, although cable-generated video was a reality almost from the beginning. But the broadcast companies were not happy. They called the cable companies pirates who were stealing their precious signal. It did not seem to matter that the signal was not getting to the new customers without the boost of cable. They were pirates and had to be stopped. Sound familiar? In those days we usually had at the most 4 or 5 channels. Now almost everyone is on cable and we have hundreds of channels. Monetary agreements have been worked out to allow a mutually beneficial business. And though I will complain about the cost of cable and the fact that most channels still have advertising, things are better. They got even better with my DVR so I can skip commercials. That is an example of the fact that history never stops. Another example is that at this time we see many people unhooking from cable and going strictly with Internet video.
In maybe a similar way some of the functions on HBCD might have been thought of as hacking tools and therefore disreputable, but think about it. A tool that can help you recover a forgotten password that prevents your client from logging on is a good thing. The fact that it could be used to steal other passwords is a fact, but so what? Being able to boot a broken system from a CD is a good way to help recover data from a crashed system. I have used live Linux distros several times to access a hard drive that was otherwise not available. Being able to boot a computer and access the hard drive without going through the installed operating system can also be used for nefarious purposes. That does not make the tool a bad thing. [If I wanted to provoke an argument, I would apply the same logic to firearms, but that is another story.]
I wonder if the scribes in late medieval Europe thought that Gutenberg’s printing press was a pirate. The scribes and their employers had a vested interest in maintaining the high cost of publishing. Although I do not know the history of that period very well, we can speculate that the powerful guilds probably opposed the proliferation of printing presses and their cheap products that made reading available to everyone. Later, the publishers of technical journals got upset when people could photocopy selected articles at the library without buying the whole book. The wheel turns.
It happens every time technology lurches forward. It happened when home video taping became an economic reality. The full wrath of those crying “pirates” was probably delayed because the quality of VHS sucked compared to — wait for it — DVDs! The RIAA has taken the place of printing guilds in complaining about piracy.
But society has a way of adapting to new technology. In the process, things that were initially labeled as pirates’ tools become mainstream. Then they disappear into the general background, and the quality of life improves for everyone.
Even the word “hacking” has issues. Is hacking good or bad? The obvious answer is yes. And that is why I was wrong to dismiss HBCD as a mere “hacking tool.” Of course I can perhaps be forgiven a bit since the earlier versions of it contained copyrighted material that it was not clear could be honestly used by everyone.
Be that as it may, thanks to Randy Crumpler, I now have another useful tool in my kit. In addition, his act of generosity stimulated an interesting train of associations about how technology often seems to require a “pirate” phase to make the transition from an esoteric tool for a few cognoscenti to a ho-hum part of our environment.