. . . continued from Hot News To me, the most mystifying part of the entire affair is simply that Clark and his fumbling minions stood to gain nothing from the vandalism. Their stupidity lies clearly in not understanding the whole point of vandalism, Rule #1 being to get in and out as fast as possible. That vandals have almost invariably been caught throughout the ages is Rule #2 that Clark et al apparently never learned. Considering the significant amount of time it took for Clark et al to set up the sting/vandalism, it is also obvious that these guys never learned Rule #3—vandalism is not supposed to be hard work. Rule #4 about doing the maximum amount of damage, and Rule #5—something about not leaving any traces behind—were also lost on these characters. I guess they've figured it all out now, except that a number of the individuals allegedly involved in addition to Clarke have yet to be caught. They just left Clarke and a couple of others holding the bag. What a bunch of wankers.

The financial legal burden already borne by Clark and his family and the families of other miscreants who've been pinched is nauseatingly large. There's more to come. Just wait until the court fines are levied.

The family may be humiliated. The financial legal burden already borne by Clark and his family and the families of other miscreants who've been pinched is nauseatingly large. There's more to come. Just wait until the court fines are levied. The court is likely willing to levy a fine that may force Clark and his family into the strictures and further humiliation of bankruptcy. Imagine that. Years of hard work, savings, building, nurturing and caring, father, mother, sister, brother, all destroyed by a single act of vicious anarchy. It's not cool. It's not clever. It's not unique. Thoughtless vandals have been hurting themselves and their own families since the beginning of human history.

But in our contemporary and oh-so-fashionably self-important embrace of feelings of entitlement, is there a trace of arrogance and a demand that everyone just back off of Clark? Are there rumblings in some quarters that eBay is actually a monolithic corporate villain, acting with perfidy and vindictiveness to pursue and exact retribution from the hapless Mr. Clark? You bet! There are plenty of people volubly stating in no uncertain terms that eBay should just let it go—that catching the guy and scaring him with the specter of jail time and enormous fines is sufficient punishment. And what about the horribly onerous legal bills borne by Clark and his family? Isn't that responsibility also sufficient punishment?

Not by a long shot! To hell with your never-ending con game designed with the sole purpose of deterring justice and consequences from being legitimately exacted. When you attack a server, or dozens of them, what you're doing is attacking months and years of hard work by IS/IT staff, web designers, programmers, writers, graphic artists, technicians and hundreds of other real people. You're slicing and dicing all of their work into little pieces of garbage. And for what reason? To hurt them? What have they done to you? Are you trying to hurt eBay merely because it's a large corporation? Do you believe you can hurt a corporation in this manner without also imposing upon all of the common people who actually make up the corporation a deeply and abidingly frustrating burden of work to rebuild all that's been torn down? What about the customers and subscribers who depend on eBay? Their needs have value too, whatever you may think of a capitalistic society which trades in the enormous volumes of nonsense so evident in some areas on eBay. Was the point of the vandalism merely to wreck servers in one place so that other servers were left vulnerable, perhaps revealing some illicit access to financial gain in the process? Or did a wave of egomaniacal arrogance drive the vandals to commit a vicious act designed only to teach the corporate godhead that it is vulnerable?

Vandalism is a tired scheme in this day and age. I think it's tired because it's too easy to perpetrate in the digital world. I think it's tired because it is not the same as the graffiti you scrawled on old man Smith's garage up the street because he yelled at you for walking on his grass.

Make no mistake about it, I despise much about the megacorporations which dominate so much of our technological world. I despise them for the flaws inherent in any organizations that large. But I don't despise the people who work inside the megacorporations. I know many of them. Some work hard and smart. Others don't. Some just take up space. Still others are innovators, brilliant and bold. They are all women and men, like all of us, mostly doing the best they can in the situations they're in. Their work and their creations don't deserve to be vandalized. There's too much at stake—too many people to be hurt—for any of us to accept even a hint of cybervandalism and cybercrime.

Because a thing can be done easily—hacking or cracking, virus and worm and trojan creation—does not give anyone leave to actually use such activity to visit upon anyone or anything the horrible aftermath of vandalism. It is heartbreaking for the people who must afterward repair the damage. It often places upon those people unreasonable stresses which affect life and health and whole families. That's right—always remember that the terrible financial consequences and incarcerations borne by the miscreants and their families often pale into insignificance when compared with the collective burden shouldered by hundreds or thousands of people charged with the task of physically repairing the damage.

It's a vain hope, but let 2006 be a year when we find more effective defenses against the perfidy of socially engineered spam, secure gabon & fascine barring viruses, worms and trojans from assaulting servers, and greater and more frightening consequences enacted and levied upon the vandals and reprobates themselves.

What are you waiting for? Check your firewall right now!

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