The Washington Post today has an interesting story about the DC 2600 meeting. Overall it does a good job illustrating the community building role of 2600 meetings and actually leaves the reader believing that we may be doing something good.

Of course, no article is perfect. They get the DeCSS case wrong, saying that "[2600] was guilty of copyright infringement for posting on its Web site some computer code that allows people to copy encrypted DVD movies." 2600 was never accused of copyright infringement. In fact, the plaintiffs couldn't point out a single instance in which DeCSS was used for copyright infringement, much less used by 2600. The court ruled that 2600 was guilty of distributing a circumvention device under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (our appeal will be heard May 1st). The article fails to mention that DeCSS was created so that people can play DVDs that they've legally purchased. Once again, the media assumes this tool exists for purposes of copying.

There's also a skewed emphasis on the marketability of hacking skills. The broad diversity of goals, motivations, and value systems represented at the average 2600 meeting is not really given justice. Finally, there's a heap of pseudo-mysterious sensationalism thrown in towards the end for good measure, but we wouldn't expect anything less these days. The parts that didn't make our stomachs churn weren't so bad.