When Underground Values Clash: Part 2

Intro: Part 2 of the series. Sort of like my version of a follow up.

To each person his own. That’s a saying I try to follow a lot in my world. You might be thinking, how does THAT relate to anything? And then I can say, think about it. Everything has a certain meaning, but interpretations will differ correct?

As a team, Versatile and I have been writing articles for the past 2 years. Since the day we really started moving, we were never really sure what “The Underground” really meant. Even knowing what underground material is, where to get it, and how to use it, we could never really be sure of the difference between legal and illegal. There’s that gray area that Versatile talked about in the first part of this series.

The problem is, we have so many things we want to talk about. So many different exploits, hacks, and tricks that we’ve found out about or discovered on our own. Each thing is useful to a different person and can be underground in its own way. So now we have to think about interests. Will this be interesting for our readers? Will this be something that you or I will refer to when the time comes? There are so many blogs out there that just spew information, and not in a relatively easy to read fashion either. Plus there are rules to WP, the lovely TOS that Versatile mentioned.

Here’s where I’m going with this: There is a balance to everything in life. We, as The Underground, are trying to maintain this by staying within a “grey area,” occasionally overreaching the bounds on either side. And because interpretations differ over this “grey area,” people will find some things to be illegal whereas others won’t.

What does this mean? To each person, his own.

Suppose someone wrote an article on the theory behind cracking COD4 and playing it on cracked servers. As a theory, it is free information, and so long as the person is not promoting that people ACTUALLY use it, should it be “illegal” to share that information? Some people will say, yes, because it might be used to actually carry out the task. But I would say, the writer is staying in the darker side of the “grey area” but isn’t really breaking the rules. He might be telling us HOW to do something, but in the end, it is only “underground” if you decide to take the information and use it right?

So really, the interpretation differs. And that’s why we can’t use WP to post major “works” anymore. What we see as informative, they see as potentially dangerous or illegal. And in a sense, that’s correct. Any user can take our information and just break the law.

To each, his own. We’re back at that statement. Just like Versatile said, OUR underground is different from YOUR version. At least, some of you. Everything is underground on some level, whether or not you agree, that fact will not change. I don’t consider something simple like using a Junction to make a “modification” to AIM chat files Underground, whereas someone inexperienced would. Then again, I might consider downloading L4D and playing on the Garena networks underground, but someone who is way past that wouldn’t.

Do you see the difference? So when a comment comes along saying “[but] …I am not seeing any good “underground” content”, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that opinions differ. And we try our best to do the research for you so that we can make everyone’s life a whole lot easier.

So for now, we’ll keep doing what we do. We’ll play the WP game and play hardball on the V2. If you want to see something, sound off in comments, twitter, or emails. Don’t think we’re slacking off and not really looking for things. Just remember: To each, his own.

Voltaire.