[bawolff]

I disagree. Its mainly about having technical control and freedom. Reverse engineering how things work feels like peak hacker ethos. You don't have control of something if you can't remove it.

I think ethical considerations were always a bit secondary to technical power when it came to so called "hacker ethos".

After all, instructions on how to remove watermarks definitely feels like the sort of thing that would have been in phrack back in the day.

[blablabla123]

There's a thing called Hacker ethic which used to be referenced quite frequently in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

Probably it's worth reminding of also considering we're on HN here... ;)

[bawolff]

Well, to quote from the article

> Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems—about the world—from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and more interesting things.

> Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total.

> Mistrust authority—promote decentralization

> All information should be free

I phrased it a bit differently, and perhaps a little less sympathetically, but i think i was more or less saying the same thing.

In any case a tool like the article that strips watermarks seems exactly the sort of thing that would fit into what i quoted above. Its mistrusting authority - there is nothing more central authority then having a literal central authority adding hard to remove digital signatures to images. It promotes freedom of information - it supports explaining how watermarks work and what they are. Its fundamentally taking apart a system, which teaches us how the system works.