Another thing about website security...you can encrypt your HTML files so browsers can read them but most people can't. Problem is, many hosting services do not appreciate hosting a file they can't read. This prevents a certain amount of security from being achieved.

I don't care so much for dumping streams, but I do want the choice of just taking the url and putting it into my media player of choice, and not have some stupid web app run just so I can listen to or watch a stream from the net. I don't think thats a question of legality, but usability in my opinion. I have no interest in saving streams.

So then, with "downloadable content" case this means - if media stream is easily accessible, but has a first 5 seconds "this content cannot be freely downloaded", then downloading it is illegal, right? Well... sounds logical :-\ And I think that this is actually a root of DRM technology .

Forgive me, I believe the title reflected my understanding that hacking is philisophically ethical and "cracking" is illegal. This may be more of a "generalization" of activities from definitions of "hacker" and "cracker." If "hacking" is ethical, then this could be neither hacking nor cracking, just retrieving information and guessing mss:// urls from web pages.

Although it is obviously a trivial task, how would you categorize this activity? I don't think its "normal" web surfing, although it may be. I would be curious to hear your answer.

Some safe crackers are professionals others are thieves. Some people hack apart their vehicles to make custom street rods, chop shops do it to sell stolen parts/cars.

I'm afraid I don't understand the question.

AFAIK hacking just refers to screwing around with a computer in general with anything that requires keyboard input.If you just apply the term to programming cracking would be a subspecies of hacking - of course the crackers are the guys with the black hats an horses.

It's funny that high-tech nerds use the same way as hundred year old western movies to categorize themselves

Anyway - I put any webaddress I like into my browser or whatever.I don't see what would be illegal about that if something starts downloading or pĺaying - without copyright warning or anything to that effect.
If there is a warning it would be unethical (depends on anybodys set of ethics anyway) but probably not illegal (at least at the moment in most countries).

You got to see the fact that the internet is subject to completely different laws in different countries and those are supposed to define legality (and some says also ethics)- you can't drink beer in public in the US,in Europe you can and in other countries you have to.

Other example:
In Brazil a judge took down a youtube vid of some famous chick screwing her boyfriend at a public beach - in most european countries a court of law would tell her that public beach means just that - in the US she herself would be sued for indecent exposure.