Countless businesses today understand that “hacking” is not just a crime, but a necessity for today's Internet security. “Microsoft and Facebook announced last November that they would pay bounties to ethical hackers who discovered vulnerabilities, not only in their own products, but also in the software systems that make up the Internet infrastructure” (Acohido, paragraph 3). Companies hire outside IT professionals to illegally hack their networks and try to find security vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. Imagine suing one of these hackers for answering the call of these high-profile companies. Sanctions imposed on a person who has accessed a network or system that is not their own should reflect the situation and not a blanket punishment for unauthorized access. Merriam-Webster defines the word hacker four different ways. The first definition is one who hacks; second, a person who is inexperienced and/or not competent in a particular activity; third, an expert in computer programming and solving problems with a computer; and fourthly, one who illegally accesses and sometimes alters information contained in a computer system (“Hacker”). When society began to associate the term hacker with computers, it was before digital identity theft and cyberterrorism, in the wonderful days of the 80s and 90s and the early days of the Internet. Society, at that time, put hackers on a pedestal. Movies and television portrayed hackers as all-nighters fighting evil corporations for poor peasants. Hackers were capable of feats that only the most educated individuals could achieve, not mere teenagers working in the dark from their parents...... middle of paper...... culture hacker. "Journal of Popular Culture 45.1 (2012): 133-152. Web. April 19, 2013. Rensin, Emmett "This infamous hacker went to prison for trolling AT&T. Now he wants to troll Wall Street. 26, apparently a suicide "Business Day Technology. New York Times, January 12, 2013. Web. April 28, 2014.26.html?_r=0>.Yu, Zhengchuan, Gng Hu, and Chenghong Zhang. “Why IT Talent Becomes ComputerHackers.” Communications of the ACM 56.4 (2013): 64-74. Web. April 19. 2014.