Is Hacktivism Robin Hood Politics?

deran9ed writes "After reading an article at Guardian Unlimited, I wondered what was Slashdot's viewers' thoughts on "Hacktivism", the act of hacking for a so called cause, according to a Guardian Unlimited article: Once hacking was regarded as the pastime of attention-grabbing nerds. But a meeting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London will be told how credible an activity it has become in the era of direct action. Old-fashioned hacking, the meeting will hear, has given way to hacktivism: a highly politicised underground movement using direct action in cyberspace to attack globalisation and corporate domination of the internet. Either way you cut the cake its still illegal, but is it along the realms of say the Vietnam Era protests, or are hacktivist using this term to promote themselves." The vast majority of so called "Hactivism" just isn't. I think that in most cases the intentions are good, but the folks capable of, say, defacing a website, usually aren't the same folks able to intelligently communicate a message. Instead of looking like political activists staging a sit-in, they look like angry teens spraying graffiti obscenities on a wall which does far more damage then good.