The deal with regular computer or server software being altered is that you can't alter, say, a Microsoft XP OS and repackage it and sell it on your own. Each of those software titles has many patients and copyright labels protecting it many different parts of it.
As far a someone going into XP and say, writing a program ( or script) to be able to delete the IE shortcut off of the desktop is perfectly legal. They could sell it all day long.
This goes the same as the DCX ECM. Companies like SuperChips aren't rewriting the ECM and tagging it as their own, they are braking the code down and fixing and deleting what they want and then pushing that script (program) out. What they create is theirs. Catch my drift?
As far as us owning the software as in Microsoft, Adobe, or whatever, WE DO NOT OWN THE SOFTWARE that we buy in the stores, etc. WE OWN A LICENSE to use the software. The disks that we by are physically ours, but the programs that are on them are logically the software vendors intellectual property. This is what made Bill Gates so damn rich. He convinced IBM way back in the day for him (Bill) to keep the rights of the software and only sell licenses to use it. IBM with all thier wisdom thought he was a nut job and told him that it would be the actual computer making the money, not the software...And 90 billion dollars later...you get the point.
As far a Mitnik not caring for this since it is a car, you are missing the point of what a hacker (or cracker) is. It doesn't matter a damn bit if the guy cares about it or not, it is can it be broke? You honestly think that the people who hack the some of these off the wall websites give a sh!t about them? No, they want to be able to tell others that it was broke. Keep in mind that most hackers, and almost all the great ones, didn't do it for financial gain, they did it for prestige within thier little click and bragging rights basically.
