Is paying criminals not to hack a good idea?

NDTV report on how Kim Dotcom stopped a denial of service attack on Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox by giving the hackers 3,000 lifetime vouchers for Mega’s premium service.

While the intention may have been just to be able to play his games (or to get some publicity painting him as a saviour) I think it is a bad precedent to reward hackers – ether for hacking, or for stopping hacking. Either way it incentivises them to do more hacking in future.

Also of interest is that Dotcom claims he is broke, and can’t afford anything – yet gave away 3,000 lifetime premium subscriptions to Mega.

An annual premium subscription is around 100 Euros so NZ$150. A lifetime one would probably be valued at around $2,000 using a modest discount rate. 3,000 x $2,000 is $6 million.

It’s tough being broke.