Compared to crimes like murder and rape, hacking seems like a relatively minor offense. After all, some geek snooping around on the Internet doesn’t really hurt anyone. Sometimes they deface websites. Sometimes they steal credit card numbers. Sometimes they plant viruses. Sometimes they are the subject of ludicrous movies from the 1980s and 90s. But hackers are hardly killers. Not yet at least.It’s understandable, then, that New York Times columnist John Tierney ruffled some feathers a few years ago when he suggested that hackers should be sentenced to death. His justification wasn’t that the hackers caused physical harm but rather financial mayhem. “The benefits of executing a hacker would be greater, [Professor Steven Landsburg] argues, because the social costs of hacking are estimated to be so much higher: $50 billion per year,” Tierney wrote. “Deterring a mere one-fifth of 1 percent of those crimes — one in 500 hackers — would save society $100 million.” To which, Washington Post writer Robert MacMillan wrote, “Hell should reserve a special place for New York Times columnist John Tierney.”Read the rest over at Motherboard.