Indeed. I wouldn't say the law is for show; I would say the written law isn't the whole story. Reality is a three-edged sword: the law, the intent, and the implementation.

"For show," to me, implies you can ignore it and charge forward, bull-in-a-china-shop-style. That doesn't work in law or computers; naive invalid input gets rejected by the first-stage parser, and a court complaint completely ignorant of the law can get tossed by the clerk before it even sees a judge's desk. Rather, hacking is understanding and exploiting the consequences of, and nuances within, the rules.