>just because something is not legally required does not mean that it's wrong to do it, so I don't see why the distinction even matters.
Define "wrong" though. That's the problem, and why the distinction matters.
Re:Kiwifarms Dropped by Their ISP
by insanitybit on Sunday October 23, 2022 @02:58PM
(#33309270)
My point is that the distinction already doesn't exist. This is because it really doesn't need to exist for most cases - no one worth talking to is on the "actually malware should be legal and providers should be forced to host it" side of the argument. Where things get murky is the "Potentially Unwanted Program" ie: programs that really really suck, are kinda sketchy, but don't cross over into malware territory.
That's to say that there are grey areas, but there are also black and white areas, or areas that are so far on the fringes of grey that it's fine to just treat them as black or white. We do that all the time.
In the case of Kiwifarms we have what I think is a very straightforward case. A website that exists for the sole purpose of organizing malicious acts falls well into the "maybe it's not illegal, but it's blatantly unethical".
What exactly is illegal? None of what I have described goes through a legal process, there is no official judge saying "yep, that's spam" or "yep, that's malware". In general things are very murky with regards to what the legality around malware is - if it has not been used to access another system maliciously you're really going to have to stretch the CFAA (partly why the CFAA is so vague).
Beyond that, just because something is not legally required does not mean that it's wrong to do it, so I don't see why the distinction even matters.