As a Tupac fan, it wouldn't even be all that hard to believe that Tupac lives on. Tupac has appeared in at least three movies, and released nine new albums since his death. He is credited as the screenwriter of an as-yet-untitled movie currently being filmed. Tupac has been more prolific in the 15 years since his murder than most living entertainers.

Sadly, though, the story is not true. The PBS site was hacked by a group known as LulzSec in retaliation for a PBS documentary on WikiLeaks. The show, titled ": The inside story of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history" does not speak kindly of Wikileaks, and hacktivists have already demonstrated and what they perceive to be a violation of free speech and an attempt to obscure the truth.

reports that attackers also planted a message at pbs.org/lulz which read, "All your base are belong to Lulzsec." The title of the page was "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. F**K FRONTLINE!" (Asterisks inserted by me).

My PCWorld peer Ian Paul notes that there seems to be a lately. I agree with Paul regarding cyber attacks in general, but I want to go a step farther and point out that hacktivism in particular seems to have caught on as an acceptable means of non-violent protest.

The defacing of the PBS Website is obviously an indictment of the network and Web server security at PBS, but the larger picture is that it is yet another example of the power wielded by hacktivists--hives of skilled hackers with a social conscience and a "Robin Hood" complex.