Thanks! FWIW I think the virtual con this year is going to be pretty cool. There are a lot of challenges, and forms of interaction that aren't possible in person we're going to try out. There sadly are a bunch of things we can't do virtually that I'll definitely miss from the in person event as well. It'll be different but still hopefully awesome.

I think the term cracker had the same media portrayal problem probably starting with the movie Sneakers (of the top of my head, no fact checking there) but it is a much more niche term in general and if you were to generally use it around people, probably even in computer adjacent jobs, they'd be more confused by what you're talking about then recognize it.

That being said yeah I'm 100% down with considering crackers being the DRM busters. I personally kind of consider demo scene wizards to be part of the "cracker" group even though it is completely unrelated. There just seems to be a heavy amount of overlap.

There was a movement around 2000 to define hackers as the good guys and crackers the bad guys who break into computer systems and cause damage. I believe that movement failed.

A cracker, to me, is someone who breaks software protection. A hacker can be good or bad, and that makes the word more fun.