Well, not really though. In unwired it makes it very clear that piracy is very difficult, with warez nodes constantly having to move as the Grid Overwatch Douchebags Division roots them out. Hell it took a test, and money to get pirate software, that took hacking skills to find. I had to spend the better part of my down time every month either patching or looking for up to date code for my software. It wasn't easy or simple, most shadow nodes had to be well hidden or on the move, or such a tool of the corps that they left it there, shadowsea being one of those tools.
The amount of infrastructure needed to stop, scan, test, identify and halt malicious code for every single packet transfer is just ridiculous. The whole point of hacking and cracking is that you're tricking the machine, or the human element, or both. What you send out looks innocuous to the machine, and makes it do something within its operating protocol and it goes "Okay, that seems fine, I'll just do that little thing, I'll run a troubleshoot diagnostic on that part or move that actuator or run this computation." Thing is, you're making it do those little things, maybe a thousand times, or in a sequence that makes it do what you want. Spit out a credstick or a bag of gummy bears, turn off some of its censors so that an authorized vendor can restock the product which by your spoofed ID you very much look like to the machine. There was no shortage of clever you had to be to make things happen, and you were still a minority in the population.
I could totally accept that corporate security started tightening up, like allot, started instituting more stringent protocols whatever. But even previously, most offices were all wired, wifi blocking paint, and polorized windows. If you wanted anything important you still had to go inside or tap a land line near the premise, you had to physically be there and either you were clever to bluff your way in, sneak in, or take a risk and shoot your way in. Important data on premise was in proprietary format, so you had to be running the same OS as the company working on it (Why you just didn't need their builder program I don't know, but that's the way they wrote it.) to even view the file. Let alone if you want to sell it, you have to move it off as certified data, which erases the original copy, and find someone who can appreciate the value of it and find a buyer.
I understand they want to tighten things up for gameplay or whatever, but the general path they've take has been on the side of hard scifi, not explaining away things as super science. They do explain away fantastical things, but using the logical progression of technology. Like ASIST, which was something of a rarity in 2nd ed is now everywhere, that's given the matrix a 3rd dimension of travel, you can be in it, think it and make it. That's already fantastical, and the corps with their infinite funds use it to no end to out think the general population and make some fantastic things to sell, and some real wiz brutal things to protect their profits. But today, we already have ways of using mental impulses to control things, I'm reminded of an experiment where they had a monkey bound up, hooked to basically a trode net, controling a robotic arm to give it bananas. You can see where that'd go, you can see the influence -both ways really. It's not fantasy, it's science fiction, you take what's loosly probable today and see where you can imagine going with it.
Not only that, but think of it from a setting standpoint. You have greezy little gutter urchins scraping to get by out there, toughest one gets to eat. Then you have the little one not too tough by street urchin standards, but he's smart and he's got a 2 bit link he lifted, and he's helping his little friends get by by hacking a vending machine or two, or a maglock to let them get some place secure to sleep for the night, whatever. There are mountains of people struggling to get by and some of them are clever enough to exploit the system, not because they have the budget for some 50'0000 nuyen skateboard but because they're clever. That to me is way more gritty cyberpunk than: The system is so wiz powerful that your machine literally lights on fire, and you spend another 25'000 nuyen fixing it. Yeah, there goes street level play.
The gibson is so powerful that your machine explodes, and on sight security tries to melt your little decker buddies brains, sure. 7-11's slushy machine is connected to the omnipotent grid and sets your head on fire when you try and get a free slushy, that's just ridiculous. Low level machines should have some cheap tricks, measured in nuyen not brilliance, to fend off hackers, be tightened up, not wireless whatever. But steamrollering the whole setting was just another unnecessary thing in 5th ed. Looking at it now, my Commlink from my last character was 28'160 Nuyen, that's hacked programs and all, way out of the reach of most people who don't live and die by it in the shadows. Any way, I'd be happy to debate this at length in another thread about the matrix, but not here - we aren't going to see eye to eye, but I do enjoy a healthy debate and I always learn a thing or 6 in the process.
