Chain Breakers
The term Chain Breaker was used to refer to any member (actual or suspected) of any of several organizations, usually considered to be of criminal or even terrorist intent, that became increasingly popular people's movements in the Corporate Wars era at the end of the 21st Century. Among the general public, Chain Breakers were viewed as dangerous criminals with intent that raised from misguided through nefarious to downright dangerous. Much like the earlier term "hacker", self-identified Chain Breakers often strongly rejected these associations, and the term eventually outgrew a smaller targeted demographic to become a general term for social subversives who refused to assent totally to corporate governance by the Megacorporations. The conflicting term would be Corporate Drone.
Etymology
The term "chain breaker" is argued to have two roots. The first, and most commonly cited, was political in origin and the chains referred to are the chains of oppression and slavery: chain breakers were therefore freedom fighters trying to uproot tyrrany. The narrower etymology points to early instances of the phrase being used to reply specifically to people defeating blockchain protections on cybernetics in order to chainbreak them. The motives for this activity ranged from simple profit (allowing the more easy redistribution of stolen cybernetics (or other goods that used the system)) to altruistic (allowing the continued function of life-supporting cybernetics past their intended license life).
Associated Activities
Approach to Transhuminism
Known Chain Breaker theorists wrote heavily on the need for transhumanist technologies and inclusive approaches to the adoption of technologies like cybernetics and, later, nano-augmentation, but they conflicted with their rival groups, the Corporate Drones and the Disconnected, on how they framed these technologies, taking a nuanced and balanced approach that split the middle between the unalloyed-good presentation given in corporate sales media and the fear-and-loathing promulgations of the Disconnected. Specifically, they saw transhumanist technologies as good where they could be provided equitably and distributed evenly. Many chain breakers got their start in attempting to circumvent DRM protections on medical equipment and cybernetic prosthetics, either their own or those of loved ones. Some Chain Breakers are known to have gone heavily into augmentation for their own personal motives.
Digital and Intellectual Property Crimes
Chain Breakers were known to engage in a variety of digital crimes, especially concerned with the theft and redistribution of intellectual property materials; indeed the very term for the group comes from a specific subset of hacking concerned with subverting, bypassing, corrupting, or sabotaging the operation of various forms of blockchain protections. Participation in this specific activity is said to be more determinative of the rightful usage of the title "Chain Breaker" than membership in any one particular organization could have been.
Industrial Sabotage
Many famous chain breaker groups were associated with movements to disrupt Megacorporations or other industrial methods, for which purpose they occasionally collaborated with the Disconnected or even Corporate Drones working for rival megacorporations (though the latter was far rarer).