What do you think hacking is? The actual laws broken were "unauthorized access to computers and computer networks." If you know that you don't belong on a system (like being B&), and you get on the system anyway (unlawful access), you could be V&. Find out about that, it's kind of creepy. Google it.
Again, I'm not saying that anyone will go after some kid d*cking around on a forum, but the laws are there. No need to bring China into this.
*Getting B& is not a crime, but logging on after being banned is. Just because something is a crime doesn't mean that you will surely get punished, only that you *could*, if things go wrong. And i'm pretty sure you knew what i meant without me typing an essay about it.
Holy hell thanks for the laugh. There is no hacking going on by joining a forum over and over. None. There could be charge pressed if they accessed the admin panel and removed the ban, and you could prove it; or they are making some kind of death threats and the like. There is no illegal activity in being a troll on a forum. You have to ban the IP and so forth to mitigate the trolls/spambots and so forth.
I would love to see a case where a forum owner sued a troll tho. That would be classic.
FYI, here you go since you were too lazy to link it yourself.
http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96783It's not against the law but it is almost definitely against your ISP's ToS to use their network to evade bans and if bitcointalk cared enough to email
they can warn you/suspend your service if you're a repeat offender. It's the internet equivalent of trespassing.
Source: used to mod a forum with 20,000+ active users and contacted ISP's regularly