I tried scanning the article to find out what made it illegal, and was fairly disappointed to find that (once again) I'd been lured by a sensationalist headline.
Yeah, the headline did make it sound like hackers were protecting The Pirate Bay headquarters or something... we should be able to downvote bad titles :)
"What it does not have, according to city officials, are things that would make it an office. It doesn’t have enough fire exits, sprinklers or wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, as required by city regulations."
Obviously these guys are up to no good with their illicit "hacking." Isn't that code for "making meth"? And a Dojo!? They probably run Fight Club style events too.
Software developers are known troublemakers. If you don't keep an eye on them, they'll type away all night optimizing code and drinking caffeine.
Not being up to code makes it illegal to occupy the building. I'm not quite sure why the NY Times would leave something like that out; it's possible that code violations are more prevalent in NY and thus the import need not be explained.
The title is supposed to tell us whether the article is worth reading. Most anyone who cares about Hacker Dojo already knew about their retrofit funding problem; there's little fresh news here.