Hacker Crackdown | Page 3

Ungentle Giant / The Breakup / In Defense of the System / The Crash Post-Mortem / Landslides in Cyberspace
Part 2: THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND Steal This Phone / Phreaking and Hacking / The View From Under the Floorboards / Boards: Core of the Underground / Phile Phun / The Rake's Progress / Strongholds of the Elite / Sting Boards / Hot Potatoes / War on the Legion / Terminus / Phile 9-1-1 / War Games / Real Cyberpunk
Part 3: LAW AND ORDER Crooked Boards / The World's Biggest Hacker Bust / Teach Them a Lesson / The U.S. Secret Service / The Secret Service Battles the Boodlers / A Walk Downtown / FCIC: The Cutting-Edge Mess / Cyberspace Rangers / FLETC: Training the Hacker-Trackers
Part 4: THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS NuPrometheus + FBI = Grateful Dead / Whole Earth + Computer Revolution = WELL / Phiber Runs Underground and Acid Spikes the Well / The Trial of Knight Lightning / Shadowhawk Plummets to Earth / Kyrie in the Confessional / $79,499 / A Scholar Investigates / Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
Electronic Afterword to THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, Halloween 1993

Preface to the Electronic Release of THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
October 31, 1993--Austin, Texas
Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book. Out in the traditional world of print, this book is still a part of the traditional commercial economy, because it happens to be widely available in paperback (for a while, at least).
Out in the world of print, THE HACKER CRACKDOWN is ISBN 0-553-08058-X, and is formally catalogued by the Library of Congress as "1. Computer crimes--United States. 2. Telephone-- United States--Corrupt practices. 3. Programming (Electronic computers)--United States--Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I always get a kick out of that description. Librarians are very ingenious people.
If you go and buy the print version of THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, an action I encourage heartily, you may notice that in the front of the book, right under the copyright sign--"Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling"--it has this little block of printed legal boilerplate from the publisher. It says, and I quote:

"No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books."

This is a pretty good disclaimer, as such disclaimers go. I collect intellectual-property disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them, and this one is at least pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much to do with reality. Bantam Books puts that disclaimer on every book they publish, but Bantam Books does not, in fact, own the electronic rights to this book. I do. And I've chosen to give them away.
Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this. They are not going to bother you for what you do with the electronic copy of this book. If you want to check this out personally, you can ask them; they're at 1540 Broadway NY NY 10036. However, if you were so foolish as to print this book and start retailing it for money in violation of my copyright and the commercial interests of Bantam Books, then Bantam, a part of the gigantic Bertelsmann multinational publishing combine, would roust some of their heavy-duty attorneys out of hibernation and crush you like a bug. This is only to be expected. I didn't write this book so that you could make money out of it. If anybody is gonna make money out of this book, it's gonna be me and my publisher.
My publisher deserves to make money out of this book. Not only did the folks at Bantam Books commission me to write the book, and pay me a hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, an electronic document the reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal felony. Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave and forthright about this book. Furthermore, my former editor at Bantam Books, Betsy Mitchell, genuinely cared about this project, and worked hard on it, and had a lot of wise things to say about the manuscript. Betsy deserves genuine credit for this book, credit that editors too rarely get.
The critics were very kind to THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, and commercially the book has done well. On the other hand, I didn't write this book in order to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of the mitts of impoverished sixteen-year-old cyberpunk high- school-students. Teenagers don't have any money--no, not even enough for HACKER CRACKDOWN. That's a major reason why they sometimes succumb to the temptation to do things they shouldn't, such as swiping my books out of libraries. Kids: this one is all yours, all right? Go give the paper copy back. *8-)
Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have much money,