The Hacker Crackdown

[masque12]

Last night I finished reading Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown. Great book, and it's available for free online. I am especially fascinated by the part of the book that covers the Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games, a company that I do volunteer demo work for. I had previously known about the incident, of course, and the fact that SJG sued the SS (how appropriate!) and won over the incident. What I didn't know was the legal importance of the SJG vs. SS case. It was basically what gave teeth the the notion of electronic privacy. The SJG case is also important in that it was one of the reasons for the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which ended up backing SJG in its successful lawsuit.

In any case, this page has a shitload of info on the case, if you're interested. I'm currently reading the judge's ruling, myself. I noticed one thing in particular about it. Due to this case, the word "Fnord" is now immortalized in a legal document. That just ROCKS. My Discordian soul is just thrilled at that.

I may end up joining the EFF myself after reading all this stuff.

Comments

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Do you like Sterling? I have two (fiction) books of his for sale. They are currently listed on Amazon.com, but I'll delist them if you want them. One is "Islands in the Net", which is out of print, so I am asking $5 for it, and the other is "Holy Fire", which can be yours for $4.

[masque12.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do dig Sterling. I have Islands in the Net, and I'm pretty sure I've read Holy Fire already, but thanks for letting me know, in any case. If you dig Sterling, another guy you might want to check out is Neal Stephenson, especially Snow Crash. I have that one if you want to borrow it. Cryptonomicon, which I also have, is great, too. Someone else is borrowing it right now, but when they finish it, you're welcome to borrow it.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

I love Stephenson. I know we've talked about him before- remember, we were talking about the prequels to Cryptonomicon? I actually don't like Sterling very much, when he's writing alone, and that's why I'm selling the books.

We have "Cryptonomicon" (and "Snow Crash," too), but if you get the prequels before we do, I would really love to borrow them. Oh, and do you like Neil Gaiman? If you do, we have some of his stuff here if you'd like to borrow. I think you'd really like "American Gods."