"Bruce Sterling - Statement of Principle, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling
[email protected]
Catscan 10
From SCIENCE FICTION EYE #10

A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLE

I just wrote my first nonfiction book. It's called THE HACKER
CRACKDOWN: LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER. Writing this
book has required me to spend much of the past year and a half in the
company of hackers, cops, and civil libertarians.
I've spent much time listening to arguments over what's legal,
what's illegal, what's right and wrong, what's decent and what's
despicable, what's moral and immoral, in the world of computers and
civil liberties. My various informants were knowledgeable people who
cared passionately about these issues, and most of them seemed well-
intentioned. Considered as a whole, however, their opinions were a
baffling mess of contradictions.
When I started this project, my ignorance of the issues involved
was genuine and profound. I'd never knowingly met anyone from the
computer underground. I'd never logged-on to an underground bulletin-
board or read a semilegal hacker magazine. Although I did care a great
deal about the issue of freedom of expression, I knew sadly little about
the history of civil rights in America or the legal doctrines that
surround freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of
association. My relations with the police were firmly based on the
stratagem of avoiding personal contact with police to the greatest
extent possible.
I didn't go looking for this project. This project came looking
for me. I became inextricably involved when agents of the United States
Secret Service, acting under the guidance of federal attorneys from
Chicago, came to my home town of Austin on March 1, 1990, and
confiscated the computers of a local science fiction gaming publisher.
Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, was about to publish a gaming-book
called GURPS Cyberpunk.
When the federal law-enforcement agents discovered the electronic
manuscript of CYBERPUNK on the computers they had seized from Mr.
Jackson

's offices, they expressed grave shock and alarm. They declared
that CYBERPUNK was "a manual for computer crime."
It's not my intention to reprise the story of the Jackson case in
this column. I've done that to the best of my ability in THE HACKER
CRACKDOWN; and in any case the ramifications of March 1 are far from
over. Mr Jackson was never charged with any crime. His civil suit
against the raiders is still in federal court as I write this.
I don't want to repeat here what some cops believe, what some
hackers believe, or what some civil libertarians believe. Instead, I
want to discuss my own moral beliefs as a science fiction writer --
such as they are. As an SF writer, I want to attempt a personal