"Bruce Sterling - The Hacker Crackdown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

2
B R U CE S T ER L I NG тАФ TH E HAC KE R CR AC KD OW N NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
 Preface to the Electronic Release
of The Hacker Crackdown
January 1, 1994 тАФ Austin, Texas


Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book.

Out in the traditional 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 тАФ United States. 2. Telephone тАФ
United States тАФ Corrupt practices. 3. Programming (Electronic com-
puters) тАФ United States тАФ Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I
always get a kick out of that description. Librarians are very ingenious
people.


The paperback is ISBN 0-553-56370-X. If you go and buy a print
version of *The Hacker Crackdown,* an action I encourage heartily, you
may notice that in the front of the book, beneath the copyright notice тАФ
"Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling" тАФ 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 and 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 intel-
lectual-property disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them, and this one
is at least pretty straightforward. In this narrow and particular case,
however, it isn't quite accurate. 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, because of certain extensive con-
tract maneuverings my agent and I went through before this book was

3
B R U CE S T ER L IN G тАФ T H E HAC KE R CR A C KD OW N NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
 written. I want to give those electronic publishing rights away through
certain not-for-profit channels, and I've convinced Bantam that this is
a good idea.

Since Bantam has seen fit to peacably agree to this scheme of mine,
Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this. Provided you don't try to