"Sterling, Bruce - hacker_crackdown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Electronic Afterword to *The Hacker Crackdown,*
New Years╒ Day 1994

Preface to the Electronic Release of *The Hacker
Crackdown*

January 1, 1994 -- 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 -- 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.

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 -- "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 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 intellectual-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 contract maneuverings my
agent and I went through before this book was
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.