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.

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 sell the book, 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 rous