t
may not be the easiest direct method to generate revenue for the book's
author, but that doesn't matter; this is where this book belongs by its
nature. I've written other books--plenty of other books--and I'll
write more and I am writing more, but this one is special. I am making
The Hacker Crackdown available electronically as widely as I can
conveniently manage, and if you like the book, and think it is useful,
then I urge you to do the same with it.

You can copy this electronic book. Copy the heck out of it, be my
guest, and give those copies to anybody who wants them. The nascent
world of cyberspace is full of sysadmins, teachers, trainers,
cybrarians, netgurus, and various species of cybernetic activist. If
you're one of those people, I know about you, and I know the hassle you
go through to try to help people learn about the electronic frontier.
I hope that possessing this book in electronic form will lessen your
troubles. Granted, this treatment of our electronic social spectrum is
not the ultimate in academic rigor. And politically, it has something
to offend and trouble almost everyone. But hey, I'm told it's
readable, and at least the price is right.

You can upload the book onto bulletin board systems, or Internet nodes,
or electronic discussion groups. Go right ahead and do that, I am
giving you express permission right now. Enjoy yourself.

You can put the book on disks and give the disks away, as long as you
don't take any money for it.

But this book is not public domain. You can't copyright it in your own
name. I own the copyright. Attempts to pirate this book and make
money from selling it may involve you in a serious litigative snarl.
Believe me, for the pittance you might wring out of such an action,
it's really not worth it. This book don't "belong" to you. In an odd
but very genuine way, I feel it doesn't "belong" to me, either. It's a
book about the people of cyberspace, and distributing it in this way is
the best way I know to actually make this information available, freely
and easily, to all the people of cyberspace--including people far
outside the borders of the United States, who otherwise may never have
a chance to see any edition of the book, and who may perhaps learn
something useful from this strange story of distant, obscure, but
portentous events in so-called "American cyberspace."

This electronic book is now literary freeware. It now belongs to the
emergent r