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10th Anniversary of Steve Jackson Games Raid
WhiteRabbit writes, "According to their Web site, March 1, 2000 is ten years to the day since the Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games... for publishing a cyberpunk-style role-playing game supplement. This was one of the first cases in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation became involved.
More info at this page."
...and $250,000 of attorney fees? (that's 5/6 of the money for litigation costs) Really, if I had to lay off half of my employee because of this, I would have ask for more compensation. They have SJ Games lose three years worth of opportunity.
Hasdi
And we won. The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees
This is winning ? 5 times as much goes to lawyers as to the injured parties. Something in the US legal system needs to be changed to enable real people to combat big brother, be they the goverment or big company X.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Its a pretty good read, covers the Jackson Games Case as well as the other ones that occured aroud that time
C.
I sometimes write stuff
Fast forward ten years, and the only thing that's changed is who authorizes the raids: the MPAA and RIAA are hot on the heels of so-called pirates who are giving them an estimated 1.2 billion dollar surplus of funds, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act - perhaps the worst offender since the CDA only because it's more comprehensive and dangerous. A felony to use a digital-audio converter? Reminds me of how stealing cable access is a felony, but me taking a hammer to your car (doubtless costing much more loss of property) is only a gross misdemeanor.
"these times, they are a changin'"... it seems to underscore the one problem we seem to be missing - this isn't a fight over intellectual property or freedom of information as much as it's a fight to educate people. Sadly enough, most people get their information through the massive media organizations and evening news. People who can afford to put the word out on their wires are all the average consumer can hear. Our fight is an underground one - we're trying to save the freedom of the average consumer (both in the US and the world at large) against greedy corporations and they think we're the bad guys!
Well.. for what's it's worth Steve, thanks for sobering us up to this reality.. even if you didn't know you'd be making history when they showed up at your doorstep.
I would first like to ask if SJ Games, in their article, mean hackers or crackers when they say hackers.
Secondly I would like to mention that the Gubment's Search Warrant was based on a very very flimsy affidavit. And they still HAVEN'T returned all of the items they seized ten years ago.
This just goes to show that the gubment has actively been against all forms of irreverence. Which goes against the first amendment to the constitution.
I don't believe in this "National Security" crap. It is more like "Governmental Security. The Feds doing something illegal to scare the genral populus against these kinds of people.
Thank you and good night.
"A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions." Proverbs 18 : 2
Ewige Blumenkraft.
ZP
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Got Rhinos?
Even when the courts come out and say the Goons are wrong, all they end up doing is shoveling some taxpayer money back at the wronged party. I'll be willing to bet that no heads rolled at the Secret Service because of this particular incident -- what's the big deal about paying a fine when it's not your money in the first place? It's like when I found out that my company would pay my on-job parking tickets.
There ought to be some system of accountability to discourage government agents from degenerating into Goons -- maybe some way of allowing the courts to directly discipline government employees. In any case, I find it a bit disturbing that my hard-earned (well, earned) tax dollars are going to pay such stupid people.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Fortunately, we all know the government these days knows it's bounds and wouldn't trample the liberties it's sworn to keep & protect.
So, don't think about the raid. Or Project Sundevil. Or Kevin Mitnick (who deserved some jail time, but didn't deserve 5 years and absurd treatment). Heck, even Waco & Ruby Ridge. It's just the government keeping you safe from yourself.
Oh, er, wait a second...
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
IMHO, this bears a striking resemblence to the Ramsey Electronics raid - guilt by association.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
This story is worthy of /. One of the things many online personages (especially the young'uns) lack is a sense of historical perspective. This sort of thing should be dredged up once in a while, just to remind us all that the Man has been trying to f**k us for a loooong time. Can't say that the PTB don't have foresight, this was indubitably done to try and set a precedent against future users of the then-nascent "public" internet and BBS's. Unfortunately it backfired, guess the Feds got the "wrong" judge...
Too bad Leonard Peltier can't sue the FBI the same way...
Freedom: "I won't!"
For those who didn't know about it, this from their own page:
" Hacker is the original computer crime card game. This game was written by Steve Jackson as a satirical comment
on the Secret Service raid and the hacker community. The hacker community liked it. There's been no visible
reaction from the Feds. Hacker won the Origins Award for Best Modern-Day Boardgame of 1992. "
More info, but it's sold out.
This is not a signature.
They were not raided because of GURPS Cyber-Punk. The reason the FBI raided them was that they had found a copy of information lifted from a phone company computer posted on their BBS. It set a lot of prescedents, and has a lot of signifigance in the field of cyber law
--Hephaestus Lee
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
(Even if the guy -was- guilty, AND did something stupid at the office, at best any such evidence would be highly circumstantial, when it came to a case that was specifically about his activities at home. The chances are the Judge would throw the book at whoever ordered the raid, no matter what.)
But let's assume that, at some point, the Secret Service decided that the Cyberpunks game was "dangerous" or "criminal" in some way. I have yet to see anything by SJG to suggest they did, but let's make the assumption anyway. What then? It's "evidence", sure, but gathered in a raid concerning a totally independent activity. I'm not sure they'd have been able to use it.
Let's make another assumption, that they could have used it. What then? If it doesn't directly and demonstrably incite criminal activity, then it's just a book, covered by the first ammendment. That would be a tough nut for the Secret Service to crack.
Ok, let's make Yet Another assumption, that they could somehow have done so, that they could have found a way to interpret the law so as to legally be able to use the Cyberpunks information as evidence of directly inciting crime. Could they have won the case? That would depend on where the trial was held. The Secret Service aren't supposed to be involved in domestic investigations (except maybe of counterfeiting, forgery, et al), which would be right on the fringes of the Cyberpunk genre.
If the case was held in an area which was primarily dependent upon the Secret Service, in some way, for employment, stability or security, I can see a judge maybe giving them the benefit of the doubt in that one narrow field, and maybe requiring SJG to remove anything specifically dealing with counterfeiting or forgery from the game.
Anywhere else, though, the Secret Service wouldn't have a hope. It would be too tangental an argument. Without a direct, primary relationship, the judge would be perfectly within their rights to have those involved in the raid locked up for contempt of court, perjury and abuse of court time.
Although it should not be relevent, because SJG generates revenue in most States, and therefore States are earning money from SJG's business, I suspect most judges would follow SJG's tune, anyway. Most US court decisions seem to be based on financial benefit to their area, rather than the merits of the case.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
IO is also a strong linux supporter. All the servers there are running under some free software of one type or another, and you have pretty much a free hand in what you want to run off of your website, as far as mySql, php, etc..
Not to mention, having a nice, short domain name is a plus.
fnord
The secret service holds an interesting place in law enforcement. As part of the department of tresury you'd think they'd only be going after counterfitters? Well, not really. The SS (as I like to call them) is a gun for hire. Are you a powerful company or gov't office? Well the secret service is there for you.
In this case the SS was the lackie of Bell South. The big companies had lobbied congress for some goon-squad funding for "computer crime."
Which, to the Bell Souths defence was the only option since the FBI won't do jack for you unless they can get a couple good press confrences out of it. And back in 1990 these types of stories weren't news worthy. And the hacker computer back then didn't have any script kiddies. Wisdom pervailed and no one took down the Bell South E911 system. All they would have had is some guy went dumpster diving and found a document and put it online...Ooooooooooo.
So, the SS is now the lackie of Big Business, in this case Bell South. They target Kluepfel for having the document open to the public, and decide to mess with him and anyone he knows. Enter Steve Jackson Games.
At this point you should be thinking "Gee, smear tactics to label legit businesses... Trumped up charges and a drawn out legal battle designed to force someone out of business... Can you say MPAA? I though you could."
It's great to see the EFF pervail, but the since the case was won so long after the initial flap it's page 10 news. If anything this should be a reminder that it's been 10 years since SJG. Although things haven't gotten worse, they certainly haven't gotten better. There's a long road ahead, and we should be glad the EFF is there.
When these raids were happening the main fear of hackers was from people who thought we would start a war or something like that. But the defense department said that wasn't possible (and to some extent this was true) and at the same time ordered that many of us be rounded up.
Of course true hackers don't do blatently illegal things so they had to find some excuse to raid people's homes and businesses. This is EXACTLY like what happene before my lifetime in response to phreaks. This case is really different though. These people just made a RPG module that gives fantastic ways of hacking (or rather cracking) things that simply did not exist. (and by and large still do not) This was a direct attack on freedom of speech. If the Madison knew what the bill that he drafted would do to our society, the first ammedment to the constitution would have never happened.
The problem now remains. The authoritative evil people want us to conform to THEIR agenda and if we differ, well the seceret service has to come and stop us.
Ok, end ranting now
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
No. The Phrack document never existed on any of SJGames's files, including the BBS.
The Company was raided because the file DID show up on Lloyd Blankenship's personal underground BBS, and by coincidence, Lloyd also managed the Illuminati BBS.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
It still amazes me that, ten years after the event, the real facts of this raid are obscured my half-truths, rumors, and all out lies.
The fact of the matter is that Steve Jackson Games practially BEGGED for the raid. They publically ridiculed the Secret Service and bragged about their exploints online. Furthermore, what everyone fails to mention (and is crucial) is that SJ Games had documents stating that they were ALLOWED TO BE SEARCHED wihtout a warrent at any time, as part of a bargain due to prior exploits. They had in fact waived the right of a search warrent.
Plus, it was well known that there were no less than 3 FULL TIME FBI agents working at SJG at the time of the raid not working in conjunction with the Secret Service but working AGAINST THEM. Two splinter groups had entirely different agendas (one was concerned with SJG and games piracy, the other with hijacking of sensitive national security data). The groups refused to work with one another and eventully destroyed not only SJG, but themselves.
The BBS had bomb recipes, beastial porn, oirated warez, and (more over) documents about a testing facility where a prototype stealth bomber was under production! The FBI was interested in the porn, the SS in the Bomber info.
The SS was well withing their rights to seize these documents when National Security is at risk. The FBI, on the other had, wanted to amass more evidence and didn't want to make a move on SJG until later.
Meanwhile, SJG is flaunting the porn, the docs, and even stolen hardware in BBS, usenet, and IRC. The hardware was junk, and bulk defective hardware was sold to mafia kingpin Joeseph Capello in Wilkesbury, PA. He and his organization wanted to take out SJG in a big way, but his plans were thwarted by the FBI and SS.
I'm really sick of all the bullshit that's flying around out there. Do some research before you post this crap. Shame on slashdot for propogating such nonsense as news.
Did dude ever get his stuff back?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I haven't seen most of them in years. Dana has a webcam and is currently the 13th sexiest geek the whole world. Unfortunately, I've lost track of most everyone else.
The raid is what introduced me to io.com, Dana, and the rest of the coolest group of people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.
A lot of people on Slashdot seem to think that it wasn't much of a victory. I guess they don't understand what happened then. The supreme court decided that computers were printing presses. The supreme court decided that what happened was wrong. This doesn't mean that it can't and won't happen again but it does mean that it's not acceptable. When it does happen, it's a newsworthy event, not a daily fact of life. For that alone, I consider it a victory.
There are those who think SJG should have gotten more. I don't think they understand what the fight was about in the first place. The fight was about the ability to communicate. Could we talk to people and have a right to privacy? Could we print what we wanted to in an electronic forum? Did the government have the right to harass us for doing so? These were important decisions in those days. Without that case, the Internet as we know it, may well have not come to be. The freedoms we use to post on Slashdot came from that incident.
Yeah. It's been 10 years. Some of the stuff never was returned. Rumors said that we were killed during that whole purple Nike' sneaker suicide bit. My fanzine (Second Church of Ultimate wisdom) is gone. Dana is a sexy geek, instead of just being a brilliant sexy person. And the government is still performing illegal raids.
But at least now they're illegal.
-----
No Zen is good zen
Obviously this kind of activity (remember Norway) can take place anywhere on the globe, pressed by interested parties big enough. So if you run any kind of a minuscular server (web/mail/etc) anywhere, in order to secure your information against theft by bigger players, make deals with at least two equal partners to replicate all your information and services to prevent total DoS by natural disasters or governmental intervention.
Just 2% of my administrative paranoia.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
make deals with at least two equal partners
+ as widely distributed as possible, both geologically and governmentally
Almost missed half of my point.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
CENSORSHIP of a game company
The article/book by Bruce Sterling Hacker Crackdown gives a quite interesting background to the raid.
For different printable formats, go to the EFF 's Bruce Sterling - Hacker Crackdown - Archive.
If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
This you dismiss as unimportant? Remember this is a very old case, and also remember that when someone beats the Federal government, it is a big deal, it means the courts sided with SJ Games against the SS. That the SS was in the wrong. Hopefully, it caused the SS, FBI and other organizations to act less obviously outside the law in future cases. (Though I'm not sure that's true.) At anyrate, it showed that you can beat the government when they break the law because of ignorence and incompetence related to computer equipment.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Seriously, Steve was a gaming friend of mine back in the days - I even had him as Gaming Guest of Honor for Westercon in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
It was a real shame, because of all of us SMOGs, he had the heaviest investment in tech - and they took his computers and literally broke them in pieces, returning the broken chips and motherboards in plastic bags (at least, that's what he told me).
Yes, they can do that. And they still can. Those laws haven't changed, and aren't likely too in the near future, except to get more drastic as we change our Nation's Enemy List from drug kingpins to hackers and crackers.
In honor of Steve, I ask that everyone go out and have some sushi for lunch today (his favorite).
Will in Seattle
In ten years time hopefully we will be looking back at the upcoming DeCSS desicion with the sense victory....
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Check out the article below (from 2/17/2000). Although it involves a case related to criminal activities, the charges imply that *anybody* simply in possession of L0phtcrack is committing a felony.
This is important because L0phtcrack, if you are not familiar with the software program, is widely used (legitimately!) by Network and Security Administrators, and Security Consultants for Network and System Security Audits.
Logical extrapolation of the charges mentioned in the article implies that Microsoft is guilty of a number of felonies, and conspiracy to commit numerous additional felonies, in Minnesota, because they manufacture the NT Resource Kit, a favorite "criminal hacker tool". In fact, anybody in possession of the popular Unix "Crack" program, in the state of Minnesota, is surely also guilty.
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http://www.channe l4000.com/news/stories/news-20000217-164727.html
According to this article (and a Hopkins Minnesota police department), it is a felony to posess l0phtcrack. Two people were charged with
"...two counts of possession of burglary or theft tools (specifically, a software program for extracting user IDs and passwords from a computer
system). "
Later, the articles explains that these two people '...accessed the VP Projects computer system and installed a software program called LOphtCrack, which is designed to extract user IDs and passwords. "
According to the article, its also a felony to attempt to gain access using it as well as another felony when you actually gain access.
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-- ken williams
They've been releasing a steady stream of new material. While a few products had disappointing sales (e.g. INWO SubGenius was released just as the gaming distribution network melted down a few years ago, so that many gaming retailers went directly from "never heard of it" to "it's old news"), they've generally been doing well AFAIK.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
One obscure aspect of the SJG incident that was interesting to me was the WWIV BBS that SJG was running at the time of the raid. Wayne Bell, who wrote WWIV, testified at the trial about how he was able to look at the files on the confiscated computer and tell that someone had used the sysop privilege to read through all the private email on the BBS one by one, deleting them as he/she went. Because of a peculiarity of how the BBS was written, the evidence that someone had done that was retained on the BBS until (I think, not sure now) the user actually logged in again. Since that never happened, Bell was able to provide a smoking gun that the authorities not only took the BBS, but actually read through the private communication stored on it. This was a significant factor in SJG's victory, since this sort of behavior was specifically outlawed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (or something like that).
I was a WWIV sysop at the time, and found this whole aspect of the case very interesting.
Even though I've moved on, to Usenet and Web development and all that, I still think back fondly on the amazingly vibrant communities that sprang up around old 286s running WWIV off a single phone line and a 2400-baud modem. That's our history (for some of us, anyway). It's where we came from, and it's where a lot of the sensibilities we share came from. I think about that sometimes when I'm trying to explain to a marketing droid why our company shouldn't use spam as a promotional tool, or should be concerned about the privacy rights of people who submit information on our Web site.
I understand that a lot of you probably feel that what was done to Steve Jackson games was unwarranted. But, for a monument, put yourself in the position of Law enforcement. They can't be expected to know everything about the computer world. These guys were selling and distributing documents that clearly laid out plans for hacking computer systems. Yes, these were fictional systems (although, the techniques described could easily be applied to real systems running at the time), but how could we expect the FBI to know that?
If you were distributing a filer that said "How to make LSD in your basement, for fun and profit", wouldn't you expect the cops to come and arrest you? Even if the document didn't really tell people how to make the stuff, and you were doing it as a joke. No, they should arrest you, and then let you go if it was discovered that you really didn't commit a crime. No one was permanently arrested here (in fact, no one was actually arrested. They just had their toys taken away).
Law enforcement has a responsibility to uphold the law, mistakes are sometimes made. Better safe then sorry. (and don't get me started about this whole Diallo shooting thing)
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I hope a similar outcome occurs in the Ramsey Electronics raid case. Makers of electronic kits are scarce enough w/o the feds having a fit of paranoia. You can help by filling out the form if you own or would like to buy any of the small FM 'wireless mics' they used to sell. Bastards.
<PARODY>Look! K-Mart is selling TELESCOPES!! Those can be used to spy thru people's windows!!! RAID!!!!!!!!</PARODY>
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's a shame that illegal search-and-seizure of a legitimate business must be equated with stealing the intellectual property of the music industry.
I'm sorry.
I don't like the MPAA or the RIAA either.
And they're just damn wrong about DeCSS, as we all know.
But they do own the copyright to all that music that people steal. And that's illegal, and undefendable. I don't like the big music companies any more than you do. But crime is not the answer -- if we're going to preserve our personal freedoms, we have to be above such things.
People, if you don't like big media companies that screw artists and consumers alike, don't buy from them. You're not giving the artists a cent, we all know, by buying the CDs. Go to the concerts (on tour is how most artists make money). Buy CDs from small indie music houses that focus on the artists, and on doing what's different, instead of more of the same drivel. But don't steal. That just gives them more ammunition and reason for laws that take away privacy.
My favorite piece of fallout from the Secret Service raid is this:
By confiscating the Illuminati Online server, they effectively launched it from being an obscure BBS into being a nicely profitable Internet provider.
Steve should send them a thank-you card every year on this date.
Of course you must be right, you posted it on Slashdot, the home of the cyberconspiracists.
The Secret Service did nothing wrong, it was all Bell South's doing. After all, SJG and Illuminati BBS was infinging on their turf!
You can be as paranoid as you want to be about big business (aka anyone who makes more money than you), but nothing will get fixed until the real culprits are put on a tight leash.
The real criminal in this case was the US Government. The solution isn't to break the baby bells up further, or to deny hollywood filmmakers the right of association, or to prevent anyone from making more money than you. Instead, it is to ensure that laws are applied equally to everyone, including the government.
Let's accept, for the sake of argument, the spurious claim that Bell South approached the US Secretary of the Treasury with an offer to hire the Secret Service, for the express purpose of eliminating a BBS that wasn't obsequious enough for them. Now let's assume that the guv'ment had to follow the same laws as everyone else. In this case, Bell South might as well as hire the mafia as the Secret Service, since the raid would have been a criminal act of extortion and theft.
If you make the laws apply to everyone equally, then lobbying by the filthy evil anti-linux megacorps will stop, since there would be no way to get exclusive legal priviledges.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's interesting to note that the FBI doesn't generally come in to play in porn issues. It's actually the US Customs department. In a past life I had dealings with them several times for porn coming from users of an ISP I worked for.
Who gives a rip that Mickey has his fingers in Britney's pie? What business is it of yours? What's the point of your rant? Are you saying Britney Spears does not have the right of freedom of association?
So what if supporting Britney directly or indirectly supports Disney? BFD! Maybe the next artist isn't a pawn of evil mediacorp, but uses you ticket money to buy a Britney Spears CD. Are you going to start accounting for every cent that leaves your hands?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
http://www.sjgames.com/
--- Bill, partially responsible for the One of Disks...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Five dead. Yeah, that's a lot. Ever hear of (forgive my spelling) the Serbs? Or Tianmen Square? Or the Hutus and the Tutsis? Hundreds of thousands dead.
You would today take away a right that admittedly costs dozens or hundreds of lives every year. In return, will you give us the guarantee that the government will NEVER become hostile to its citizenry? Before you answer, think about how authorities in this country treat minorities. Consider how short a distance it is from their current repressive behavior to genocide.
And for the record, I don't own a gun and probably never will. But I don't go around trying to force MY views on people that I can't protect.
and as soon as we cross the line where we are breaking the law (even in so trivial a way as playing an mp3 file we haven't paid for the CD of), we give validity to their arguments.
I had a conversation with Dean Paul Fowler here at CMU, about the line between protecting the University from lawsuits by the industry and academic freedom. One of the things he pointed out is that whenever an industry of that size goes to court or Congress and says, "We're losing money because of this illegal activity," you can bet there's going to be a rapid response from those with the power. And that's going to affect everyone else. We have to pick our fights, and make sure we're really on the moral high ground here.
We have to be able to respond with an unconditional, "No laws are being broken but our rights are being violated." I can't simultaneously tell the industry to go screw itself and apologize for my cohorts who are stealing their product (however much money they make despite that theft).
Oh yeah, murder can only occur in the presence of firearms.
A few years ago a stupid fuck took his automobile through the chain link fence of an elementary school and ran over and killed several children. What's the difference between that and a schoolyard shooting?
Face it, criminals do not heed the law (which is why they're criminals). They will always have guns, even if they have to import them from China via COSCO. When one of them breaks into my house armed with an illegal weapon, what do you want me to do? Call the cops and tell the thug to wait ten minutes until they arrive? Fuck that!
If you want to place yourself at the mercy of criminals, so be it. Sure, go ahead and praise Sharon Stone for turning in her guns while she still has armed guards on the payroll. Idolize the hypocrites.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It wasn't clear back then that electronic media had full First Amendment rights in the U.S. There was a lot of talk that they'd be subject to the sort of restrictions applied to TV and radio, under FCC jurisdiction. The Steve Jackson Games and Neidorf cases settled that issue, and paved the way for the uncensored World Wide Web we have today.
And it worked. Anybody can start a web site. All the nuts have web sites, and nobody cares. Yes, there's a lot of grousing from the right, and we have to keep watching for new censorship schemes, but censorship lost.
John Nagle
(Of course, that's not why the whole thing happened. The whole hacker crackdown was caused by an administrative screwup. The FBI and the Secret Service agreed by memo that the Secret Service would take over computer crime cases, the thinking being that the SS, which is part of Treasury and handles fraud-against-the-government stuff, knew something about computers. They didn't, but they were under pressure to Do Something, so they went off in the wrong direction. In a way, this worked out well, because they brought such dumb cases that the cases could be definitively won on First Amendment grounds. It would have been much worse if they'd gone after somebody who was actually doing something bad, like promoting a stock fraud and happened to be running a BBS as part of the fraud. We could have ended up with a whole regulatory structure for BBSs, and growing the Web would have been uphill all the way.)
that if we don't like laws, we can just ignore them? Even if the laws are perfectly constitutional and backed by centuries of precedent?
The fact that it's illegal to duplicate recordings isn't anything new. And it doesn't take away any of my freedom (except where my freedom would infringe upon others' freedom, namely the owners of the copyright).
Using DeCSS to decrypt your DVD and play it in Linux is not wrong.
Copying mp3 files without compensating the copyright holders is wrong.
There's a world of difference. As a community, we need to grow up and accept that.
...
I'm a paranoid m********ker and I'm rabid about protecting my privacy.
I detest consumerism.
I avoid debt.
I work way more than 10 hours a day.
I vote, and I use my vote (and my voice) to protect my rights (how many of the rest of you vote? I bet more of you should).
And theft is still wrong. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to like the industry. Theft is not the answer.
The author of the GURPS Cyberpunk book, one Loyd Blankenship, AKA "The Mentor", was a member of the LEGION OF DOOM hacking group that was infamous in the 80s and early 90s.
The raid had very little to do with the game he was writing and everything to do with the fact that the government had reason to believe he was involved in a number of real, illegal cracking incidents.
Having said all of that, clearly the government overstepped its bounds in the SJGames raid and deserved to be pushed back by the EFF, et al, but SJGames is now engaging in REVISIONIST HISTORY by claiming they were raided simply because of the subject matter of the game!!!
There's a great filk song by Leslie Fish (the queen of filk) that refers to this incident. It's called "Gamers" nee "This Game is Real" at http://www.prometheus-music.com/eli/virtual.html
"...virtue springs from iron within, not lead without." R. Kipling
"A handgun ... has and only one use: killing humans."
If you want to use those terms, fine. But it would be much more accurate to say that their purpose is to meet deadly force with deadly force. You don't use guns to defend yourself against knives. You use them to defend yourself against other guns. The proper use of handguns is only for practice, hunting and dire emergencies.
"But what about people who acquire guns legally and then go crazy and go on a killing spree?"
If you'll recall, those assholes at Columbine also weilded pipe bombs. The reason there was no outcry to ban pipe bombs is because they were already illegal. If the guns they used were illegal, they still would have had the bombs!
These senseless killings, particularly against children, stir at our emotions so much that many people turn off their brains and let their feelings rule. Banning guns is treating the symptom but letting disease continue to fester. Guns were just as widely available in the first half of this century as they are now. Yet no one ever heard of schoolyard shootings until a couple of decades ago. This disease has become an epidemic of death because people are too focused on the symptoms.
"DOES A GUN IN THE HOME MAKE YOU SAFER?"
What a stupid article. What stupid statistics. Don't you realize that people who own an automobile are 22 times more likely to die in an automobile accident than those who don't? Don't you realize that those who own a swimming pool have a 220% greater chance of their children accidentally drowning than those that don't?
Owning a handgun and keeping it locked up in a safe in the basement won't protect anyone any better from crime. But not owning a gun while putting a sign in your window saying you do is very effective.
"You are blinded by NRA propaganda into thinking a gun makes you safe in your home when the truth is quite the opposite."
And you are deluded by the liberal press into believing that banning guns solves crime. Murder has been outlawed for how many millenia now? Five or six? If banning murder doesn't stop murder, you're smoking dope if you think banning guns will eliminate guns.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The problem is not the bombs or the guns or the knives or the sticks. The problem is that the nation is hemorrhaging to death and you want to ban bleeding.
When someone can tell my why I was safer as a child thirty years ago when assault weapons were legal, than children are today when they are not, then I'll listen to their gun control arguments.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
SJ Games is doing no such thing. WhiteRabbit misinterpreted something somewhere along the way. SJG has never claimed the raid happened because of the subject matter of GURPS Cyberpunk, because the government was completely unaware of Cyberpunk until they examined the hard disks after the raid. Basically, the government knew that Mentor worked for SJG, and that SJG had a bulletin board. That's all they knew. They were on a fishing expedition. They thought they found a big one with GURPS Cyberpunk. Boy, were they wrong.
At any rate, whoever moderated this post up wasted their points. It was either a complete troll or completely uninformed, and either way it doesn't deserve a mapping into the realm of positive integers.
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Someone you trust is one of us.
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles all existed thirty years ago, and they were just as big then as they are now. But that's begging the point. My home town had a population of 10,000. When I was growing up, it hadn't had a murder since the Dalton brothers rode through town a century earlier. Today, the town has a population of 15,000. It's still small enough that people know their neighbors. Yet it has had about five murders in ten years. Also, if you take a look at Columbine, everyone knew their neighbors. There's something else beyond 'connectedness' that's the problem.
And I don't think there's any one single cause behind the recent random violence in society. It stems from several causes. Your supposition may work in the big city, but it is by no means the only cause, and hardly explains Columbine or the rise of gangs in Small Town, USA.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned