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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.
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?
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.
(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)
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
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)
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); }
http://www.sjgames.com/
--- Bill, partially responsible for the One of Disks...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.)
And when everything except being a good little consumer drone, working 10 hour days all your life and dying in debt is the only thing still legal?
Intolerant people should be shot.
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.