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."

Comments

Make sure you read Bruce Sterlings Book

[caolan]

which he made freely available as an online text as well as a published novel.

Its a pretty good read, covers the Jackson Games Case as well as the other ones that occured aroud that time

C.

Steve Jackson

[Signal 11]

This is kind of a symbolic date. Ten years ago today the first major assault on online freedom came in the form of an unsigned search warrant, confinscation of an entire company (effectively), and putting a company that designed games (and role playing ones at that!) that just happened to be about computer hacking.

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.

Wow. That long ago?

[bons]

I still have the t-shirt "Don't tell me no lies and keep your hands to yourself." and a lot of fond memories. You can still find my name if you dig up a copy of Hacker2 (the card game) [revenge is sweet] or I.O. University.

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.

-----

Re:Cool.... but not really

[ronfar]

The one bright spot in this whole affair was the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In mid-1990, Mitch Kapor, John Barlow and John Gilmore formed the EFF to address this and similar outrages. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Constitutional rights of computer users. (For more information, look at the EFF web site, or write them at 1550 Bryant Street, Suite 725, San Francisco, CA 94103-4832.) The EFF provided the financial backing that made it possible for SJ Games and four Illuminati users to file suit against the Secret Service. -- from the page linked above

Do I really need to add anything to this? Ok, I will:

It's been three months as I write this and, not only has nothing been returned to them, but, according to Steve Jackson, the Secret Service will no longer take his calls. He figures that, in the months since the raid, his little company has lost an estimated $125,000. With such a fiscal hemorrhage, he can't afford a lawyer to take after the Secret Service. Both the state and national offices of the ACLU told him to "run along" when he solicited their help. -- From Crime and Puzzlement by John Perry Barlow

It was because the ACLU didn't understand the implication of this and similar cases that the EFF is necessary. The incident was an important part of THE HACKER CRACKDOWN by Bruce Sterling. It was the "Boston Massacre" of the Electronic Civil Liberties movement. It showed that government agencies, because of their unfathomable, deep seated ignorance of computers and everything related to them, were actually dangerous to individuals and companies who depended on computers for their livelyhood.

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.