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Mitnick Calls for Hacker Stories
ram writes "Famed hacker and master social engineer Kevin Mitnick has been commissioned to write a new book following the success of his first text The Art of Deception. The new book, tentatively titled 'The Art of Intrusion' will tell the stories of real hacks, with the names of attackers obscured to protect them from the authorities and their victims. Mitnick has called on retired hackers to come forward with their stories, offering a $500 (283) prize for the best story that makes it into the book, and a $200 payment for all stories that make the final draft."
http://www.underground-book.com/ this style of book has been done before (in australia anyway) and with relative success. The best part about that book was how the author made it available for the public to d/l. an interesting read ...
Please tell me which law I broke, exactly?
Copyright. The copyright on Happy Birthday is not expired. and it won't for another couple of decades (unless copyright laws change again).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
That's the model that Scott Adams has been using for about 15 years with Dilbert. He ran out of ideas after the first two years but at that point he was popular enough that people sent him screwy stuff that was happening in cube-farms. Now I admit he is brilliant at putting them in a humorous context, but they're not necessarily all his ideas.
This sig best viewed in a drunken stupor.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
AGREED. I published a book and paid out a much greater sum to contributors than what Mr. Mitnick is offering. Especially for the components that will make is book interesting to a wider audience. The key with publishing is to attract as large as an audience as possible - which the anecdotal stories will certainly help to do because they give the masses an insight into the hidden world.
In general, royalties for U.S. sales are 5-10% of the sale price of the book from the publisher - usually 50-55% off of the cover price. Foreign sales often yield a fixed price per unit sold. Really geeky books have an audience of 5,000-10,000 readers. Mass market geek books 2-10 times that. The anecdotes will push this book well beyond that. I rant, but do the math and you'll see that $200 and $500 is very exploitive.