The Hacker Crackdown

Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book. Out in the traditional world of print, this book is still a part of the traditional commercial economy, because it happens to be widely available in paperback (for a while, at least).
Out in the world of print, THE HACKER CRACKDOWN is ISBN 0-553-08058-X, and is formally catalogued by the Library of Congress as "1. Computer crimes—United States. 2. Telephone— United States—Corrupt practices. 3. Programming (Electronic computers)—United States—Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I always get a kick out of that description. Librarians are very ingenious people.
If you go and buy the print version of THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, an action I encourage heartily, you may notice that in the front of the book, right under the copyright sign—"Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling"—it has this little block of printed legal boilerplate from the publisher. It says, and I quote: