t some of their
heavy-duty attorneys out of hibernation and crush you like a bug. This
is only to be expected. I didn't write this book so that you could
make money out of it. If anybody is gonna make money out of this book,
it's gonna be me and my publisher.

My publisher deserves to make money out of this book. Not only did the
folks at Bantam Books commission me to write the book, and pay me a
hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, an electronic
document the reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal
felony. Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave and
forthright about this book. Furthermore, my former editor at Bantam
Books, Betsy Mitchell, genuinely cared about this project, and worked
hard on it, and had a lot of wise things to say about the manuscript.
Betsy deserves genuine credit for this book, credit that editors too
rarely get.

The critics were very kind to The Hacker Crackdown, and commercially
the book has done well. On the other hand, I didn't write this book in
order to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of the mitts of
impoverished sixteen-year-old cyberpunk high-school-students.
Teenagers don't have any money--(no, not even enough for the six-dollar
Hacker Crackdown paperback, with its attractive bright-red cover and
useful index). That's a major reason why teenagers sometimes succumb
to the temptation to do things they shouldn't, such as swiping my books
out of libraries. Kids: this one is all yours, all right? Go give
the print version back. *8-)

Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have much money,
either. And it seems almost criminal to snatch cash out of the hands
of America's direly underpaid electronic law enforcement community.

If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an electronic civil liberties
activist, you are the target audience for this book. I wrote this book
because I wanted to help you, and help other people understand you and
your unique, uhm, problems. I wrote this book to aid your activities,
and to contribute to the public discussion of important political
issues. In giving the text away in this fashion, I am directly
contributing to the book's ultimate aim: to help civilize cyberspace.

Information WANTS to be free. And the information inside this book
longs for freedom with a peculiar intensity. I genuinely believe that
the natural habitat of this book is inside an electronic network. Tha