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 EDITOR'S NOTES
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 IT'S AGAINST THE LAW
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I don't condone software piracy. I'm not one of those that believe everything
should be free. I know too many people who spend their nights trying to
puzzle out their next piece of code, and none of them resemble Bill Gates
very closely. Most are like Bob Fairburn, trying to put together a little
thing done well, do what they love, and eeek out a living doing it. More
generally, nothing comes from nothing, and without economic legs, little in
this world advances very far, or has much impact.

I also confess some reticence regarding the topic of pornography. I
personally don't even take the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and I
generally shower in the dark. Photos of fat chicks with donkeys don't do any
more for me than they do for the donkey, and frankly, some of the images I
have had the privilege of viewing online would make even the donkey blush. I
don't find any lofty position posturing for "freedom of speech or
expression", artistic merit, or anything else in photo-images involving
little girls, animals, or graphic depictions of homosexual acts. Despite the
howls of rage from the terribly concerned, I find no high ground to take on
this issue not already staked out by someone braying with less intelligence
than the donkey could possibly muster.

And while it is a very small cut of what goes on in cyberspace, it does go
on. There are victims. Not terribly directly. And they are not terribly
damaged. But there are the issues of crime and victim, and we should deal
with them in an appropriate degree through the existing apparatus of law.

There is also the concept of a level playing field. BBS operators who work
within established legal and business norms are immediately put at a
competitive disadvantage when some BBS operators decide the law does not
apply to them. The nature of callers being what it is, a BBS offering
commercial software freely for download, or offering clearly obscene
materials online, will find an audience pretty quickly. Reaching 100 lines in
just a few years is quite a task for those playing by the rules.

All that said, we've got a problem. It goes to the heart of a basic sense of
dishonesty among our law enforcement apparatus. And it's becoming awkwardly
difficult to tell the criminals from the police. The current mode is to use a
poorly thought out law intended for mobsters and drug kingpins to seize
computer equipment of bulletin boards and other businesses suspected of
information crimes. In most cases to date, these seizures have not resulted
in criminal charges.

Whenever called to task on this topic, the FBI, Secret Service, and local law
enforcement invariably harp that they were simply gathering evidence as part
of the investigation. This is so disingenuous as to be criminal. They don't
normally even have the courtesy of hiding their  posture on this topic. It is
a planned campaign of terror intended to frighten BBS operators into
compliance by the threat of an electronic and economic death penalty. The
problem with this, and the very reason our founding fathers barred such
activity as part of our Constitution, is that it is all too easy to get the
wrong man. And the system further then becomes subject to political or
economic motivators inappropriate to a system of justice.

Personal computers are not simply evidence gathering machines. They've become
so central to the operation of bulletin boards, publishers, software vendors
and developers, and many other businesses, that seizing them constitutes a
sentence of economic bankruptcy - from the minute the seizure is made.

There is a principle established by our founding fathers in their
Constitutional compromise that was quite explicit in that a resident of these
United States is held to be innocent until proven guilty and adjudged to be
so by a jury of his peers. In theory, you can be caught red handed running a
lawn mower over piles of human bodies stacked on your front lawn and an FBI
agent or policeman can't find you "guilty" of anything by themselves. They
can detain you on suspicion and present you for prosecution. In fact, judges
cannot actually find you guilty of criminal wrong doing under our system of
justice. Twelve of your uninterested neighbors who are NOT professionally
part of the system have to agree that you are indeed guilty before our system
can mete out a punishment. This current practice of seizing equipment under
color of search warrant abrogates all the protections built into our
Constitutional form of government to preclude this. As such, they constitute
not merely a procedural faux pas, but treason.

The Steve Jackson Games Trial illustrates the mockery made of our legal
system by bumbling, ignorant law enforcement officials who very nearly put
this man out of business by breaking into his office, stealing all his
equipment and business records, and there was NEVER a charge filed against
him. Indeed, the investigation leading to this ridiculous activity has all
the appearance of a mistake. He's not only innocent of all charges, there
WERE NO CHARGES and indeed he was apparently not only the wrong guy, it was
even the wrong BBS. They were looking for ANOTHER BBS that used the same WWIV
software in the same city.

The government's main defense in this case actually appears to be that they
were unaware of the Privacy Protection Act, unaware that Steve Jackson Games
was a publisher, and that anyway the seizure brought the company media
attention and it was HELPED by the publicity. This would all be evil if there
were anyone in charge of this with enough sense to have had a design. The
lame protestations of the defense in this civil trial finally even turned the
judge livid.

And it doesn't stop there. On Saturday, January 30, Russell Hardenburgh had
all the equipment it took him years to purchase, and I would think years just
to wire together into a 124 line BBS, seized and hauled away. He has a very
difficult task rebuilding a business he's been building since 1987. That he
made copyrighted software available on this system is quite likely, indeed it
was viewed as the biggest open secret in the BBS community, and most BBS
operators thought something ought to be done about it. But as of this
writing, he hasn't been charged with anything at all. He has already lost his
BBS and his 14,000 subscribers are likewise out in the cold - BEFORE any
charges have been brought. If the man had been pureeing neighborhood kids in
the kitchen blender he would have at least had a trial before beginning his
sentence.

Similarly Joey Jay had his 32-line system hauled away from his Chesterfield
Missouri home on January 15, again by the FBI, on allegations of pornographic
images. They threatened his FATHER with seizure of his HOUSE and the man
subsequently threw his son out into the street. Jay lost his BBS AND his
HOME. I would guess from talking to him that Jay DID have such images online.
And that may in fact be illegal. But it doesn't appear we'll ever know. There
were no charges filed. The penalty was again levied BEFORE the process was
even begun.

We don't know that these two men are guilty. We don't know that they are not.
We will quite likely NEVER know because it's unlikely they will ever be
charged. Their computers were arrested. And it's striking fear in the hearts
of computers everywhere. If this were due to mistakes, it would be one thing.
But it isn't. It is part of a planned and executed design to enforce law by
not enforcing it. To simply arrest equipment, forego the expense and bother
of a trial, and let the victims serve as "examples." If anyone questions
this, they innocently claim to simply be gathering evidence - knowing full
well they've already sentenced the suspect to bankruptcy.

Not only have the lives and livelihoods of all of these individuals been
irretrievably damaged, but large numbers of people who used these systems
have found their correspondence has become the property of the government,
that government agents are pouring over their private electronic mail, and
that their right to assemble and to communicate has not been abridged, it has
been abrogated in its entirety - without acknowledgement, notice, or
explanation.

Through the gross misapplication of existing evidenciary practices, federal
law enforcement officials have basically abrogated their responsibility to
enforce laws at all. They are not charging lawbreakers, they are not
prosecuting law breakers, they are RUINING individuals who they have reason
to believe MIGHT be breaking the law - often on terribly thin allegations.
They have taken on the role of judge, jury, and executioner largely because
it is inconvenient and expensive to learn the technology and make their case
in court. So they cunningly just use the evidence gathering function to
deliver the punishment and to hell with the rest of the process.

And that is no law at all. It is a crime. Not a small crime. And not a
victimless crime. It is a crime of treason against the state, against our
nation, against our citizens, and against our way of life. And it is a crime
all out of proportion to crimes of copyright infringement or donkey
pornography. Realistically a fine and some community service would likely
cover the donkey and the grevious harm done Novell. Treason and the designed
overthrow of our Constitutional form of government is generally held to be
more serious.

As we sit, on any allegation from virtually anyone that wishes you ill, our
government can, and in fact may, break down your door, take your computer
equipment and business records, and disappear in the night with virtually no
explanation and it will take you years of legal effort and hundreds of
thousands of dollars to ever retrieve it. It is a peculiarity of our
technological age that this act is virtually an airtight assurance of your
bankruptcy. By the time you get your day in court, if you are wealthy enough
to afford it, the business you worked for years to build will have been long
gone.

You may be guilty yourself of a crime. You may not. It may never come up. On
the signature of a bureaucrat so ignorant he can't list a file directory, you
can be ruined. And there are enough cases of it happening already that this
is no longer an abstract theory. It is happening and has happened repeatedly
within the last 45 days. It is happening by design. They are proud of it. And
they fully believe that they not only are above the law, but that they ARE
the law.

None of this falls within the powers we as a people have granted the state -
ever. Our representatives didn't do it by "mistake." A small group of
bureaucrats who have made a life of snuffling up to the public trough for a
living have taken it upon themselves to do this thing - mainly because it's
easy, and because it works - and because nobody has yet yelled booger.

I do not concur with those who treat this situation as something requiring
education and conciliation. I have no reason to believe we need to establish
"credibility" with our legal system. It has to establish credibility with us.
At this point, they seem to seek control by a rule of fear and intimidation -
a tactic outside our system of law.

It is the ultimate irony of our time that in a period where totalitarian
governments all over the face of the planet are folding their tents in
failure, our nation seems bent on establishing their own as if it were all a
new idea. Copy all the software you like. Titillate yourselves till your eyes
bleed with goofy bit-images. No matter how you arrange the pixels, as
criminals, you're all small timers compared to the felons and traitors behind
the badge.

Bill Clinton probably doesn't read all his e-mail at
75300.3115@compuserve.com. But somebody will have to. And your elected
representative in Washington would be a good follow up. They won't know
there's a problem if you don't tell them. It's a sure bet the SPA is unlikely
to carry the torch for you. There's twelve million of you online. And if you
don't want to have to apply for the government's permission for every
tagline, we'd better get in motion.

Booger.

 Jack Rickard
 Editor Rotundus