[NOTE: This file is from Bruce Sterling's "agitprop" disk at gopher://oak.zilker.net/11/bruces. It contains his "literary freeware" policy on writings he has placed online, including _The Hacker Crackdown_.] ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY The documents on this disk are not commodities. They're not for sale. They are not part of the "information economy." Some of them were part of the commercial economy once, in the sense that I got paid for writing some of them, but they've since been liberated. You didn't have to pay any money to get them. If you did pay anything to see this stuff, you've been ripped off. If you didn't get this data for free, send me some e-mail and tell me about it. Information *wants* to be free. And I know where you can get a lot more. You can copy them. Copy the hell out of them, be my guest. You can upload them onto boards or discussion groups. Go right ahead, enjoy yourself. You can print them out. You can photocopy the printouts and hand them around as long as you don't take any money for it. But they're not public domain. You can't copyright them. Attempts to pirate this stuff and make money from it may involve you in a serious litigative snarl; believe me, for the pittance you might wring out of such an action, it's really not worth it. This stuff don't "belong" to you. A lot of it, like the Internet electronic zines I've included, doesn't "belong" to me, either. It belongs to the emergent realm of alternative information economics, for whatever *that's* worth. You don't have any right to make this stuff part of the conventional flow of commerce. Let them be part of the flow of knowledge: there's a difference. Don't sell them. And don't alter the text, either; that would be a hopelessly way-dork move. Just make more, and give them to whoever might want or need them. Now have fun. Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.sf.ca.us FAX 512-323-2405 .