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                            A CRACKER'S MANIFESTO

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Until fairly recently, copyright law was perceived as a way to encourage
content-producers to create works and distribute them to the public via
monetary inducements. It is a scheme that has been fantastically successful.
Society has enjoyed an enormous bounty of cultural, literary and technical
works. Content-producers have made some well-deserved money in the process.

About 10 years ago that all changed. The length of copyrights was extended.
Programs that might assist people in copyright infringement were outlawed.
People lost the right to keep their data in the format they wanted, and to do
what they wanted with their own hardware. These changes have come about as the
result of lobbying dollars from large corporate entities; for them, stopping
people from downloading the latest Britney Spears album is more important than
consumer freedom or indeed the existence of truly general- purpose computers.

This is all happening contrary to the interests of the majority of the
population. Content-producers are in a better position to make money from their
work than ever; the Internet, in particular, has opened up an enormous audience
to almost any artist or author. Regardless, copyright has come to be seen not
as a limited monopoly but as an absolute right of sorts, though there is no
precident for this other than industry lobbying and the proliferation of
recently-invented terms such as "intellectual property".

The law is clear: so-called "intellectual property" rights are more important
than the freedom to exchange code and technical knowledge. So, crackers of all
stripes have been made criminals. That includes those who do not release to
other people, though the law may choose to reward their obedience when they get
caught.

The calling of every cracker is simple: to crack software, and the freedom to
follow that calling is threatened. Some will respond by keeping their cracks
to themselves; however, whether they realise it or not their freedom to do even
this is threatened. The nature of general-purpose computing is what is at stake.
Do we want to pay for computers on which we can only run "approved", "safe"
software, or computers with which we can do what we please?

By publicly speaking out against the practise of releasing, so-called
"reverse-engineers" are jabbing holes in their own lifeboat. If they want to
stop releasing, that's their prerogative; however, they should not shoot
everyone in the foot by publicly announcing that distributing cracks is immoral.
By doing so they are contributing to the skewed perception of copyright that is
so pervasive in our society.

As crackers, we must win the war of attrition being waged upon us by the
lobbyist groups. That means making sure there are always ways of distributing
cracks, and never giving in to the propaganda being foisted upon us by wealthy
special interest groups.