Essay Archive - Wire Pirates
Wire Pirates
Someday the Internet may become an information superhighway, but right now it is
more like a 19th-century railroad that passes through the badlands of the Old
West. As waves of new settlers flock to cyberspace in search for free
information or commercial opportunity, they make easy marks for sharpers who
play a keyboard as deftly as Billy the Kid ever drew a six-gun.
It is difficult even for those who ply it every day to appreciate how much the
Internet depends on collegial trust and mutual forbearance. The 30,000
interconnected computer networks and 2.5 million or more attached computers that
mak....
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