Back in the 70s (as Kapor recited to the hushed and respectful young hackers) he himself had practiced "software piracy" -- as those activities would be known today. Of course, back then, "computer software" hadn't been a major industry -- but today, "hackers" had police after them for doing things that the industry's own pioneers had pulled routinely. Kapor was irate about this. His own personal history, the lifestyle of his pioneering youth, was being smugly written out of the historical record by the latter-day corporate androids. Why, nowadays, people even blanched when Kapor forthrightly declared that he'd done LSD in the Sixties.
Quite a few of the younger hackers grew alarmed at this admission of Kapor's, and gazed at him in wonder, as if expecting him to explode.
"The law only has sledgehammers, when what we need are parking tickets and speeding tickets," Kapor said. Anti-hacker hysteria had gripped the nation in 1990. Huge law enforcement efforts had been mounted against illusory threats. In Washington DC, on the very day when the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation had been announced, a Congressional committee had been formally presented with the plotline of a thriller movie -- DIE HARD II, in which hacker terrorists seize an airport computer -- as if this Hollywood fantasy posed a clear and present danger to the American republic. A similar hacker thriller, WAR GAMES, had been presented to Congress in the mid-80s. Hysteria served no one's purposes, and created a stampede of foolish and unenforceable laws likely to do more harm than good.
Kapor didn't want to "paper over the differences" between his Foundation and the underground community. In the firm opinion of EFF, intruding into computers by stealth was morally wrong. Like stealing phone service, it deserved punishment. Not draconian ruthlessness, though. Not the ruination of a youngster's entire life.
After a lively and quite serious discussion of digital free-speech issues, the entire crew went to dinner at an Italian eatery in the local mall, on Kapor's capacious charge-tab. Having said his piece and listened with care, Kapor began glancing at his watch. Back in Boston, his six-year-old son was waiting at home, with a new Macintosh computer-game to tackle. A quick phone-call got the jet warmed up, and Kapor and his lawyer split town.
With the forces of conventionality -- such as they were -- out of the picture, the Legion of Doom began to get heavily into "Mexican Flags." A Mexican Flag is a lethal, multi-layer concoction of red grenadine, white tequila and green creme-de-menthe. It is topped with a thin layer of 150 proof rum, set afire, and sucked up through straws.
The formal fire-and-straw ritual soon went by the board as things began to disintegrate. Wandering from room to room, the crowd became howlingly rowdy, though without creating trouble, as the CyberView crowd had wisely taken over an entire wing of the hotel.
"Crimson Death," a cheerful, baby-faced young hardware expert with a pierced nose and three earrings, attempted to hack the hotel's private phone system, but only succeeded in cutting off phone service to his own room.
Somebody announced there was a cop guarding the next wing of the hotel. Mild panic ensued. Drunken hackers crowded to the window.
A gentleman slipped quietly through the door of the next wing wearing a short terrycloth bathrobe and spangled silk boxer shorts.
Spouse-swappers had taken over the neighboring wing of the hotel, and were holding a private weekend orgy. It was a St Louis swingers' group. It turned out that the cop guarding the entrance way was an off-duty swinging cop. He'd angrily threatened to clobber Doc Holiday. Another swinger almost punched-out "Bill from RNOC," whose prurient hacker curiosity, naturally, knew no bounds.
It was not much of a contest. As the weekend wore on and the booze flowed freely, the hackers slowly but thoroughly infiltrated the hapless swingers, who proved surprisingly open and tolerant. At one point, they even invited a group of hackers to join in their revels, though "they had to bring their own women."
Despite the pulverizing effects of numerous Mexican Flags, Comsec Data Security seemed to be having very little trouble on that score. They'd vanished downtown brandishing their full-color photo in TIME magazine, and returned with an impressive depth-core sample of St Louis womanhood, one of whom, in an idle moment, broke into Doc Holiday's room, emptied his wallet, and stole his Sony tape recorder and all his shirts.
Events stopped dead for the season's final episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. The show passed in rapt attention -- then it was back to harassing the swingers. Bill from RNOC cunningly out-waited the swinger guards, infiltrated the building, and decorated all the closed doors with globs of mustard from a pump-bottle.
In the hungover glare of Sunday morning, a hacker proudly showed me a large handlettered placard reading PRIVATE -- STOP, which he had stolen from the unlucky swingers on his way out of their wing. Somehow, he had managed to work his way into the building, and had suavely ingratiated himself into a bedroom, where he had engaged a swinging airline ticket-agent in a long and most informative conversation about the security of airport computer terminals. The ticket agent's wife, at the time, was sprawled on the bed engaging in desultory oral sex with a third gentleman. It transpired that she herself did a lot of work on LOTUS 1-2-3. She was thrilled to hear that the program's inventor, Mitch Kapor, had been in that very hotel, that very weekend.
Mitch Kapor. Right over there? Here in St Louis? Wow. Isn't life strange.