Format

The 1998 cover formats were mostly similar with one glaring exception.

The price remained at $4.50 per issue for the United States and $5.50 for Canada.

The masthead had some subtle changes throughout the year with "2600" appearing in Times Roman in all issues except Summer, where the font from Wired Magazine was used as a parody for the second year in a row.  Other words in the masthead varied in style.

The volume and issue number were spelled out in each issue except for Autumn where they were printed numerically.  The Autumn issue was also labeled as "Fall" in 1998 and was also the first issue in over a year to have the season printed on the cover.  This was significant, as it marked the fact that we had caught up to the backlog caused by our financial troubles and that issues were once again coming out on time.

There was a slight alteration with the date scheme for Winter, which was referred to as "Winter 1998-1999" whereas in the past, only two digits had been used for the second year.  This change was likely made in anticipation of all of the Y2K hysteria ahead.

The page length remained at 60 pages with the page numbering scheme staying the same.

The contents had the following unique titles:

Little messages continued to be found on Page 3, masked into the dotted line that separated the contents from the mailing info for Spring and Summer.  No message was printed in the Fall issue, but one appeared in a new location on that page in Winter.

These messages read as follows:

In the middle of each issue, our first two letters pages no longer took the form of one giant double page, but small messages were printed in the binder by the staples for a couple of issues.

For Spring, the message read from top to bottom and said "cruelty-free staples!" and for Summer, it read bottom to top and said "free range fasteners", each with arrows pointing to the staples.

Letters titles were no longer unique, with Spring, Summer, and Fall all simply titled "Letters" while Winter had the unique title of "Non Spam".

Covers

This year's covers used mostly photographic images with one exception.  They all contained the "Free Kevin" statement in them somewhere.

Contributor credits were as follows:

Inside

The staff section continued to have credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout, Cover Design, Office Manager, Writers, Network Operations, Broadcast Coordinator, Webmasters (now plural), Voice Mail (removed in Winter), Inspirational Music, and Shout Outs.

Our PGP key (missing in the previous issue) returned to the bottom of the staff page with the Spring issue, but was gone again in the Fall and Winter issues (although it appeared in ad form in the Fall).

The staff section remained on Page 2 with varying styles throughout the year.

The required postal mailing info was printed on Page 3 for Spring and Summer and moved to the staffbox section on Page 2 for Fall and Winter.

The Statement of Ownership was printed on Page 5 in the Winter edition.

Unique quotes continued to be printed in the staffbox of each issue:

Spring:  "What Kevin Mitnick is about is creating a mythology of a hacker threat and using that threat to expand the government's statutory authority and increase its wiretapping capability.  Find me an individual who was hurt.  Find me a company that was hurt.  The most you can say is that some companies had to close security holes... and arguably they would have had to do that anyway." - Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Summer:  "At this moment I do not have a personal relationship with a computer... it got so confusing, as to what was on the computer, what wasn't on the computer, what was on the hard drive, what was on the soft drive, that it made it easier for me just to do my work with pen and pencil." - Attorney General Janet Reno, May 24, 1998.

Fall:  "This is not a tool we should take seriously, or our customers should take seriously." - Edmund Muth of Microsoft, reacting to the release of Back Orifice, a program that attacks Windows 95/98 with a vengeance, by the Cult of the Dead Cow, as reported in The New York Times.  We should point out that they said this BEFORE the program was released.

Winter:  "We will not engage in any assaults or hostile physical contact, physical intimidation, verbal threats of physical harm or violence, or any other actions that are threatening or hostile in nature.  We will not carry weapons onto company property, in company vehicles, or while conducting company business, even if we have a permit or license to carry them." - Page 17 of the Bell Atlantic Code of Business Conduct.

We found ourselves in high gear in 1998, as the "Free Kevin" movement truly took off.  The spirit was contagious.  "We are experiencing a period of movement and transition."  The "Free Kevin" bumper stickers (which had been sent to all subscribers) were beginning to appear everywhere and we began to notice a change coming from outside our community.  Once the story began to get some attention in the mainstream, people's opinions shifted.  "The winds have changed."

Things weren't changing on the inside, unfortunately.  The judge in Kevin's case made it quite clear that she had no intention of granting him bail.  He also wasn't allowed access to the evidence against him because he would have had to access a computer in order to see it all.  And that apparently was a threat.  We saw a different kind of threat: the clear demonstration of a huge lack of knowledge of technology on the part of those in charge.  The same judge also threw a hissy fit when word got out that we were attempting to look at her financial disclosure documents to find potential conflicts of interest.

Throughout it all, Kevin remained imprisoned - for nearly four years by the end of 1998.  All without bail or the prospect of a trial anytime soon.  Throughout the year, the date of a potential (and much welcomed) trial kept getting pushed back.  Autumn turned to winter, then to sometime next year.  "What is happening to Kevin is merely a prelude to what could be one of the most ominous periods of our history."

Then things really took a turn over the summer, when word of a movie version of the book Takedown started circulating.  This was the book that had been written back in 1995 by computer scientist Tsutomu Shimomura and journalist John Markoff about the capture of Kevin Mitnick.  It was met with widespread criticism for its bias, its exploitation of Kevin's story, and crossing the line of journalistic standards by having Markoff become a part of the hunt.  But, incredibly, the film was even worse.  We quickly got our hands on a script and revealed some shocking truths to the world.  Namely, even though in real life Kevin was still sitting in prison awaiting trial, in the movie version he had already been tried and found guilty.  In addition, he was portrayed as a violent racist who thought nothing of cheating and stealing.  Needless to say, we had some notes to pass along to the writers.

If we weren't already angry and emboldened at this point, this was the catalyst we needed.  "We intend to stop this production in its tracks and make damn sure everyone involvedi is aware of the facts."  Hackers mobilized outside of Miramax headquarters in New York City and the story really began to circulate.  And naturally, we had a little help from the Internet.  "The net is a far more level playing field than many of us realize."  Of course, we also had to deal with our own website being blocked in many places due to fear of hackers.  That fear spread to Miramax when they saw a crowd of us demonstrating outside their offices.

The growing outrage concerning the Mitnick case helped create the "perfect storm," where tactics of hackers and activists merged into a single cause.  Calling attention to the huge problems with Takedown helped serve as a vehicle towards letting the world know about Kevin's plight.  The phrase "Free Kevin" really began to take on meaning.  But that success would mean nothing if we weren't able to affect the new injustice Kevin was facing with a fictional story that used his real name to portray him as a monster.  "Whenever his namei comes up in conversation or in the news, the image from Takedown is what people will remember.  For that reason alone, action must be taken to stop this."

And it was.  Apart from all of the efforts within the hacker community and increasingly in the mainstream, we wound up filming nearly 100 hours of footage for a documentary of our own on the whole thing.  "The summer of 1998 was one of the most productive times we've seen in a while."  We didn't know where it was all going to end up, but we knew that our efforts were having a definite effect.  "Miramax, to their credit, had the script rewritten several times, addressing nearly all of our objections to the original version."

This was a shot in the arm that the hacker community badly needed.  Instead of being perpetual victims of crackdowns, corporate greed, and bad legislation, we were fightingi back.  "All over the country, kids are handing out leaflets in their schools and malls, spreading awareness and adding to the movement."  The New York Times website was even hacked with news of the Kevin Mitnick story.  While we were quick to point out that any damage to a site wasn't something we supported, we couldn't help but acknowledge the effectiveness of reaching a huge number of people in this manner, particularly if the media outlet in question wasn't covering the story themselves.  And our readers found unique ways of showing their support.  One even planned on getting a "Free Kevin" tattoo, eliciting our response: "You do realize that one day Kevin will be free and you'll have an outdated arm?"

Our attention to Kevin's case opened up eyes regarding the many other injustices that were going on, both inside and outside prisons.  We noticed how private industry was beginning to run the equivalent of slave labor from inside prison facilities.  The soaring prison population, the subtle and overt control of individuals within the system, and the technological restrictions and manipulations began to really get our interest.

But this wasn't the only area where major progress was made.  A year earlier, we had been crippled and nearly driven out of business by a corrupt distributor who made off with nearly a year of our earnings.  Through cutbacks, patience, and discipline, we were able to make a full recovery by the end of 1998.  Seasons once again began to be printed on the covers as issues were once again coming out on time.  The phrase "nearly out of the woods" became familiar to us.

But despite this close call, we didn't know how to stop challenging the status quo, even when it might have severe adverse effects on us.  We reported on rumors of memos from Barnes and Noble telling stores to take issues off the stands that contained info about their computer systems.  We committed to printing more such info, specifically in the event that this was true because "if we refrained from printing them because we thought it might adversely affect us, we'd be just as hypocritical as anyone who removed it from the shelves."  In the end, there was no such memo, Barnes and Noble continued to carry us in all of their stores, and we all felt a little stronger in our convictions.

Support of the magazine was echoed in a variety of places, as was support by the magazine.  A Tower Books display of 2600 issues in Philadelphia was particularly artistic and drew our commendation, while we offered free subscriptions to anyone in former Iron Curtain countries, as well as Cuba and any country in Africa other than South Africa.  Many free subscriptions were also given out to prisoners within our own country.

The notion of becoming a political prisoner through hacking was brought up in our letters section.  Another common issue was the bad treatment of newcomers by many in the community.  AOL users seemed particularly susceptible to this.  We caught a plagiarist through the help of astute readers and he was forced to atone for his sins in our pages.  We tried to explain why it was important for article submissions not to have appeared elsewhere online before being printed.  And the epic debate on FYROM began.  (FYROM stood for Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and we made an offhanded remark at some point about how that was a silly name for a country.  The dialog would continue for years.)  And, just to make things even more fun, we referred to Belgium as a former Soviet republic in one of our payphone sections, which, of course, caused more mayhem.

There was no end of horror stories from schools when kids would uncover security holes or engage in mischief.  "There are an almost endless number of really stupid rules made by really stupid people in schools everywhere."  At the same time, there were numerous examples of readers showing integrity in school when it came to taking a stand, and sometimes even meeting with success.  The "Free Kevin" campaign helped many to find their voices, not just in schools but at work and amongst peers.

There was at least one notable exception to the constant demonization of hackers.  In Israel, a hacker known as "The Analyzer" was praised by the authorities, in stark contrast to how hackers were being treated in the States.  In our own media, we found ourselves dealing with some rather interesting stories.  One was from SIGNAL Magazine and revealed something known as the "Blitzkrieg Server," which was predicting a hacker attack against corporations and government installations and that this "attack would be from Japanese nationals with the help of U.S. collaborators affiliated with the 2600 international hacker group."  It appeared to be the first time an actual machine had implicated us in this manner.  That story was soon followed by an even more outrageous one, this time from a human named Stephen Glass in The New Republic, who claimed there was a "National Assembly of Hackers" that kept corporate America living in fear, amongst many other shocking revelations.  It was later confirmed that he made the whole thing up along with many other stories.  But there was no rush to correct the record with regard to hackers.  It was the kind of thing we were all too used to.

As if we didn't have enough to deal with, we were threatened with legal action by the International Churches of Christ over a hacked website that we displayed in our hacked web page archive.  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't seem to get them to understand that our displaying the hacked pages didn't mean that we hacked them ourselves.  They seemed to think they could intimidate us into taking them down, to which we had a simple retort: "It's news.  It's history.  And it's staying.  Praise The Web."

Lawsuits aside, the real threats came from bad legislation from people who had no clue.  For instance, the FCC had just imposed a 28.4 cent fee on every toll-free phone call made from a payphone - just because payphone owners wanted to make money on every call, even the free ones.  But there were far more serious threats coming our way almost constantly which made our very existence - and that of the Internet as we knew it - seriously in doubt.  "The future of the net as a safe haven for individual thought and independent development of new and competing technologies is very much in jeopardy and this is without even introducing the government's efforts to muck things up."  We vowed to remain defiant despite all of this.  We took comfort in one core belief: "When a law is unjust, you have an obligation to challenge it."

We helped to expose some of the evil and hypocrisy of the Software Publishers Association, which sought to crack down hard on their definition of software piracy, even if it meant tight restrictions on use and forced multiple purchases by consumers for the same software.  Our readers reported that Babbages, Software Etc., and Electronics Boutique were allowing their employees to take software home before it was sold and that this apparently wasn't considered an issue in the industry.  And our fun continued in the retail world: "Teaching RadioShack employees how technology works has always been something we've striven for."  A number of readers expressed concern over the disappearance of independent bookstores and the proliferation of chains.  It was a tough place for us to be, since we supported the independent stores but were gaining more exposure through the chains.  We were accused by at least one reader of selling out and not staying underground.  But reaching people was what we were all about and that wasn't something we were going to shy away from.

A detailed expose on military networks was printed, along with thoughts of one day having hackable cars.  We finally identified the two NSA-related people who were pasted into 2600 shirts in our printed ads.  We decried the absurdity of the new seven-digit carrier access codes, which made dialing numbers a lengthy experience.  We enjoyed the release of Back Orifice by the Cult of the Dead Cow and the arrogance of the industry experts who thought it wouldn't have any effect on them and their Windows machines.  We encouraged this kind of mischief, but also tried to instill a sense of responsibility: "Destroying files or causing wanton mayhem will only reinforce the stupidity these power-crazed cluebags live for."  We printed a guide on how to handle the media, a skill that always came in handy for hackers.  We also demonstrated a ridiculously easy way to get into Hotmail accounts and printed some FBI testimony that showed "why anonymous phone cards aren't."  We continued to point out the problems with "confrontational services" like Call Return, Caller ID, and Call Trace, which were still being rolled out across the country and changing the way people thought about making and receiving phone calls.

We finished the year with a warning about the threat of success.  We saw what was coming: "In the years ahead, we are going to be facing some milestones in human development with regard to free speech, communications, access, and privacy."  We were concerned that many of us would cave in to temptation, as many already had, and sacrifice beliefs and ideals for a fat paycheck.  Hackers were now in demand and this was indeed something to be concerned about.  We urged people to "set conditions and draw lines that you absolutely will not cross."  An interesting analogy to credit card fraud was made - both involved sacrificing principles in the face of a big payoff.  We made the argument that true success was far better than perceived success and that the former could be achieved simply by holding true to one's ideals.  "If somebody comes along and tells you to alter your beliefs and you obey, then you never really held them to begin with."


Spring:  Spring 1998 was put together rather quickly in a moment of desperation as we had no other cover prospects and our deadline was looming.

So a couple of us took over a computer lab at Stony Brook University and got all of their terminals to connect to the "Free Kevin" banner that was on our website.

The emphatic "NOW!" was added to the blackboard.  We had to turn the image sideways in order to get it to fit on our cover page.
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