This year marks the 20th anniversary of the raid by the Secret Service on Steve Jackson Games. The raid was one of a number of actions that spurred the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in July 1990 — an organization Steve Jackson thanks in a brief posting about the anniversary,
But we might not be making games today if it weren’t for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The founders of the EFF took on the very serious business of defending us – all of us – against perhaps the worst menace a democracy can face: its own police, laws, and courts gone astray. The balance between freedom and security never stands still, and new technology changes the details but mustn’t be allowed to change the principles. That’s why the EFF was created, and that’s why it’s still around, 20 years later. And I’m very grateful.
The incident was widely reported as being caused by a misunderstanding of the then-in-development Cyberpunk GURPS supplement. Although the Secret Service did seize electronic copies of the Cyberpunk supplement and agents subsequently suspected it was a how-to guide for hacking, the raid originated based on Secret Service suspicions about a bulletin board system that Loyd Blankenship ran on his own time that, among other things, included copies of the Phrack ezine.
I.e., there was simply no basis in fact at all for the fishing expedition, and Steve Jackson Games subsequently won a legal judgment against the Secret Service in 1993 which included $50,000 in damages and $250,000 in attorneys fees.
Thank goodness they survived and are still turning out awesome games two decades later.