PERSONAL BACKGROUND
- NAME: Eric Gordon Corley (a.k.a. Emmanuel Goldstein)
- BORN: December 16, 1959
- WHERE: Suffolk County, New York
- OCCUPATION: Writer, Editor, Publisher, Talk Show host
Corley’s pseudonym, Emmanuel Goldstein, is taken from the George Orwell book Nineteen Eighty-Four. In which, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mysterious and questionably existent leader of the opposition to Big Brother and the totalitarian state.
In 1999, Corley was named as a defendant in Universal v. Reimerdes, the movie industry’s attempt to squelch DeCSS. DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). 2600.com had provided links to websites which contained the DeCSS code. Corley was the only defendant who chose to fight the industry in court. United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against Corley.
In 2001, Mr. Corley released the full length documentary Freedom Downtime (which he wrote, directed and produced), which was about convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin movement, among other things. Furthermore, he was creative advisor to the movie Hackers.
He was arrested on August 31, 2004 in New York City, while trying to videotape a demonstration against the Republican National Convention, in which Corley asserts he was not a participant. After being detained for more than 30 hours, he was charged with disorderly conduct. At a hearing on November 29, 2004, the city dropped all charges against Corley.
He lives now at Middle Island, New York near New York City. Corley hosts a radio show Off the Hook on WBAI, and is concerned with legal matters related to social engineering and other issues affecting the hacker world. Corley also hosts a show on WUSB 90.1 FM called Off the Wall, a semi call-in show that discusses current world topics, and usually whatever is on his mind. He has done other radio shows there, including The Voice of Long Island, News Of The World and Brain Damage. Corley was featured as “The Outside Man” in the film Urchin, completed August 2006. Mr. Corley recently wrote a book titled The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey which was released July, 2008. The book consists of articles from the magazine 2600 set in chronological order to show the evolution of the internet and technology.
