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‘Steal This Book’ wiki: My mixed feelings
February 20, 2008 | 11:52 am
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By David Rothman
So, gang, what do you think of a wiki devoted to updates of Steal This Book, the Abbie Hoffman classic for moochers? And I don’t mean the e-pirate kind.
My feelings are mixed. I’d defend the right of the wiki to exist, assuming the book’s out of copyright; and as a ’60s survivor, I love this retro. The mood of the time led to everything from increased racial equality to—eventually—the anti-greed fervor behind the free software movement.
But here’s the other side. STB glorifies food and credit card thefts. And as someone over at MobileRead has observed upon reading the STB item there, do we really need a e-book on, of all things, how to be unscrupulously homeless? Actually I’m adding the adverb, given the number of honest homeless people victimized by Washington’s bungled economic policies.
For a paper copy of the original book, you can visit Amazon. An online version of the original is here.
Prediction: If the war in Iraq continues and becomes still more hated in the States, we’ll see a return to the draft—and to the mood of the ’60s. I can even see some possible effects in the E world. The less respect for authority and the law in general, the more chances of massive piracy of e-books.
Technorati Tags: Abbie Hoffman,Steal This Book
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Comments:
I don’t think you’ll ever see military conscription in the United States. Aside from the huge outrage it would generate among a wide swath of folks, the military doesn’t want one. The Vietnam-era draft was in large part a disaster from a purely military perspective, since its main effect was to undermine morale and discipline.
‘Military conscription’ is kinda off-topic for TeleRead.
i have a paper copy of STB that i re-read a year or so ago, and i have been idly following this project just because i found reading the original text to be so, uh, hilarious. i DO think that it would be VERY interesting to have an accessible, community-built update to this book, but really, by and large the info in the original is so outdated as to be amusing more than anything else. most of the ways that abbie hoffman advocates “screwing the man” in STB just won’t work these days (how to jimmy a payphone with a slug to get free calls? uh, *roxx0rz!*). that book is a product of it’s time, and it’s a fascinating look into the mindset of the youth culture of the time. a modern equivalent would be welcome, but then again, doesn’t it already exist, in a way? i believe it’s called “the internets”…
Spent a few minutes looking over the Steal This Book section for my home town, Dallas.
I found the language very 1960s contemporary (talk about ‘pigs’ etc.) Some information possibly useful to homeless people (where are the soup kitchens). Certainly that information should be free although how many people who need soup kitchens can log onto the Internet to find one?
I remember the excitement this book created way back when. It’s interesting to realize that there are still those who appear to believe that a sustainable economy can be built on theft.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Social aspects of STB wiki are tied into ‘intellectual property’ acts of ‘piracy’ in that that would’ve been totally what Hoffman would’ve advocated today. ‘Steal this song’ and ‘Steal this TV show’ and ‘Steal this movie’ and ‘Steal this book (and all the other books too)’!
With an increasingly authoritarian, downright oppressive and corrupt government, the historical reaction has traditionally been to turn cynical eyes upon all laws and ‘property’ which the downtrodden (that’s just about everybody in a dictatorship, of course) sees as mere tools of the ruling class to keep everybody else under their boots. The RIAA is already seen in this light by the very people who most (used to) buy music; MPAA and the TV cartel are rapidly being seen in the same light.
The only reason publishers (of course, the majors are all part of the same corporate incest-fest) are not generally thought of in this same light is because most Americans don’t read books in the first place. But I do wonder how long it will be before college textbooks are routinely ‘ripped’ in the first week of any semester and published anonymously via P2P sites along with movies, TV shows, and music.
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The ebook angle to the STB wiki is rather more interesting to me. How does one publish timely information these days? Not just tips on freeloading and theft, but on maintaining computers, growing tomatoes, etc? Blogs and websites are great of course if one is online. But wikis that you could download every so often and load up on your Sony Reader or iLiad seem to be the way to go here. Much better than a p-book that is out of date by the first day of publication, and fills up landfills and recycling bins when the Second Edition comes out (likewise out of date on day 1 of course).