Steal This Wiki:Community Portal
From Steal This Wiki
The task is to update the legendary text of Abbie Hoffman's work, "Steal This Book," originally published in 1971.
On this site, you can find the original text in various stages of modification. Our goal is to revise the book's content to make it relevant to today's American struggle for peace, freedom and justice.
We welcome all contributions. Upon completion, the text should be reprinted and freely distributed according to the spirit of universal ownership promoted by Abbie Hoffman.
Please join us in this important work.
Contents |
What can I do?
You can take your personal experiences and share them. Have you ever had not enough money, not enough resources, not enough "people you know"? Have you ever had to fend for yourself? Obviously (you're here), you succeeded, one way or another.
How did you do it?
Have you ever felt that you're the only person you know who feels that things arent going the way theyre supposed to be going? That there are too many people who've had to fend for themselves? That there are too many ways for the rich to get richer and the powerful to grab more power, to be more greedy?
You arent alone, and it's time to make our voices heard. It may not be time for an all-out revolution, but lets figure out what it IS time for.
So, what can you do? Share.
Also, if you havent already, get yourself a post office box. It might come in handy later.
Programmer Needed
We would like to offer instant special editions, we need someone with scripting skills(perl, java, or the like). We would need some code that would grab a current snapshot of the wiki, strip all of the internal links on the top and bottom, merge, and convert it to PDF formatted for book printing or e-book. Idealy several options would be available for printing and options on included chapters so an instant special edition could be chosen to download and print on demand.
What is the point?
For every person who's had to scrape for a meal or a ride across town, or just to find an audience for the important things he's had to say, there are thousands just like him who would benefit from shared knowledge.
The point is to create a "Steal This Book" for this century. For our times. For your times.
Who all is here?
Some friends, some neighbors, some like-minded folks. We invite you to register, so, as time goes on, we can keep track of who's writing what and what kind of help we can all provide.
Are They watching? Why should I register?
Of course. But feel free to register under multiple nicknames, and feel free to use public IPs, such as those at libraries or schools. We are sensitive to the fact that some people may find it wrong to have a bunch of nuts sharing ways to get around the law, or ways to protest the war, or ways to demand that our elected officials are held accountable for their actions.
I'm sure that we can find ways around Them getting the wrong information too easily. As we get to know one another, some of our communication can be handled in other ways. This is just the beginning.
Privacy and StealThisWiki.org
As you might imagine, privacy is one of the things we believe strongly in. We honestly don't care who you are, what your browsing habits are, etc. Really. We do not require registered users to supply us with valid information -- we would be quite content to have a hundred "John Doe"'s. Our wiki software logs IP addresses for anonymous users -- but these IP logs are purged every 48 hours (and the only reason we keep the logs for that long is to help us block IPs used by spammers.)
Whenever possible, we will provide anonymity for those who require it. We will refuse to turn over ANY records unless legally forced to do so (i.e. subpoena) -- and even then, we'll do what we can to make sure they stay private ;) Silly little "cease and desist" letters don't mean anything to us -- in fact, we enjoy reading them. And no, don't bother reporting us to our hosts -- they feel the exact same way.
If you have a special privacy requirement, you can e-mail our admin (feel free to use an anonymous e-mail system for that too, if needs be,) and we'll do our best to accomodate you.
And, Finally
Most of all, have some fun. If you read the original text, you will see that Abbie had a tremendous amount of fun writing this book. It's obvious from his writing that he enjoyed these tricks, he enjoyed discovering them, and he enjoyed being able to apply them to the larger, great cause of change.
So, have fun. Be lighthearted. Dont stop with the heavy stuff, but also include some fun stuff.
We dont want change for the sake of change. We want change because we want our lives as Americans to be, somehow, better, to live up to the goals expressed over 200 years ago by those pot-smoking, wig-wearing freaks. So, if we cant have fun trying to make our lives more free and fun, we have a problem.
And I dont think it's US with the problem. We all know that it's THEM with the problem!
And Then What?
And then, our intent is to find a nice publisher for the new book. We are going to find an illustrator for some pages, and we will print this book and encourage people to steal it. We can also hand it out in public places.
It starts here, but it doesnt stop here.
