Steal this... wiki

Posted by Deanna Zandt at 9:11 AM on July 6, 2006.

In an interesting twist of technology-meets-subversive-counterculture-classics, Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book has been made into a wiki that anyone can edit. From the guidelines:

This site is intended, however, to support and distribute information that is relevent to this day and age, which can be reasonably defined as one in which Americans are forced to deal with difficult issues, such as a military led by an unwise and unreasonable group of people, and in which we are forced to deal with real and dangerous threats.

[...]

Hopefully as the content on this site evolves, while it is not intended to mirror the original work, it will become a new and similarly useful work, holding true to the spirit of the original, and providing useful information to those who value freedom, peace and justice in this great nation of ours and around the world.

It's a pretty fascinating concept; the original book will be made available for download as a PDF soon, so as to respect the original work of art and the time/circumstances it was created. But what a great way to introduce new concepts of cultural subversion into the dialog and consciousness. If you're into that sort of thing, you might want to check out the Free Culture movement while you're at it.

Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.