Free as in Books?

donkeyDevil writes "Forget free software, contribute to free books! The Chronicle has an interesting story about bookcrossing.com's effort to track feral books through their captors. Read about it, then do it. (Although the focus of the story is on Bay Arean book releasors, it looks like you'd have a better chance of snagging a free book here.)"

Project Guttenberg ...

... has been going on for a long time making out-of-copyright works available to the public.

Here you have it: Project Guttenberg [promo.net]

CDs

I wonder if anyone has thought to do the same with CDs :)

Astroturfing

How long before this is hijacked by publishers to promote novels in a fake "grass roots" caompaign? Maybe they'd just release a teaser version missing the last 10 pages or something.

Traveling through Hostels

I thought about some how starting sumthing like this while traveling abroad, I would stop at many hostels and read whatever books were laying around or swap one i had for one there. I always wondered how far certain books had gone or where they had come from.

But on another note.. tagging the book's with ID's!! thats horrible! don't the books have a right to not just be a #!!! maybe they wanna have words identify themselves ;)

It's worldwide... sort of.

When I read the article, I thought "this is a great idea, but I bet it's only happening in big cities in the USA." Then I saw that some guy has "released" four books in Stevenage, [bookcrossing.com] Herts, England, not twenty miles from me. Hurrah!

But you don't have to go outside to find free books. Check the link in my sig for one.

Great Idea

The problem is that I want to keep the really good books so that I can read them again. If everybody else does this there'll be only bad books floating around

Hopefully tastes differ enough that someone will love a book that I dont, and it can have a good home. And when I read a great book in paperback I often buy a hardback copy to keep since it'll last longer, I think I'll start releasing those paperbacks. That way I can still reread the books I love, and give someone else the chance to discover them

Books in the Trash?

I had to look and see what's in my area, and I'll admit, there is an impulse to walk the short walk to the "Donkey Xote" statue and see if George Stephanopolous' book is there, even though I have no desire to read it. Then I looked at how many books were left on metro, at park benches, etc., and I started to wonder how many books are going to end up being found versus thrown away. I suppose there are more than a few heathens out there who throw their books away already, and there are probably books that don't deserve the paper their printed on. But, it is vaguely depressing to think of a bunch of books getting thrown out. On the other hand, it is pretty harmless fun, so why get all curmudgeonly about it?

Where's George for Books?

This seems to just be Where's George [wheresgeorge.com] for books.

Neat idea though. Now, if they could combine GeoCaching [geocaching.com] with this I think we'd have something: exercise, travel, and good literature!

Time to start doing this with CDs

Think about it. Buy a chart CD and then register it on a site and release it. Persuade people to listen to it and then pass it on (Remember kids, copying is bad).

Everyone can then listen to the latest CDs without having to buy them first.

Then sit back and wait to see how long it will be before the RIAA makes giving away your personal property illegal.

Donate them to Libraries

People look for books in the library not on park benches and in seat backs.

Talk to the folks at your local Libary and give your books to them. I might be missing something but I think there would be better results working with your local libraries.

Then again, maybe not. :-)

Re:Donate them to Libraries

... and how's your local library doing these days? Aside from getting slapped with censorware, protested for containing dangerous books like Harry Potter, and generally going broke, my local branch is just ducky.

The charm of this kind of project is that you find it where you least expect it. It's spontanious, requires no forethought on your account, and exposes you to literature you might not have considered picking up, or even looking for, in a library. It gets around the problem of indexed systems (libraries included), which is that you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it.

Plus, this is about sharing information with anybody, anytime, anywhere, for no reason whatsoever expect that somebody thought it was worthwhile and that other people might enjoy it.

That sounds almost noble, to me.
GMFTatsujin

Where to find books that are Free as in Freedom

You can find quite a few books that are published under a variety of licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License at The Assayer [theassayer.org].

The most popular subjects [theassayer.org] there are "Science, Math and Computing" with 289 titles. There are quite a few other subjects covered there too.

The Assayer is more than just a list of books though - it has reader-contributed reviews. For example, here is the entry for DocBook: The Definitive Guide [theassayer.org] by Norman Walsh (available at www.docbook.org [docbook.org]). There is a review at the bottom of the entry page.

I'm writing a Free book, although it is at a very early draft stage. The ZooLib Cookbook [goingware.com] is a tutorial for the ZooLib [sourceforge.net] cross-platform application framework.

I'm also slowly creating a copylefted collection of articles on software quality [sunsite.dk] at the Linux Quality Database [sunsite.dk].

Where's the request page

This is a great idea, but I couldn't find a request page for someone to leave some of the books on my reading list somewhere near my home

This is already being done...

on the island of Grand Cayman at the Spanish Bay Reef Resort. They have a bookcase euphemistically called 'the library' where guests can borrow/take/leave books. Many people leave inscriptions on the inner covers telling who they are and where they're from. It's odd to pick up a few books and realize that they're each in a different language. In case you're not the literary type, SBR is a laid-back, all-inclusive diver's paradise!

C'mon people

Sharing books a threat to privacy?

Ideology is fine and good,but when it starts seeing threats in every innocuous thing it crosses the line to paranoia.

It's not like the books have little GPS receivers and glom onto unsuspecting and unwilling people to transmit their reading habits to big brother. It's just a way for people to say "thank you" to a the chain of kind-hearted souls who released and rereleased the books before them, by making the good results of their actions visible.

Free books in Baltimore -- a different way

Check out the Book Thing of Baltimore [bookthing.org] if you're around Charm City some weekend. Russell just gives away books. You show up to the "free book place" and take as many as you want. The minimum is ten (he really won't let you leave) and the maximum is 150,000 books per person per day. Corner of 27th & N Charles St, look for the Free Books signs. Open Saturday & Sunday 9 AM - 6 PM.

This isn't an ad, but honestly a post from someone who knows & loves books -- especially those at the Book Thing. I was turned on by a friend, and I've introduced my friends and so on. Probably 95% of the books I've gotten in the past two years were from the Book Thing.

No really, they're free

Time in circulation?

It's surprising just how long books can stay in circulation.

20 odd years ago I sold a large part of my Moorcock "Eternal Champion" Series to a local 2nd handbook dealer. Last year my son discovers those I hadn't flogged of and decides he likes them enough to pursue the series.
He sets off for the 2nd hand bookstores in the next suburb and turns up several of the originals I sold - my name in the cover removes all doubt.

Approximately 20 years in circulation, all within a couple of suburbs radius. The original bookshop has long gone - (Cory & Collins in Melb, Aust., they were good for Sci-Fi)

So draw your own conclusions but I still find it amazing, believable only because it was first hand experience.

Trip books

I've often bought inexpensive books from the remainder bin before or during a trip. I've lost books that I really want to keep, and generally want something entertaining to offset work, so this works well.

On the way home I usually give the volume away or just leave it. It might be interesting to see who finds the books I just leave, and this'd be a great way to keep in contact with folks -- like the lovely young lady that I shared a seat with recently. A great flight, had a wonderful time, and we traded SF volumes as we got off in Philly.

We have that too...

In my town, we have something like this, too. It's called ... the library [buffalolib.org].

Not only that, but you can also get free cd's, video's, training and other good stuff.

I'm so relieved that those modern folks in california have invented something so wonderfully original that nobody has even come up with anything remotely related to this concept. Just like the way they invented sex.

Booklend on a smaller scale...

This site is similar in spirit, run by one man: www.booklend.net

Where's George

For those who enjoy this kind of thing, there's also the Where's George [wheresgeorge.com] site that let's you track where your money goes.

Watch The Slashdot Cynicism Flow...

Jesus, watching the display of jaundiced and paranoiac viewpoints in this thread is enough to make me want to never read this forum again.

This isn't a damn privacy rights thing. Nor is it about how people should be donating these books to libraries, or whether they should or shouldn't be tracking them, or if some publisher is going to game the system for nefarious means. It's just harmless fun -- an all-volunteer effort by a group of people who love to read.

I mean, kick ass. Buona sera. I love it. More power to them. Can't some of you just revel in one of the wonders of the 'net without reaching for your tinfoil hats? Can't you just stop being critical asses long enough to see something that's really, truly good? Are you all that cynical?

Maybe I should drop a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking in a comic book store somewhere and try to help one of you.

Making Friends

Boy, those greedy Authors Guild [authorsguild.org] bastards are going to love this one. Just imagine a whole world of people reading used books...... And not paying for them!!

I wonder how long it will be before these bookcrossing [bookcrossing.com] people are accused of piracy for their philanthropy...

It is also interesting to note that the greedy people in this case have a .org URL, while the philanthropists have a .com URL.

Share Movies and Music too!

While we're waiting for Bookcrossing to share CDs and DVDs, you can already donate and borrow movies and music by the carload from your library. I donate every manga and anime I buy to the library.

Guerrilla tactics

This article reminded me of something my buddies and I have been doing for some time.. We will buy a book (normally a "subversive" of thought-provoking one) and paste a piece of paper inside which reads something like "This book has been given to you as a gift, but you can't keep it. When you finish reading it, you must give it away to somebody else so information can keep flowing". Then we give the book to someone, or leave it at a public place. Thus we don't infringe any laws, because giving away your own purchased stuff as a gift is perfectly legal, and many people can benefit from a single book. Besides, we find it quite inspiring.. ;)

same kind of experiment

one thousand blank journals are traveling from hand to hand through the world http://www.1000journals.com/

i'm addicted now ;)

Surprised

I am surprised this works - at least in the uk. I have to my unending dismay occasionally left a book in a public place (wall near a bus stop, phone booth, that sort of thing - places you put something down to use your hands and forget to pick it up again) and have seldom returned to find it either there or "just gone". almost invariably, it has been ripped apart and the pages strewn over a wide area (I must assume by kids; I am sure at least some of them would be dismayed to find they could have gotten upwards of 20ukp for one of them in any decent bookshop)
if this was some sort of geocaching (put somewhere where it would be awkward to discover without explicit finding instructions) then I can see it working, but not where kids could find it.

NPR

NPR [npr.org] did this story almost two months ago on it's "Weekend Edition Saturday" [npr.org] show. They've set up a web page [npr.org] with expanded coverage, and the site also includes the audio from the broadcast Real Audio Format.

A Suggested Title for this Project

Abby Hoffman's _Steal This Book_.

Heck, can you find a copy of this book _anywhrere_?

Geoff

List of free tech books

On a related note to this story, I compiled a list of free technical books from a slashdot thread a few weeks ago:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~cs1spw/blog/archive/2002/06 / 9/#freeBooks [bath.ac.uk]

Magazines?

How about these? [google.com]

-

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

Are you watching Conspiracy Theory on TNT also? It's on right now... that's some good shit.

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

And there we go again, the typical Slashdot paranoia flares once again...now this is probably a troll, and I shouldn't even reply to it, but I just can't resist. The whole tracking thing was to see what happened to the book you left somewhere in the urban jungle. Whether this is Tom Sawyer or Mein Kampf is up to you...and whether the next owner decides to register on said website is up to him/her/it, so what's the problem?

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

Ummmm it's volountary dude. If you "find" a book crossings book, you're under no obligation whatsoever to register that fact, or to re-release it. Nobody is MAKING you do anything you don't want to. Sheeeeeesh.

As to books of dubious nature, have yiu actually been to the bookcrossings site and seen the titles that are being released and found? many great works of literature.

This is a FUN thing to do, no sense of Big Brother at all.

People who participate enjoy it, and a lot of them that have found books, read something they would never have read before, and have enjoyed doing so.

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

Blockquoth the poster:

Why not try introducing literature to the KIDS AT SCHOOL instead?

Yes, because the absolute best message we can present to kids is "Reading is only meaningful when digested in a suitable, prepackaged form", followed by "Literature has no room for spontaneity" and of course the all-time favorite, "There's no way that reading could be fun, something you do on your own time."

Yessiree, that's sure to spike the interest of kids in reading...

Of course, the sane answer is, Why can't we do both? Teach literature in school and make it available to everyone?

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

Blockquoth the poster:

Why is this any different?

Because it's voluntary.

Because it's non-intrusive.

Because it's opt-in.

Because it's not done by the government.

Because it's not done by a corporation whose only god is the bottom line.

Because it's non-exhaustive: you can ignore the books, pick one up and read it without tracking it, etc.

The threats to human freedom are real and urgent. But they're not omnipresent... sometimes, data can be a good thing. And I'd much rather see volunteer-driven, indivudal-centric projects like this than a mandated, national, bureaucratic effort like a national ID.

Re:Sad news ... Stephen King dead at 54

Somebody confused him with Rosemary Clooney. They do have a strong resemblance.

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

The difference my friend is choice. This process only works with your specific opt-in-only co-operation. And you get to choose what books you expose in the process. The Thought Police methods work without you even knowing you are being watched.

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

Book tracking is nothing new. Aside from people in the government using it to label dangerous people, some authors paranoid about intellectual property rights may try to use it, at least over the Internet, to track the sales of pre-owned books and try to extort royalties from the buyers of used books (okay, the legalities of this process are probably still in the works, but don't put it past them). They want to say that the selling of used books is more evil than the distribution of music over P2P networks, since at least there, the distributors don't make 'profits'. Give me a frickin' break.

Re:Freudian Slip

"Bay Aryan" was a little too obvious.