Abbie Hoffman wrote a book in 1971 called “Steal This Book.”  It embodied the yippie view of life, reject authority of all types.  This was anarchy, and 1971 was a good year for anarchy.

But Abbie could never have dreamed back then of the potential for anarchy that the internet would someday present.  In the marketplace of ideas, there’s no way to stop a thief.  But that hasn’t stopped some from trying.

I (and just about everyone else) has had some great fun ridiculing the pompous cyberbully  Dozier.  Now there’s word of a website, Inventer Link, that claims that you can’t look at its source code or you will have to pluck your eyes out or some such nonsense.  The site is inconsequential, the point is not.  Claim of ownership and an effort to find some way to protect oneself from having one’s guts spilled all over the internet has driven these ninnies to extremes.  Instead of protecting themselves, they have proven themselves to be empty windbags.  They are impotent to stop anyone, and the harder they try, the clearer that becomes.

Worse yet, the louder one tries to stop others on the web from stealing their “book”, the more widespread the theft becomes.  Dozier is now ridiculed in 37 different languages.  It is possible that the name will become synonymous with internet impotency and legal failure.  Ironic, eh?

The flip side, however, presents far greater virtue and a much smoother path.  I received a very kind email from a reader who asked if I would permit him to use one of my posts in his law practice.  He thought enough of what I had written that he wanted to hand it out to clients as a tool in his practice.  I was deeply flattered by his request, and even more appreciative of the fact that he sought permission to do so.

Simple Justice is copyrighted.  Even the name is a registered trademark.  But I have no plans to hunt you down if you print something that I’ve written out and use it.  I write it and click on a button and it suddenly appears here, for all to see.  If I didn’t want you to see it, I wouldn’t do that.  It adds (in my wildest dreams) to the body of ideas in the world and some of these ideas will be worthy of repetition.  That’s why we have ideas.  If no one wants to use them, then they really aren’t worth very much.

It was my pleasure to give permission to this lawyer to use my post.  It is my hope that what I write here occasionally helps someone and contributes to the discourse.  I try to write clearly so that I can communicate my thoughts to a wide array of people.  Some tell me that I am blunt.  Guilty.  But at least I try to have something to say, and if you want to steal one of my posts, then apparently I must.

There are many things from 1971 that have not panned out quite the way we expected.  Instead of a population that questions authority, there is a huge segment of our society that trusts authority so deeply and blindly that they are willing, no happy, to hand over the power to torture them, eavesdrop on them, watch them in their bedroom and even hand over their life.  If you asked me back then, I never would have believe this possible.  Times change.

But at least they haven’t shut down the marketplace of ideas, where people can speak their minds and disagree with that huge segment of society that wants to make sure we never “Steal this Book.”