computer underground - book - 2006 - Commodork: Sordid Takes from a BBS Junkie

Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie
Rob O’Hara
2006

Rob O’Hara’s self-published memoir of his relentless obsession with software piracy is an important contribution to the world of literature on the computer underground.  O’Hara’s book is highly relevant for two reasons, the first is that the BBS (bulletin board system) is a largely forgotten communications medium that has been completely overshadowed by the rise of the internet. I’ve already discussed the forgotten medium of the BBS in my posts about the Phone Losers of America Complete zines book and the Cult of the Dead Cow book, but for a long time, BBSs were the chief mode of communication for the computer underground. The collective users of all the BBSs in the land produced a huge library of literature (mostly in the form of .txt files), engaged in extensive file trading, and developed a number of other practices that were unique to the medium.  

The second reason why O’Hara’s book is interesting is because it focuses on the social practice of software piracy rather than the practice computer hacking which dominates the literature on the computer underground. While elements of computer hacking are featured in this book, the primary focus is on the lengths O’Hara went to to find new software for his Commodore 64 (and later, other computers, of course). Commodork is by no means an authoritative or scholarly look at software piracy, but its a start to a body of literature that should exist yet doesn’t. O’Hara also discusses other lesser aspects of the computer underground, including the demoscene and the lit scene.

This book presents the memories of computer usage of one man who had a strong drive to accumulate software. This book is a self-published work, which permits its author to blend personal anecdotes about attending parties and going to college into his stories about copying files from floppy discs. Like I had written in my previous post about outlaw biker Doug Ford’s Patch Holder, I am strongly in favor of more individuals from various subcultures publishing books about their experiences.