On Tuesday, January 15, 2002, at 06:38 PM, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote:
Michael Motyka wrote:
E-books are already a fact, but most are sold with the same retail machinery as regular books, so changing the medium doesn't change the risk.
I mean something more along the lines of encrypting each of your electronic books and burning it to a CD. Nobody should be able to tell by looking what you read, nobody should be able to compromise someone else's library. Then the issue of reading habits become null. All tools should be open source. Essentially they already exist - just need a little packaging.
That's pretty much what I understood you to say. The problem is that somewhere in the bookdealers' and jobbers' archives, the sales record will have to be accessible by title and by customer or customer category. In the case of a cash sale, of course, there's no problem, but if a credit card was involved the dealer has to be able to retrieve the record by name in case there's a chargeback or complaint. So the vulnerability to a police razzia still exists.
For physical books, there's always physical cash. (Pace the "Uncle Fester's" book bought in the Denver bookstore, that the Feds want the bookstore to reveal the buyer of.) For online purchases, this trend of Feds snooping on reading habits could be a business opportunity for an anonymized online buying system. How could physical delivery be arranged? First, purchase with some form of untraceable credit card. Second, delivery to a local bookstore or even a Mailboxes, Etc., with pickup by matching the ID. For a small commission. (This should not be in violation of any laws. This is not a mail cover, nor a money changing, etc. operation. Just a package delivery service.) One can imagine t.v. cameras set up, but unlikely if there are thousands of such delivery sites. Organizations like the ACLU, EFF, etc. could even set up such book-ordering services, perhaps via liberty-sympathetic lawyers in various cities and towns, to make the PR point that such services are the only way around government snooping on the citizen-units. (Of course, any normal bookstore is free to order a book and then take cash for it. I've ordered books without ever leaving my name or number and then paying in cash. This works better for conventional books than it does for controversial books on bomb-making, pot-growing, or sex.) --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001