Message from a Parallel Universe

[Tim May]

Cypherpunks,

I was twiddling the dials on my Hartle-Witten BraneNet, and I 
received this message from a parallel negative tension brane 
universe. Apparently there is a group similar to our own group in 
this world which is at this quasi-time debating "literary anarchy."

Here's an excerpt:

>Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:53:24 -0700
>To: cypherbranes at lne.com
>From: Aimless Fargone <clueless at lawyers.org>
>Subject: Literary Anarchy
>Cc:
>
>
>I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of 
>books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I 
>even hear your point of view that government regulation of 
>bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed 
>with in some far-off utopian future.  But, like, I don't understand 
>how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what 
>was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but 
>couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers 
>deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending 
>to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style 
>and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was 
>important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents 
>write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value 
>propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition 
>for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.

....