Spoliation cites

[Tim May]

At 1:49 AM -0500 8/3/01, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>Black Unicorn wrote:
>
>>  I'm not sure where you have been over the last 48 hours but clearly
>you've
>>  not been paying attention.
>>
>
>       Actually, I have.
>
>>
>>  Courts _clearly_ have the ability to demand the production of all
>copies and
>>  originals of a document.  They have merely to order it.

A court may "order" the production of all copies and the original(s) 
of "Wind Done Gone," but if copies have already been sold anonymously 
and untraceably to the public, as is the norm with book sales even 
today, the issue is moot.

The situation of publishing a book is analogous to distributing on 
Freenet: once the copies are out there, they are not retrievable by 
the releasor. (The court may wish to employ tens of thousands of JBTs 
to visit every home in America, not to mention Europe and elsewhere, 
in an attempt to seize all copies, but it is clearly beyond the power 
of the author to retrieve these copies.)


Claims that releasing something in a form which may not practically 
(in the strongest sense of the word!) be retrieved is some kind of 
"spoliation" are bizarre. The claim that distributing via Freenet or 
Mojo or Usenet, systems which are similar to ordinary publishing in 
the sense that retrieval after distribution is nearly impossible, is 
also bizarre.

BU has said I should pay him for his research. Laughable.


--Tim May


-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns