The vital private archive

Michael Motyka mmotyka at lsil.com
Tue Jan 15 08:49:43 PST 2002



"F. Marc de Piolenc" <piolenc at mozcom.com> wrote :
>Dear Michael,
>
>Michael Motyka wrote:
>> 
>> Won't it be wonderful if the Court rules in favor of the 1st?
>> 
>> OTOH, why trust in a corruptible legal system?
>> 
>> Use cash and don't leave the ID information at the goddam bookstore in
>> the first place. If you're going to keep the book and you can't deduct
>> it, peel stickers, destroy receipts. Duh!
>
>That's fine for the clued-in folk like us, but what the bookdealers are
>fighting for is the vital but fragile asset of consumer confidence. Joe
>Sixpack is going to think twice about buying a book on sexual impotence
>- not to mention the Anarchist Cookbook - if he thinks Big Brother is
>going to be following his purchases. So a favorable court decision will
>mean much to the trade.
>
Both responses are required.

>> It is time for books to be published on CD. Using open-source tools and
>> good encryption, then the fascists can't even tell what you read. Unless
>> your OS is corrupted.
>
>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.

>>  Hack CD burners to add a SetBurnerIDCode command.
>
>Sorry. Could you expand on the significance of this for non-programmers?
>What does this command accomplish? Is it in firmware?
> 
Each data set written to a CDR contains a mfg id code and a unit serial
number. This is stored in FLASH or ROM somewhere and the firmware simply
includes this info when writing - probably in some header somewhere. I
don't remember, it's been ten years since I looked at CD formats. I
don't know exactly how much work this would be but I would guess that it
is very feasible. Simply put it might be nice to have a raw read/write
capability.

>>  Gather, duplicate and distribute widely state, federal
>>  and unpopular information that is quickly disappearing.
>
>Yes! I've been doing that for about 20 years, but I'm fettered now by
>not being able to visit my favorite research libraries in the States.
>
It's a huge problem, literally. There are bazillions of MB of data out
there in the form of maps, R&D reports and other stuff. Shrub and his
corpfasc entourage are going to delete it from the public space over the
next few years.





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