The vital private archive

[F. Marc de Piolenc]

Dear Michael,

Wow - two minds with but one set of thoughts.

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.

> 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.
 
>  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?
 
>  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.

If you have personal contacts at US depository libraries that are now
being forced to destroy "sensitive" material, you will do mankind and
freedom a service by arranging to take that material off their hands.
Librarians have very strong instincts for preserving books - they don't
like to burn them. If they trust you to make the stuff disappear and not
reveal their help, you'll get it all. 

Other stuff turns up in library sales, pawnshops, thrift stores...all of
which are currently out of my reach!
 
> It's like F451 - private archives are the only way to save proscribed
> information.

The other side of the coin is research/reprinting services like mine,
which make the private archives available to others as copies and scans.
I also trade 2:1 (for very useful stuff, 3:1) for stuff I want. In other
words, you give me 100 pages of stuff I want, and I give you 200 (or
300) pages of stuff that I have and you want. At present, that and
downloads are the only mechanisms by which I'm able to expand my
collection.

Marc de Piolenc
Iligan, Philippines
http://www89.pair.com/techinfo/
(or see my catalog on ABE)