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: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: Aimless Fargone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>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.
....