[induna]

OK, the hyperbolic rhetoric has worn me down once again. I think that notimp's entire argument is simply irrelevant, and surely not worth the heap of words he has expended on it for two simple reasons:

1. It is by far more simple for anyone to create and disseminate books now than it ever has been, and the technology is such that that will remain the case for the foreseeable future, even if the creation and dissemination must occur through non-mainstream channels, which is probably unlikely in the medium term. The long term is beyond my reckoning.

2. Given the fact that electronic books are, um electronic, or actually digital, we will always be able to copy them and share them if there is any serious attempt to restrict the free flow of information, even if this means photographing every page, OCRing them, and saving them in an open format -- a process that can be highly automated and will certainly be much faster than the Xerox machine of old.

There is no danger of knowledge disappearing if we care to maintain it, quite the opposite. From my perspective an actual assault on the availability of the (digitally) printed word is the only thing that would justify notimp's verbosity, and there is no such assault.