Quote:
Originally Posted by ownedbycats
I was thinking the kiosk would be able to take cash while eReader stores can't  |
That indeed is the only value. You can only buy paper books in a physical store today if you want to be anonymous. Autocratic regimes are now estimated to be about 50% of countries rather than 20% some years ago. There are certainly countries were buying books, news, video or music is safer anonymously. Even free Internet downloads are not anonymous.
Bookshop owners can vanish in some countries. So really an anonymous ebook vending machine would be unlikely to be allowed. Some countries now ban not just two way internet by satellite but even home TV dishes. A dish on a balcony inside a plastic box will work, so some cities have a high mast in the direction of a popular satellite with a jammer pointed at the city. Cuba has hosted uplink jamming to disrupt USA East coast sat feeds on satellites over the Atlantic downlinking to parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America.