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TOWARDS COMPLETE, PERMANENT

AND EXTREMELY CHEAP LIBERTARIAN PUBLISHING AND READING,

AT LEAST IN ALL MAJOR LANGUAGES, VIA CD-ROMS etc.
 
 

CD-ROMs AS SUPPLEMENTARY MEDIA TOWARDS A LIBERTARIAN WORLD LIBRARY, ENCYCLOPAEDIA, ARCHIVE & INFORMATION SERVICE OR NETWORK OF INTERLINKED SPECIAL INFORMATION NODES, GOING BEYOND AT LEAST THE PRESENT CAPACITY OF THE INTERNET.

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"Divide et Impera!" (Divide and rule!) Divide the subject and thereby commence to master it!

One can favor competition in postal services without being able or willing to run any postal service efficiently!

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This long & largely alphabetized introduction to the project, a kind of FAQ, alphabetized, is intended to be sent by e-mail and upon request to those who have shown some interest in it, after receiving a shorter introduction or appeal to join it. So far, no one has asked for it. But this is not a reason to keep it ready and improving it somewhat for the few who may come to ask for it. Anyhow, it is already helpful to me as a memory aid. I am one of those who cannot always remember the best arguments just when he needs them.

If you want only a few pages or books on liberty then these notes are not for you. They are for those only who, if they could get it, would want easy, cheap and permanent access to ALL pages and books ever written on liberty and all related subjects, at least for reference purposes, and also the option to contribute to them, together forming a comprehensive and growing freedom library & information service, available in any desired segments on cheap duplicates in alternative media, so far mainly on microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs. It is not intended to replace Internet use for libertarians but to supplement it - as e.g. printed books still do.

These are just alphabetized notes, often duplicating the same thoughts or one-man brain-storming efforts, either under the same alphabetical term or others. They are, as yet, quite insufficiently edited "raw material" to be used or refined and supplemented or rejected by anyone who wants to think, discuss or write about this freedom opportunity. I do seek further entries to it from anyone. Objections might come to be separately listed and replied to. For the time being, some of them are included here.

Any subject, even a seemingly simple one, has many facets and can thus lead to many misunderstandings, unless the facets are all sufficiently observed and considered. Simple as the CD-ROM project appears to be, one should not jump to conclusions on any of its aspects, either. There are almost always more than 2 sides to any question.

Instead of an abstract of the CD-ROM project, I offer here the shortest advertising for it that I have so far drafted:

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WILL 300 LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS BE ENOUGH?

HOW MANY LIBERTARIANS DOES IT TAKE TO FILL A CD-ROM?

How many libertarian Mbs can and will you contribute towards a complete libertarian publishing, library & information service on ca. 300 CD-ROMs, with all the desirable reference works, linked, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD-ROM, to Internet sites? Get entered in the still small but growing list of interested people for the cooperative filling of CD-ROMs, all produced only upon demand. They are, currently, still the cheapest, easiest, most powerful, wide-spread & durable enough alternative medium for all freedom books etc. For further details see: www.geocities.com/libertarian_library/ or write to me. - PIOT, John Zube, Libertarian Microfiche Publishing: www.acenet.com.au/~jzube & http://butterbach.net/lmp/lmp_sup.htm - jzube@acenet.com.au - or: P.O. Box 52 (35 Oxley St.) Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia, Tel.: (02) 48771436. No fax!

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A longer advertisement or abstract of the CD-ROM project, coming to 628 words, is appended. You are invited to improve these texts or replace them by more appealing ones.

LMP OFFERS A PRIZE FOR THE TABULATION OF ALL THE PUBLISHING OPTIONS, listing their strengths and weaknesses. See under PRIZE OFFER BY LMP.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY TO READ THIS WHOLE ALPHABETIZED COMPILATION! It is partly repetitive and thus boring, once you have already grasped the essence of the project. I tried to cover many aspects of a simple idea. Rather pick and choose some of the capitalized catchwords & their lines only - as long as this is necessary to convince yourself.

THE BASIC IDEA is rather simple: I would rather have 500 libertarian books, or even more, for $ 50 or even less, on a single CD-ROM or, for ca. $ 250 on 250 microfiche or 250 floppy disks or 6 Super disks or 7 Zip disks - than have them available, if in print on paper, for ca. $ 12,500 or online, if already on line, having to put up with current connection charges, downloading speeds, risks and labours for as much information. WOULDN'T YOU?

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Imagine ALL freedom writings that are of some lasting value being made available on cheap CD-ROMs, floppies, microfiche & or on any other affordable, efficient, easy and permanent enough alternative media, not only SOME of these writings, temporarily, in print or on line, on audio or video tapes.

An ancient Jewish community in Cairo saved every scrap of written paper because the world "God" might occur in it. I would not get that far, not even for terms like "liberty", "freedom" & "rights". But their collection is now appreciated by historians who found out, among other things, that this community, for a considerable time, was almost autonomous although it had no territorial monopoly. Alas, our political "experts" and "freedom fighters" go on ignoring such valuable lessons from history - as well as the libertarian writings relating to them.

The most under-utilized alternative medium, even for libertarian computer fans, seem to be CD-ROMs, at least as far as libertarian publishing is concerned, although they are the most powerful and cheapest of the already widely used media. Alas, so far they were largely only used for music, games, encyclopedias, directories and software and neglected for libertarian literature. Can anything be done to change that regrettable situation?

News, events, essays, comments and appeals, as well as brochures and single books could continue to be efficiently offered online. Whole special reference libraries and collections are another matter. The size of websites is still limited and so are the speeds and safety of most online connections.

Would such CD-ROM literature offers be even cheaper and more convenient and complete than the downloading options are for libertarian literature? I was convinced of this after a recent prolonged downloading chore.

CD-ROMs offer libertarians another great opportunity for their literature. Nevertheless, they hav so far remained extremely underutilized by them, like the microfiche and floppy disk options are.

This is not another scheme to get financially rich in financial terms, although for some activists this might happen, but, rather, one for everyone interested in becoming rich in freedom information.

Better sign up for a speed-reading course, too!

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ABSTRACTS COMPILATION FOR ALL SIGNIFICANT LIBERTARIAN WRITINGS, OPEN TO ALL THOUGHTFUL CONTRIBUTIONS: On CD-ROMs there would be enough space for a comprehensive abstracts compilation for all significant libertarian writings, by all who want to make such contributions. If that compilation is not monopolized by a few scholars but remains open for many entries by anyone interested, people, with their different abstracts for the same texts, then this could be, mostly, fairer to the authors and their works and ideas. It would also make more interesting reading. Amazon.com has begun such an online service for books it tries to sell. Moreover, it would give readers and writers a feedback option. If, some day in the future, libertarian academics want to provide a libertarian abstracts compilation designed for libertarian scholars only, in the conventional way, but on CD-ROM, then they are naturally free to do so, however exclusive their offers might be.

ACTIONS: Actions can be very differently defined, for libertarians as well. I hold that, to finally achieve comprehensive, lasting and cheap libertarian publishing, even if only on CD-ROMs, likewise, comprehensive and affordable library and information services (via selling cheap duplicates of wanted texts), together with all the helpful guides, bibliographies, abstracts reviews, indexes, directories, encyclopedias of definitions, of refutations, etc., could, possibly, constitute the most important libertarian action ever, the one with the greatest influence, although, in the beginnings, they would appeal largely only to scholars and students of liberty - the opinion-makers for the future.

ADDRESSES RECOMMENDED: All those listed should publish or speak or write about this project in their circle, at least pass on relevant e-mail addresses and URLs and, rather than suggesting to the list compiler, to contact certain people with the project, should make the contact themselves. Mostly these people are only an e-mail away and would welcome a suggestion from a friend or associate much more than from a stranger.

ADVANCE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO LIBERTARIAN TEXT CD-ROMS? IS FINANCE NEEDED OR JUST SUFFICIENT INTEREST IN AND PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROJECT? In the past many books were financed via advanced subscriptions. Perhaps the same can be done here? If enough people declared they would be willing to buy the first 10 libertarian CD-ROMs, at a special discount price of, let us say, $ 10 each, then some or the other group of people might thus be motivated to get such first disks compiled and offered for sale. To demonstrate interest by advance orders would be more important to promote this project than advance payments. Seeing that the blanks and the pressing of CD-ROMs are extremely cheap, financial contributions are hardly necessary but text contributions are. Moreover, interest in this publishing and reading option must be sufficiently demonstrated in order to motivate enough libertarians to take the initiative and invest their labour, time, skills and energy in this project. So get listed as a prospective buyer, contributor of text, text compiler, downloader, editor and distributor of such CD-ROMs. Ask for the still all too short beginnings for such a list.

ADVANTAGE OF A COMPREHENSIVE LIBERTARIAN TEXT OFFER ON CD-ROMS: Please consider having ALL freedom texts in your own private reference library, in a powerful and convenient alternative medium. It would require very little space, much less than your still very incomplete private freedom book collection in print on paper, also many more freedom books than are so far offered online. Moreover, you could access all of them offline, in large batches, equivalent to a small freedom library on each CD-ROM, with a cheap CD-ROM drive. Do you know of anyone who possesses a complete freedom library or has access to one? - Are you really a genuine freedom lover if that is not of interest to you?

ADVANTAGES OF CD-ROMS: On the CD-ROMs virus attacks, broken links and other website flaws could be avoided, for years to decades. All the latest virus screenings (there are over 60,000 computer viruses by now) could be applied at the final compilation of a libertarian CD-ROM. - A few could do most of the labour required and pay most of the web connection costs just once. - They would thereby also reduce online congestion and thus benefit uncounted others with the results of their efforts: all libertarian texts of lasting value offered on cheap CD-ROMs, in large batches: 650 Mbs or ca. 300-500 freedom books on a single CD-ROM. (With zipping the number of books on a 650 Mbs disk might come to 2,000 or 2.6 Gbs!) These disks can be mailed around the world much faster than they could be completely read. - Imagine what such a CD-ROM could save you compared with buying these texts in print and getting them mailed to you, or getting them downloaded by you - if you could already get them online. According to my own experience, you could save ca. 400 hours of searching and downloading chores and connection fees with a single CD-ROM, if 650 Mbs of this libertarian information are already available on the Internet. So why isn't this done, the sooner the better? - While the life-span of CD-ROMs is limited, too, they are so cheap that they can either be replaced after a few years or re-copied to fix the text again, for a few years, on another cheap CD-ROM. The better CD-ROMs are now expected to last 50 - 124 years! CD-ROMs, as a rule, when carefully compiled, do not teach you to swear, they would not empty your pockets or threaten your life savings or your standard of living or deprive you, like printed books do, in large collection, of much of your living space. - I presume that on CD-ROMs much larger single files could be offered rather than numerous separate files, chapter by chapter, as happens mostly on the Internet.

ADVANTAGES OF LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM PUBLISHING COMPARED WITH WEBSITES: Mind you, the advantage lies with CD-ROMs mainly for those websites pages offering long or many texts that remain largely unchanged, i.e. classical and neo-classical freedom writings in form of books, long essays or dissertations. Chat sessions, current discussions, news, consumer information etc., naturally, would still be optimally offered online. But why should each libertarian have to separately pay connection fees for downloading or reading time, when he could save much finding and downloading costs, labours and troubles by buying cheap libertarian CD-ROMs already compiled by others and containing all long texts of lasting value that are already offered on the Internet - and much more from other sources - to the extent that they are of interest to him? Current libertarian website publishers might either greatly shorten and simplify their sites or altogether save themselves the costs, labours and troubles, by simply pointing out, their own long text offers on CD-ROMs, as well as those of many others, e.g. on a single or a few of the remaining libertarian websites, in the same way as AMAZON BOOKS are now pointed out on many websites. - Screening against bugs could be made very tight for these CD-ROM editions. Any new bugs would, to my knowledge, not affect prerecorded CD-ROMs that are not re-writable. (They are laser disks as opposed to the magnetic floppy and hard drive disks. Flawed entries could be corrected before duplicates are pressed or copied from it. Updates for one or several libertarian CD-ROMs could, perhaps, be provided on a single website or on a few and properly interlinked ones.

ADVANTAGES OF LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM TEXT COMPILATIONS OVER DOWNLOADING: I have learned my lesson in a year 2000 downloading effort, using up 100 connection hours, costing me ca. $ 300, to download over 14,000 files, coming to 157 Mbs, on CD-ROM. That taught me how much downloading 650 MBs from the Internet would cost me in hard labour and connection fees. Rather than engaging in prolonged and expensive downloading myself, I would, from now on, prefer it very much to be able to buy readily compiled libertarian websites & perhaps much more other libertarian information, not yet available on the Internet, altogether 650 MBs at a time, for merely $ 5 - 50 (the price of a single printed book), on a single CD-ROM, one provided and optimally arranged by some other freedom lovers or network of freedom lovers. On it, instead of hundreds of different link, literature, abstracts & review lists and directories, there could be single directory to the numerous texts included in it. Naturally, I would want included there as well my own LMP literature list of microfiched libertarian titles and some libertarian essays, and, later, some of my own and some of my favorite libertarian books. - Since such offers are not yet made to me, I will try to induce enough libertarians to compile them for anyone interested. While for a single individual the job would be too large, a few dozen or a few hundred libertarians could successfully tackle it & thus market whatever freedom information they possess and want to spread much better, more cheaply and permanently than they could so far. Some want to offload all their distribution troubles onto the Internet. They could still do this but they could also do this via libertarian CD-ROMs that are permanently kept in print and they do not have to maintain a website for their titles. Some people will gladly offer such disks for sale. That availability, like that of printed books and microfilmed texts, could also be announced on the Internet.

ADVANTAGES OF OFFERING ALL LIBERTARIAN TEXTS SOON, CHEAPLY AND PERMANENTLY ON CD-ROM: The greatest advantage of being able to get all freedom writings, together, or large special interest segments of them, at a very affordable price, would be the much greater chance for that freedom knowledge to become, as a consequence, sufficiently spread and effective in the real world. Now not even scholars do have access to all freedom writings. - For instance: No one has as yet access to all monetary freedom writings because such a library has not yet been compiled. Most of these writings are long out of print and inaccessible. But all freedom writings could be cheaply and permanently published - on alternative media and via some collaboration. Then all the collaborators could get all these texts on cheap duplicates. - You would not have to be a scholar to get the chance to access the most scholarly and most skillfully worded information on any freedom subject, fast enough - for most purposes. A comprehensive freedom library on CD-ROM could become the most influential library of all. It could become more influential than all present libertarian think tanks, conferences and meetings combined! It could combine all the information of the numerous free market think tanks and could add all the freedom writings of the past, not only by well-known scholars but also and by many non-academic freedom thinkers. It could offer the best answers to most of the remaining economic, political and social problems. No government could then afford to ignore this information for long. It would have no excuse to offer for doing so. It would risk being by-passed by better informed "juntas", also informed on libertarian putsch and revolution as well as non-violent resistance options, and always able to offer better advice and solutions than any government can. - Each party could be offered the best refutations of points made by parties opposing it and could be offered freedom solutions that would work to solve problems they were so far unable to solved, even when they got into power and had access to tax funds. Nor could the mass media long persist in ignoring this freedom knowledge - when, with a fully developed libertarian information service, all their false or incomplete statements could be easily refuted, almost automatically. Letter writers, public speakers, authors, article writers, would have the best references at their disposal. With this resource at least the libertarian movement, if not the whole public, could be enlightened much faster and more thoroughly. Any libertarian could then e.g. supply mass media with the best possible correction of any errors and lies of any government. With it, it would become relatively easy to enlighten the established opinion makers so that they could play a more positive role. The opinion makers could be systematically supplied with the best freedom answers available to all topics of great interest to them and they would risk losing their fame and positions if they did not finally resort to this information compilation on their own initiative. - If any politician were slow to make use of this resource then his opponents could be supplied with all the information needed to most effectively criticize his statements, programs and actions.. All parties could be offered the best freedom arguments against each other, especially once a libertarian ideas archive is fully developed and offered on CD-ROM and also a libertarian encyclopaedia of the best refutations of popular errors, myths and prejudices.. - Via mobile phones and palmtop keyboards anyone in a public meeting, wanting to question or refute a speaker, could quickly gain access to much of the relevant information. Regular meeting places would have link-ups to that combined knowledge, offered by a single service provider or network. A single CD-ROM drive and screen and collection of 300 libertarian CD-ROMs would not require much space - and would be portable. Screen projectors are also coming down in price, so that an objector's selected text could be screened to a whole meeting. - Before you would attend a lecture or discussion, you could bone up on the subject, perhaps sufficiently to come to know more than most of the present speakers on it, who are not so prepared beforehand. Thus you could induce others to use that resource for all of their future presentations or risk being replaced by those who do.

ADVERTISEMENTS ON WEBSITES AND IN THE LIBERTARIAN PRESS: While it might already be helpful to get either or both of my short advertisements on this subject placed upon a large and well known libertarian website, or the closely related and shortly expressed libertarian library project of John Humphreys, to get the list of interested people finally rapidly increased, the optimal way to me seems to be to place the short list of those who have already shown interest on such a website and to do so in a way that those interested can then and there or any time later on, when they visit this website again, enter themselves, with the wanted details and any self-description they like.

ADVOCACY OF THE PROJECT: Without me pushing explanations or advertisements of this project to many e-mail addresses, the growth of the still all too small list came practically to a stop. It may take ME anything from 100 - 1000 such additional mailings to gain a single new address. In the meantime, one or more of the already collected e-mail addresses or even websites might become defunct or changed. Thus for a whole year, in frustration, and because I had several other urgent projects to work on, I did not push the project at all, apart from mentioning it, with short appendixes, in my ordinary correspondence. By now sending the current list to all so far on the list, I do hope to gain some additional entries. So far I only gained some corrections and additions to already existing entries. - The most promising approach would be for one or several popular libertarian websites to reproduce the list, with a program for self-entry, or to refer, with a short project description, all those interested to a single website where they could add themselves to the list of interested people.

AFFINITY GROUPS AMONG THOSE LISTED: I think that the remaining disagreements among libertarians are considerable and that affinity groups among them should rather produce their own CD-ROMs. Only their combined output, of finally hundreds of libertarian CD-ROMs, all more or less specializing on the main interests of those collaborating in the compilation of one CD-ROM, would be able to represent all libertarian publishing and come, together with the output of all other media, close to achieving a comprehensive and lasting libertarian publishing, library and information services. For instance: The pro-abortionists and the anti-abortionists might not want to appear on the same CD-ROM, nor may some objectivists want to be represented on one CD-ROM together with individualist anarchists, anarcho-capitalists or market anarchists. That should be up to them.

AFFORDABILITY OF ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: (See also under Costs.) Almost every adult and working person in somewhat developed countries could afford to engage in extensive publishing on demand, using affordable, efficient and easy media like microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs, towards complete and permanent libertarian publishing. Since I can't, apparently, convert enough libertarians to take up their microfiche publishing options, I am now trying to interest them in taking up their floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing options - which, as well, they should have fully utilized years ago, since they are obviously part of electronic publishing. Microfiche (COM-fiche: Computer Output on Microfiche) are also long established peripheral print-out options for already digitized electronic texts, which offer great savings in space and costs compared with paper printouts, especially for long texts. Then there are the optically scanned microfiche, whose production is also, at least in the better service bureaus, computerized, automated and very fast in accurate scanning and text duplication. In this respect microfilm is actually still leading edge technology. Most computer fans are insufficiently aware of their micrographic options and their efficiencies. Can they be made sufficiently aware of their CD-ROM publishing and reading options for long pro-freedom texts? Will they learn to apply the precedents of ten-thousands of game, music and software CD-ROMs and of a few encyclopaedias in this format - to their publishing problems with libertarian literature. I can only hope so.

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: Can we afford to ignore any powerful, cheap, lasting and relatively easy media, now accessible to hundreds of millions, in the struggle for liberty? Has the extensive use e.g. of microfilms for writings and of CD-ROMs for music, software, games, encyclopaedias and attachments to computer magazines nothing to teach us?

ASSEMBLY OF THE MATERIAL FOR ONE LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM: While that would be up to the group of like-minded people, who would, between them, try to assemble, produce and distribute a libertarian CD-ROM, it seems obvious that material could be collected a) by downloading from those websites permitting such usage, b) it could be sent by e-mail, in batches up to about 1 Mb and via floppy disks, that could, zipped, contain up to ca. 6 Mbs and also on mailed CD-ROMs that are so far only partly filled and whose producers want to gain whatever benefits they could by seeing their material combined with other libertarian material of a kind that they do also like. They would have to agree upon a compiler and editor or, between them, if they can afford this, try to hire a professional. Most likely, if the list of interested people is already long enough, there would be people listed who are able and willing to do this a) as a labor of love and b) as a way to advertise their own material and also their ability to compile such CDs effectively for others.

BACK ISSUES OF LIBERTARIAN MAGAZINES: These periodicals could, perhaps, be won over to publicizing and using this option if the advantages of publishing and selling their back issues in this format were sufficiently described to them. Then the examples of these CD-ROMs could inspire the compilation and production of many other libertarian CD-ROMs. Once screen reading is popular enough they might come to convert altogether to website plus floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing, thereby reducing their publishing expenses and risks to a minimum. They might also come to add one to several CD-ROMs to their current issues, as many computer magazines do, containing e.g. libertarian books that are long out of print and out of copyrights.

BALL IN YOUR COURT: CD-ROMs are "balls" in a world-wide pro-freedom game and struggle. Please carry, throw or kick them as far as you can in the right direction, towards our goals. Indeed, they do not constitute the only game in town. But, do fairly compare them and realize and utilize their potential.

BENCHMARK TESTING FOR ALL ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: Generally it is assumed that the Internet is ideal for gathering and spreading all kinds of information and that it can do this in any quantities. But can you, vor instance, compile or download from it a tabulation that would compare all the cost savings per page and other conveniences - and inconveniences - involved with all of the alternative media, so that, with the aid of such a tabulation, everyone could make a sufficiently informed decision on his use of alternative media? The Internet as well as the mass media have left most people, even scholars and journalists, still very uninformed on all their alternative media options. A fair benchmark test comparing all of them could greatly contribute to diminish that ignorance. See the PRIZE offered by LMP.

BIBLIOGRAPHY, COMPREHENSIVE, OF ALL FREEDOM WRITINGS: One of several primary aims of extensive libertarian CD-ROM publishing would be to achieve, finally, the compilation & publication of a comprehensive freedom bibliography. It should point out the existence of texts in all alternative media as well and should point out that all its scarce and unpublished or out of print titles could and should be reproduced on one of the alternative media. By means of a common PROJECTS LISTING much duplication of such publishing efforts could be avoided. Via e-mails to one agreed-upon bibliography compilation centre, a comprehensive libertarian bibliography could fast be built up. Many short ones could already be downloaded from the Internet and then automatically sorted together. I have often suggested that it might be started by libertarians with private collectors of such literature merely listing all the rarer freedom titles in their possession, on their PC and then sending these usually rather short lists to a centre, on a floppy disk or by e-mail. A complete freedom bibliography, e.g. if it listed the location of rare titles, could be a great help in promoting publishing on alternative media for titles that are now hard to access. - People who have seen the length of the LMP literature list have often misunderstood it as a mere bibliography, rather than the offer of the full texts on microfiche. They are not used to as long literature lists. In my LMP series I offer, already digitized, a free banking bibliography of 126 pages, compiled in 1989 & still very incomplete, and a panarchistic bibliography of ca. 56 pages, apart from some bibliographies and literature lists offered by others. I presume that a comprehensive libertarian bibliography would come to ten-thousands of pages and that it would thus be almost impossible to find a paper publisher for it. But on CD-ROM it could be easily and cheaply published, upon demand, together - with much other material, and also annually updated. Chris Tame's libertarian bibliography, which I have not seen yet, was expected to come to 1,800 pages in 3 volumes, alas, again only in print on paper, for which a large price would have to be charged. And how long would it remain in print?

BIG BUSINESS? It is not my intention to establish or suggest only a single organization that provides this service for all libertarians - but if anyone wants to establish such a service or business then he should be free to make his proposal to all those listed.

BOOK OFFERED ONLINE: Libertarian Books on the Internet: There are all too few of them so far, as far as I could find out. They could all be offered much more economically and conveniently if combined on a CD-ROM, in a single large batch. But I doubt that all of them would already suffice to fill a single CD-ROM. If you know better, please tell me. Please inform me as well why they should not rather be offered together, on a single CD-ROM, rather than on xyz different websites, from which they have to be downloaded, expensively and time-consumingly, by every libertarian interested in them, chapter by chapter. I'm somewhat peeved with the way books are offered on the IN, in many sections rather than in a single large file. So far I found only one long libertarian text there that was offered in a single file, I believe it was Proudhon's book on property - and my system would not download it as a single file! I might have succeeded if I had marked and downloaded segments separately. Anyhow, rather than tediously downloading books from the Web, I, for one, would rather buy a whole small freedom library on a CD-ROM, saving me in labour, troubles and all-over costs.

BOOKLOVERS AS COLLECTORS: Even if, one day, all freedom books and all other books will become available online, old collecting and reading habits will die only slowly. Book lovers will continue to collect printed books - and others, who want to acquire more texts or want them more cheaply, will come to collect e.g. CD-ROMs. That does not reduce the value of the availability of books on line - if they are made thus available. CD-ROMs can at least play a supplementary role.

BOOKS, LIBERTARIAN, WITH A CD-ROM INSERT? In this format not only could the whole book be included, preferably as a single file, for word searches, but a very extensive alphabetical index and very long bibliography could be included, as well as some relevant essays by the author or some favorite writings by others, relating to the topic of the book. The author could also reserve the right to reproduce the book on his own account on CD-ROM, in case the publisher does not do this and also lets the book get out of print. Moreover, he could declare his readiness to combine his book offer with many related books, on a single CD-ROM. For single books, however, or even 2-6 small ones, ordinary 1.44 Mbs floppy disks could be used, with their texts reduced to plain TXT and WINzipped, so that about 6 Mbs could be included on it. The spread of floppy disk drives is still larger than that of CD-ROM drives. But the price difference for the blanks does hardly matter any more, so cheap are both.

BRAINSTORMING: Have a brainstorm on the subject, either by yourself only or together with some like-minded friends or associates. I thought about the subject for a long time but will probably have missed quite a few possibilities. In some ways several heads are better than one. This opportunity is almost of the same size as was the invention of writing, that of the printing press and that of the Internet. Compare the memory capacity of a CD-ROM of that of our brains. How much could we learn by heart and easily and rapidly recall?

BROWSING AND SURFING VS. DOWNLOADING & OTHERWISE COMPILING LIBERTARIAN INFORMATION ON CD-ROMS: I know that most anarchist and libertarian surfers did so far prefer to engage in individualized and "anarchistic" browsing on the Internet, following their own nose. But have they considered the dis-economics involved, compared with getting whole small freedom libraries on CD-ROMs? From these they could pick and choose as well, without encountering e.g bugs, broken links, slow uploading speeds and coming across all too much irrelevant information or getting lost or stuck in various link chains, like in a labyrinth. The sequential and linked contents list to 650 Mbs at a time, in one CD-ROM, combined with an alphabetical index (to some extent already available via file management programs, as in Windows Explorer, would make searching much easier and more fruitful. The previously assembled libertarian information, offered on CD-ROMs, could be considered as productive capital or pre-done labour. Consider also: How much other large capital could be offered so cheaply and could be multiplied so easily?

BURNING CD-ROMS: Quite a number of different programs exist by now for burning CD-ROMs. I have still to see an evaluation of all of them. However, if the product does not greatly differ, i.e., all the differently compiled CD-ROMs could still be read on most CD-ROM drives, then it does not greatly matter which program is chosen by the compilers.

BURNERS, PRICES: The cheapest new burner that I have so far seen advertised, I saw in a TV advertisement in June 02. It was down to A $ 128! That is about US $ 65! Before, in Harvey Norman's computer store in Campbelltown, I saw one for $ 149. Some of the burning programs are down to A $ 25.

BUYERS FOR LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS & ADVANCE ORDERS OR INDICATIONS OF INTEREST: Those only prepared to purchase finish libertarian CD-ROMs should also get themselves listed as future buyers. Advance payments would not be necessary - until the disks are ready to be delivered.

CAPACITY FOR TEXTS SCANNED IN AS IMAGES, WITHOUT OCR: As far as I know, a CD-ROM can be filled with about 30,000 pages that are only scanned in as images. Assuming the average book to contain 250 pages, this would reduce its storage and retrieval capacity to 120 books. Moreover, it would save the labour involved in correcting texts scanned with OCR programs, none of which are perfect as yet. They could also be enlarged on screens, as required and printed out as "images". Scanners are becoming cheaper all the time. A Canon scanner, including OCR was offered here for A$ 100 but it has a low image resolution. To read images of fine print probably the highest affordable resolution would be desirable. Anyhow, that is another easy and powerful option to be considered, for labours of love, undertaken on PCs to make libertarian texts completely and more easily and cheaply accessible. But one should keep in mind that texts scanned in OCR and then proof-read could be offered in much larger quantities and also, in many cases, in more legible typefaces. See under PDF.

CAPACITY, e.g. book publishing. While the blanks offer so far either 650, 700 or 800 Mbs, this capacity could be increased, about fourfold, e.g. via WINZIP applied to files reduced to TXT. Thus a CD-ROM might contain up to ca. 2.6 to 3.2 Gbs, almost half as much as a DVD with unzipped text. - The whole capacity of a CD-ROM does not have to be utilized or utilized optimally. In pdf format it might contain exactly reproduced pages, but only ca. 4,000 to 12,000 (The highest estimate that I have seen, in an advertisement, was 30,000 pages), instead of using the potential for 160,000 to 220,000 pages, according to one product and another reference. Nor is it necessary to fill a CD-ROM with book texts, since the disks are so cheap that they are an economic medium even for 1-3 books only and several times they have been used in this way. This may also be the best way to submit texts toward a CD-ROM that would reproduce many such limited offers and thereby offer the advantages of mutual advertising, amounting here to a small and special freedom library.

CAPACITY: HOW MANY WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR ALL LIBERTARIAN TEXTS? A COMPLETE FREEDOM LIBRARY ON A MERE 300 CD-ROMS? Assuming that all libertarian writings would come to 150,000 book titles or their equivalent in other formats, and that a single CD-ROM might contain the equivalent of 500 books, then 300 CD-ROMs would suffice for your complete freedom library. If you bought all of them then you could probably get them presently for as little as $ 5 each, i.e., for $ 1,500 you could have a complete freedom library - on a single bookshelf! It would even be portable. You might have to add only one or a few every year to keep up with recent freedom writings. The space for your collection would no longer threaten to take over your house. But of all this reference material you might not be able to read in full, in a long and healthy life, more than the equivalent of 10-40 CD-ROM text disks. - I had estimated that as few as 100 to 300 libertarians, all as active as I, with my chosen medium, microfiche, could reproduce all libertarian writings permanently and cheaply in this format. If many more books are offered, instead, on CD-ROM then many less micro-fichers would have to make their contributions towards complete freedom publishing in one or the other alternative medium. But a single libertarian, even if he could "simply" download 650 Mbs of libertarian texts from the Internet, would require, at my downloading speed, ca. 400 hours of hard labour to do so. That may be one reason why no one has as yet offered plain text CD-ROMs filled with libertarian texts only. In autumn 2,000 I was confronted by the decision: Use them or lose them, namely the remaining 100 hours of prepaid connection with my service provider. I used them and netted 157 MBs of information. Much is doubled up, flawed or contains broken links. The lot is spread over several disks, in Adaptec Direct CD format, since I downloaded files separately rather than into file folders and the disks slowed down significantly, in their downloading speed, after about 35 Mbs of separate files, altogether over 14,000. But this experience was very instructive for me. Individuals should not all have to engage separately in such chores and pay connection costs for many hours, seeing that a few could do the labours and pay the connection fees once and then could offer very much combined freedom information upon very cheap CD-ROMs, bug free, in better combined form, without flaws and all too much repetition. I found the downloading labour mind and body numbing already after any 2-4 hour session. Thus this labour should be divided between a small group of interested people and then offered as a labour and cost saving option to other freedom lovers.

CD-ROM EDITIONS, OPTIMALLY FILLED WITH LIBERTARIAN TEXTS: No individual or small group should be expected to do all the jobs associated with such an edition on his or its own. Here international division of labor, Free Trade and mutual aid should be applied. Are there many publishers who publish 200 - 2,000 books at a time? I get my libertarian microfiche filmed and duplicated in batches currently coming to 17 PEACE PLANS issues, containing the text equivalent of 17 - 51 books and my annual output comes to ca. 70 PEACE PLANS issues.

CD-ROM LITERATURE OFFERS: I know of only two collections of relatively modern and general literature on CD-ROMs, one of them called THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE. It contains over 5,000 titles, not all of them books and costs in retail about A $ 80. Then there is the conservative Freedom Library offered by LEX REX, see the short list on the CD-ROM project: 160,000 pages offerring 55,000 titles, costing about US $ 90 on one CD-ROM, which I bought, and in print about US $ 11,000. As an example I also bought from Harvey Norman's supercomputer shop, for $ 32.95 a disk containing 4,000 classic works of literature, for Mac & Windows, books by 400 authors from all over the world. Leo Tolstoy, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Rudyard Kipling are represented there, not necessarily with their freedom writings. How many more such precedents to you need to stir you into action? - I did also read somewhere that all of the somewhere preserved ancient Greek and Roman writings have been put on one or two CD-ROMs. But they could not help freedom lovers of today very much. - Here one should take into consideration that there do exist not only directories to CD-ROMs but also directories to the directories that list CD-ROMs! I downloaded such a directory to directories. Do you have the time and opportunity to peruse such guides? Perhaps in some of these lists one will already find some libertarian text collections on CD-ROM! If so, why aren't these offers pointed out in the libertarian press? Laissez Faire Books mentioned in its catalog, some time ago, a collection of 5 libertarian floppy disks, offering some alphabetized libertarian information for Apple Systems. Is that offer still made by someone on floppies or CD-ROM and also in Windows? I do not know. Do you? - How many more years will it take libertarians and anarchists to make full use of ALL their alternative media option?

CD-ROM OFFERS FOR LIBERTARIANS SO FAR: I have not yet seen any text-only libertarian CD-ROM offered by anyone. Have you? The only anarchist one appears to be the collected works of Bakunin. Instead, I noticed only 2 multi-media CD-ROMs by a famous leftist and somewhat anarchistic writer, Noam Chomsky. Both were offered expensively (by JURA BOOKS with its low costs plus charges) and contained only the equivalent of one or two books or lectures each - instead of 200 - 2,000 in full texts, without pictures and movie clips. Even THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE contains more genuine freedom texts in its single CD-ROM than these 2 "anarchistic" multi-media offers did - but only in plain text. I was not tempted by that "anarchist's" CD-ROM offer at all or by any of his many bound books. However, he seems to have been the first "anarchist" to have made use of this publishing medium. For that I can respect him. - Recently Henry George's books and some lectures and articles have also been offered on 2 CD-ROMs, but not yet all Georgist writings. Also James Hutchings, a left anarchist, offers a single floppy disk, almost filled with unzipped anarchist texts. All together too little too late so far. For an individual Dr. David Hart has done most in this respect by partly filling, in PDF, 4 CD-ROMs with classical liberal material, mostly in French. See the Short List.

CD-ROM PRODUCTION EXPERTS: Those with sufficient time and energy and love for the job, or willingness to do such job for agreed-upon payments, have to be found and listed and then to be contacted by those who want to deal with them. I do not and cannot, at least not yet, offer myself for this purpose - but know that many others could, if they wanted to. If someone wants to offer such services to all those on the list, he or she should be at liberty to do so.

CD-ROM PROJECT: CD-ROM, although computer media and very powerful, have so far been as much neglected by libertarians, as were e.g. microfiche and even floppy disks, when it comes to text reproductions for publishing upon demand.

CD-ROM PROJECT: It should not be perceived as one group or one organization but as many. "It's not a group. It's many groups." … "Hell is a place where everyone is the same. Hell is a place where there can be no surprises. Hell is a place where there is just one idea. Sounds familiar?" - Chad Oliver, "Meanwhile, Back on the Reservation", in ANALOG, April 27, 1981, page 87. - In this respect, the still all too tiny CD-ROM projects list is aiming at providing a special society or free market - made up of many diverse societies and special markets. Finally, when the medium is already widely used, it will just become part of the general market and of the specialized markets on it. Then it would need no further advocacy, no more so than paper and ink or computers or spectacles do now. But so far, like so many other libertarian ideas and projects, this particular one, like the micrographic options and even the floppy disk possibilities for freedom books (up to about 6Mbs, zipped, on one cheap floppy disk!), and numerous other freedom ideas and projects, remain vastly unknown, unappreciated and unused even among people who consider themselves to be radical and consistent libertarians, presumably interested in all their freedom options. When this project has achieved its objective, induced enough libertarians to make use of this opportunity, then it might be transformed into, a common projects list, a common literature for sales list, a common abstracts and reviews listing, a common alphabetical index, a common bibliography, for all libertarians. It might, as such, be continued, on CD-ROMs, DVDs, blue light CD's and or online or on other powerful, easy and affordable media.

CD-ROM PROJECTS LIST AND TELEPHONE BOOKS: The CD-ROM list and its providers and publishers will no more so do the CD-ROM publishing for all those listed than telephone directories providers and telephone companies will do all the telephoning for those listed. It just points out an under-utilized information collection, archiving, communication and duplicating option for freedom lovers. Whatever use they make of it, after they have become sufficiently aware of it, is quite up to them. The list merely aims at initiating and facilitating a wide-spread use of CD-ROMs among libertarians for their kinds of texts.

CD-ROM USAGE & WEBSITE USAGE COMBINED: To the extent that libertarian CD-ROM users would require updates or would want to discuss particular books, authors or topics online, they could still do so via the Internet. Later at least some of their discussions might be cheaply archived and distributed on CD-ROMs. - Howard Olson is preparing a first CD-ROM of this kind. It would be a pity if all these opinion exchanges were, after a few months or years, disappear from the Internet and were no longer recoverable from one archive or the other.

CD-ROMs & MICROFILMS: Essentially, CD-ROMs are just another but very powerful and cheap collection, printing, duplicating or publishing option, with some definite advantages over handwriting and printing on paper and even over microfilm publishing. But the latter, in accuracy of its kind of scanning and speed of its kind of printing duplicates is still leading edge technology. Its savings over print on paper publishing are enormous and can only be beaten by CD-ROM and DVD disks and future still more powerful disks, like the upcoming blue-light CD-ROMs. Conversion to microfiche enabled me to produce 189 times as many pages as I had previously produced on paper.

CD-ROMS & WEBSITES: I believe that a mutual fertilization will occur between them. CD-ROMs will often be largely filled with material from websites. On the other side, many websites will come to include material from CD-ROMs or to refer to material that is only offered on CD-ROMs. It is not a case of "either - or" but one of going towards liberty with all the means available to promote it, in their particular strengths.

CD-ROMS FOR BOOK PUBLISHING: For an individual or a small group it is much harder to publish to compile and publish hundreds to thousands of titles at a time than a single one. That is one of the draw-backs of CD-ROMs. However, now we have not only photocopying machines, scanners, dictating programs, efficient keyboards and word processors, telephones, and post office services but mobile phones, faxes, floppy disks, e-mail, websites and partly filled CD-ROMs to compile the material world-wide, sometimes very fast. There are thousands of millions of readers in the world. If only a small fraction of them became involved with today's publishing options in alternative media … And if only a fraction of all libertarians became so involved with their supposedly favorite writings …

CHAIN REACTION OF IDEAS AND KNOWLEDGE: With all freedom ideas, arguments facts and opinions made readily accessible, at last, the critical mass could be reached. Then a chain reaction could come to take place, sweeping the world, burying the unsound ideas, prejudices, spleens, fallacies, myths etc, with the best facts and arguments for the best ideas. We should try to organize the total mobilization of all that we have to offer, instead of merely "spitting or pissing into a strong wind" or trying to extinguish a roaring bush-fire with a few buckets of water. Nothing against the quality of the water or the buckets. There's just not enough of either. See under IDEAS ARCHIVE, PROJECTS LISTING, DIRECTORIES, LIBERTARIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

COLLECTED WORKS EDITIONS ON CD-ROMS: They should be of special interest to libertarian magazines that attempt to popularize the writings of certain libertarian writers. So far this may have been done only for Michael Bakunin and Henry George.

COLLECTED WORKS: They do not, any longer, have to be produced very expensively, in numerous and space consuming volumes. The works of most writers can fit with the works of several other writers, on a single 40 cents blank CD-ROM. A still living writer could every few years or even annually put out an updated edition of the works he has so far produced. Coops or partnerships of them could produce and market such an edition between them, if they or their views are compatible. Moreover, collected works editions do no longer have to suffer the fate of being out of print for all too long or having to wait for a long time after the death of an author to be finally produced, at least once. Unless a writer is as prolific as e.g. Isaac Asimov was, a whole CD-ROM will not be needed to reproduce his works. But it could be used to add much of the criticism and praise that his work has received. Otherwise, the works of many authors could be combined on a single CD-ROM, especially if the text is plain and zipped. Among the collected works that I would like to see on one or several CD-ROMs (those of Bakunin are already published in this way and those of Henry George are prepared for this), are those of Ulrich von Beckerath, Laurance Labadie, Robert LeFevre, Herbert Spencer, Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, A.J. Nock, Harper, Rothbard, Auberon Herbert, Leonard E. Read, Proudhon, Benjamin R. Tucker, Lysander Spooner. You pick your own favorites - and work towards their cheap and permanent availability in this format. In division of labor between many of their fans, the chores involved for a contributing individual become manageable in size.

COMMON TOUCH OR UNDERSTANDING OTHER PEOPLE: Whoever has the common touch and really understands other people would be much more suitable than I am to promote the use of CD-ROMs among them, for their favorite writings. Some people are born popularizers, advertisers and publicists, opinion makers or advocates and some are not.

COMPETITION WITH OTHER MEDIA: It will have to efficiently compete with website publishing, offered free of charge, or for a small charge like that by Pulpless.Com and with various other electronic book or tablet projects.

COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS: While I do not possess enough skills of this type as yet, and may never become as skilled as others in this field, I do know that on the market, among all the libertarian talents, there are many who are able to do this job very efficiently and that among these a few would be willing to do so if they saw that it would open up a new market for their abilities in optimally assembling libertarian texts on CD-ROMs, in the same way as it was opened up for music, games, software, directories and encyclopedias with the arrival and use of CD-ROMs in these spheres.

COMPUTER SKILLS REQUIRED FOR OPTIMALLY COMPILING LIBERTARIAN TEXTS ON A CD-ROM: I haven't as yet acquired the skill to efficiently compile 650 Mbs of texts in a single CD-ROM, although I possess the ADAPTEC Easy CD Creator program. (I used so far only ADAPTEC Direct CD format, which uses a CD-ROM like an ordinary disk drive but doesn't make the disk readable in most other CD-ROM drives.) I do know, though, that there are many libertarians for whom such a compilation would be a relatively easy job. And they could possibly make some money from it. So what is holding up this job?

CONTRIBUTIONS NEED NOT BE SENT IN NOW. On the list only the availability of a certain number of Kbs or Mbs for such publishing efforts should be indicated. While I would welcome some further contributions that I would like for my own reading and collection or also for my limited libertarian microfiche publishing efforts, I for one do not see myself as a suitable recipient and CD-ROM publisher for all the Mbs offers of libertarian information and texts that this list may come to indicate. Among all those listed, I may still be the least skilled on in this respect! Moreover, to use an analogy: One printer or publisher could not serve the printing and publishing requirements of all the world, not even if he used CD-ROMs. Although a single CD-ROM could offer a whole large encyclopaedia or small special library, it, and even hundreds of it, could not reproduce all books and manuscripts in the world. (Only for libertarian writings a few hundred CD-ROMs might suffice.) Moreover, I am not yet skilled enough in compiling and editing CD-ROMs - but know that there are thousands around who are very well informed and capable in this respect, as professionals or hobbyists. Both types should enter themselves in the list for sales of their services or cooperative labors of love, in the pursuit of common interests among those who got themselves listed. - To get in touch with each other and to make their own arrangements and agreements on their kind of libertarian CD-ROM is quite up to them. But they should announce their common project as well as their finished product.

COOPERATION OR COLLABORATION AMONG LIBERTARIANS REQUIRED: While most individuals would have difficulties in digitizing and effectively compiling as much as 650 Mbs on one CD-ROM, a few to a few dozen libertarians could do so relatively easily, e.g. via e-mail attachments (for up to 1 MB) & separate searching and downloading efforts, as well as keyboarding and scanning efforts, with each participant doing one chapter of an agreed upon book title, instead of trying to tackle a whole book by himself. They could also contribute as much from their own already existing files as they want to. In this way they could fill one or even several freedom CD-ROMs relatively fast. How many Mbs have you compiled in your system so far, during your years of computer and IN usage? How many of these Mbs would you like to see published in a common CD-ROM? What are their special subjects? A common listing of these offers could soon lead to the first CD-ROM containing this material.

COPYRIGHTS: Are they an insuperable obstacle to this project? - No, for the first text-only libertarian CD-ROM could be compiled only from material that is not or no longer copyrighted. It could also be partly filled with copyrighted material for which no copyrights are claimed for this CD-ROM edition. Libertarians are already accustomed to placing much libertarian copyrighted information on the internet, where 300 million readers can either freely read it or download from it for their private use. - At least until libertarian literature on CD-ROMs becomes popular, the copyrights holders would not have to be afraid to lose other sales thereby. If they wanted to, they could put a time limit on their consent to having their material placed on libertarian CD-ROMs, or a quantity limit for the duplication of their writings on CD-ROMs. Furthermore, a blocking program could be incorporated that would make it difficult to impossible to privately copy from a CD-ROM containing copyrighted material. Furthermore, they could form a coop with the libertarian CD-ROM producers and share royalties according to their page input. But the best solutions for believers and opponents of copyrights would probably consist, in the long run, for each group to produce and sell its own CD-ROMs, confined to their kind of offers. I for one would welcome it if, in the long run, all essential freedom information were offered without copyrights restriction, even if only in form of abstracts, quotes or reviews, and for ideas best in a LIBERTARIAN IDEAS ARCHIVE. Then the not-copyrighted information would possess a pricing and convenience advantage and thus win out over most of the copyrighted information. I would rather like to see writers and innovators rewarded in dozens to hundreds of other contractual ways than by legal copyrights. At least indirectly they could win, in fame and its advantages, the more often their writings are copied, naturally, only if this is done honestly, and under their name. Compare the commercial use many gold medal winners in sports can make of their Olympic fame. Should they have copyrighted the news of their wins?

COPYRIGHTS: The authors of books, all still copyrighted, but independently of conventional publishers produced by them on a CD-ROM, could either earn some money by selling their CDs very cheaply to a very large readership or, if they have only a limited number of readers, very expensively. They could offer to include comments from readers in the next edition, also reviews obtained in the meantime. They could make their own titles more attractive and more widely known by combining them with many other titles of a similar kind or subject. For those who can already achieve many sales of their separate titles in print on paper, or from online offers, the CD-ROM option will not be very attractive, at least not financially. But on CD-ROMs they could include e.g. their personal appearances, talking about the book or the subject and also interviews and reviews as well as very long bibliographies and alphabetical indexes. What they lose in print sales, they might gain by proper pricing of the CD-ROMs containing their works. And they might find it worthwhile to offer one book or all their works so far, on a CD-ROM and keep it or all of them permanently in print in this format. Possibly a program could be included against copying it or copying it more than once. The widest readership, under present conditions, they might obtain by putting their work, if necessary zipped, on a single floppy. On it, it would probably not last as long as a book printed on good paper would, or a quality CD-ROM, but, such a floppy could probably be easily replaced by an interested reader, ordering another one. And illegal copies made of his digitized work might be considered as free publicity for it. Nowadays a book reaching 500,000 to 1 million impressions, is already considered to be a bestseller. With floppies and CDs it could, potentially, reach hundreds of millions. Even if the author did not get any direct returns from it, he would thus make more of a name for himself and could charge more for personal appearances and for interviews and sponsorships, lecture tours etc. and might be offered attractive jobs or consultancy fees. A CD-ROM that would describe all the alternatives to copyrights earnings has still to be compiled as well.

CORRESPONDENCE ON THE CD-ROM PROJECT: All the correspondence that I had on the CD-ROM project might be compiled and made available on a floppy disk, online or on a website, to the extent that it contains interesting proposals, objections and refutations. I believe that the objections and attempts to refute them should be separately compiled in an alphabetized file.

COST COMPARISONS AND BENCHMARK TESTS FOR ALL ALTERNATIVE MEDIA, NOT JUST FOR COMPUTER SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE: Fair enough comparisions should be made, indicating e.g. cost per duplicated page and other characteristics, preferably in tabulated form, and should be well enough published. I know of no website which provides such a comparison! Some information explosion! See the Prize offered by LMP.

COSTS IN HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, LEARNING PERIODS: Access and maintenance costs for microfilm hardware is much lower than for computer hardware. Users of libertarian CD-ROMs would not even have to have an expensive computer system or be linked to the Internet for most of their libertarian information requirements or only for a short time, for updated information. And that time they might spend in an Internet coffee-shop, or on the system of a friend. Microfilm and CD-ROM technology remain largely unchanged, having reached their optimum level. (Well the speed of reading from and writing on CD-ROMs does go up, and CVDs have been introduced which are about seven times as powerful.) Their hardware is supplied at very competitive prices and does not require frequent updates. Home users can learn to use microfiche reading machines and playback CD-ROM disks within seconds to minutes. They do not require re-learning periods for new software and hardware, either and are safe from most bugs. Nor do they become dependent upon search engines and techniques. Guides to what is available on microfilm, on CD-ROM & on the Internet can also be cheaply published on microfiche, floppies & on CD-ROMs, for any special subject. The attempt to mediate most information exclusively online overlooks that most information, even computer information, is still mediated via printed paper and that microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs are much more cost efficient than are pages printed on paper - whenever large text compilations are involved.

COSTS OF CD-ROM BLANKS: The re-writable CD-ROM blanks, which was 2 years ago still priced at about $ 30, I have lately seen for $ 5. (June 02: $ 1.) The plain blanks for read and write once CD-ROMs are down to $ 1.25 each, in individual jewel cases, in packs of 10 in shops like Bing Lee. (THE SUN HERALD, Nov. 19^th, 2000, page 46. I have bought smaller batches at A 4 2 each. A recent newspaper article, discussing CD-ROMs for the production of a combined telephone book for all of Australia, on a single CD-ROM, mentioned that they can be produced for as little as 50 cents in costs. (Retail prices of CD-ROM blanks, by June 02, are down to 40 cents.) Newsagents retail the Australian telephone books on CD-ROM for $ 20. How much cheaper do libertarians want their media to be? Do they want to be paid for condescending to make use of floppies, microfiche and CD-ROMs or do they expect a government subsidy for their publishing efforts on as cheap media? The libertarian free marketeers are all supposed to be fans of micro-economics, of free enterprise and free trading under competitive pricing, favoring automation, labour and capital savings. Why aren't they, here? - The presently remaining low costs for CD-ROMs are no real obstacle to most working people in developed countries or even to poor retirees like myself. Most of the better computer systems do already have at least a CD-ROM playback drive, if not also a "burner" for writing on them. The burners are about 3 to 4 times as expensive as the cheap CD-ROM drives. The compiling of a libertarian CD-ROM edition could be undertaken with the cheap CD-ROM disks, at A $ 40cents each. When at least 650 Mbs are so assembled, then they could be best edited on a re-writable CD-ROM, which can be used up to 1,000 times. Once it is sufficiently edited, this could be used as a master to either privately and slowly copy it with a burner, to produce duplicates, or to use the cheap and automated services of a copy bureau like DENTON, whose prices for a duplicate I have seen as low as A $ 1.10, if one ordered several hundred copies at a time. So one could save oneself the labour and time of home-production, using commercial services at a very affordable price, if one does not have the time, energy or patience to produce them at home. Moreover, one would not wear out one's equipment. Many authors would be prepared to pay more for the printing of each copy of a single book. On a CD-ROM a groups of authors or fans could publish a whole small special interest library at such a low price. Moreover, by ordering, on demand, further such small batches, they could keep all these titles on a single CD-ROM permanently "in print". What are they waiting for? And why haven't vanity presses or coops of writers made use of this option yet?

COSTS OF CD-ROM DRIVES: The CD-ROM read-only drives were here down to A $ 136 already two years ago. Even the Read & Rewrite CD-ROM drives, or burners, are here and now down, e.g. for Creative Blaster, CD-RW 8x write, 4x rewrite & 32x read, to A $ 398. (Dick Smith Electronics offer: www.dse.com.au See under BURNERS for much cheaper offers by June 02.

COSTS OF CD-ROMS, MICROFICHE & FLOPPIES: The material costs of CD-ROM reproduction are really negligible. Already with my microfiche I came sometimes down to 0.03 cents per page on one of my microfiche duplicates containing up to 1350 small pages. Floppies can be similarly economical for freedom book reproductions. To fill a microfiche, with their limited unit size, 98 - 1350 pages, in the lower and more common reduction rates, is still quite manageable for an individual, especially when using, for the technical labours (beyond supplying the photo-ready paper master for filming) a good micrographic service bureau. On floppies, with 1.4 MB capacity, and at about the same low price per duplicate as microfiche, an individual can manage to accumulate and offer a similar quantity of text as can be provided on a microfiche, i.e. the equivalent of one or two standard sized books. More when the text is zipped!) At 29 x reduction I usually get 504 pages reproduced, with photocopies of 4 book pages attached to each of 126 foolscap documents. My costs for the original filming of such a libertarian microfiche and the first 100 duplicates of it, all done automatically through a micrographic service bureau, are less than A $ 50. Further batches of 100 duplicates, ordered only if and when required, cost me only A $ 28. The compilation & duplication of a libertarian floppy disks could be done easily and fast enough at home, on demand with the simplest computer systems. They do require a bit more space for storage and cost a bit more in postage than do microfiche and are not as long-lasting. However, both could be easily and cheaply replaced, fast enough for most purposes. The contents of the floppies could even be e-mailed, in attachments of up to 1 MB. If the text of a floppy is zipped, much more than 1 Mb could be e-mailed in a single attachment. Used microfiche reading machine can be acquired for as little as $ 50. Used computer systems usually cost a bit more. - Nevertheless, neither the microfiche publishing nor the floppy disk publishing opportunities are widely used or even appreciated by most libertarians & anarchists. For more on the microfilm options see my website. So what is holding up, as well, the output of cheap and powerful libertarian CD-ROMs? - Just ask yourself: How many individuals or small groups are there - quite ready to write, compile or reproduce a whole small reference library in a single effort? For an individual this job is just too much. Thus collaboration is obviously required and, as obviously, hasn't naturally developed or been organized as yet. Can libertarians and anarchists manage to forget their differences and collaborate to that extent? Supposedly all of us are for full freedom of expression and information rights and liberties and also for more freedom of action opportunities for ourselves. So, when are we going to take up, sufficiently, all these great alternative media opportunities, starting perhaps with CD-ROMs? Relatively few libertarians would have to become active in this way to finish the job of making all libertarian writings cheaply, easily, permanently and fast enough, for most purposes, accessible on alternative media like microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs.

COSTS OF ONLINE READING AND DOWNLOADING: How expensive is reading a whole pro-freedom book online, provided it is already on the Internet? Let us say that it is of average size in pages and print. It would usually take you a few hours to read it, mostly in several sessions. One must further presume that you would find screen reading easy enough. Thus, in provider services and telephone charges it might cost you quite a few dollars. For me, living in the country, about $ 3 are involved per hour. Thus this high technology option might cost as much as a new or second hand printed book (if they were all available to you, fast enough). Moreover, you would end up only with what you could memorize, not with a copy of the book itself, for easy reference. Nor could you annotate the text while reading it online, at least not yet, with most of the present websites. Nor is making and maintaining a book-length website cheap and easy for the publisher or editor. You could download it, but to download as many books as would be required to fill a single CD-ROM might take you, as it would take me, about 400 hours of hard labour on top of the connection and telephone cost. If you were to print the text out, then toner and paper costs as well as wear on your printer would add up, especially if you were to print out 300-500 books, which could be contained on a single CD-ROM. So information offered "free" on line is anything but free of all charges and costs, even if access, downloading and printing-out are all managed by you quite trouble free. - However, as has been rightly pointed out to me, some people are on fixed charges, for unlimited viewing and downloading. Then there are no extra costs for downloading many long texts but only additional labours, especially since most books seem to be broken up into many different files. Programs for downloading a whole website automatically seem to exist but I do not know as yet details on them.

COSTS, RETAIL PRICE OF A LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM: A libertarian CD-ROM containing the texts of 300-500 books could perhaps be profitably retailed for as little as $ 5 and probably for no more than $ 50, with the latter price now being often the price for a single newly printed book. How much more do you want to save in acquiring a large or even complete freedom library?

COSTS: What is cheaper, at present, for the preservation of 650 Mbs of text (or more, if in plain text and zipped) at a time? We should let ourselves be guided here by the experience with CD-ROM use for music, games, software, directories and encyclopaedias.

CUSTOMS, HABITS AND TRADITIONS OF PUBLISHING AND READING: To achieve easy, cheap and comprehensive access to all freedom texts, we should be willing to give up long established and maintained publishing and reading customs, habits & traditions. At least for us the message should be more important than the medium. At the same time, we should be aware that easy, cheap, powerful and long lasting alternative media have, as such, their own message to tell and freedom lovers interested in their freedom of expression and information options should be prepared to listen to it and to ponder it. Reliance on a single or a few conventional or popular media alone, on too few and too expensive or difficult ones, has already lead to many disappointments and is bound to lead to many more. It might postpone our D-Day indefinitely.

DEFINITIONS ENCYCLOPAEDIAS: CD-ROMs have enough space to permit the inclusion of dozens to hundreds of different definitions for every term. Most people remain unaware of the existence of most of the other definitions and just stick with one or a few that they heard about first and that somewhat appealed to them. Awareness of the variety of definitions is bound to make people more careful in their wordings. Perhaps one day the variously interpreted words will be numbered in accordance with their numbering on a comprehensive list of different definitions of the same term. Many dictionaries, for their own purposes, have already given numbers to the different interpretations.

DELPHIC ORACLE, LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, WORLD LIBRARY, WORLD INFORMATION SERVICE. Obviously, we could not afford to offer all freedom writings in print or online, at least not yet, seeing the costs involved with these media. However, we could afford to put all of them on CD-ROMs, DVDs and upcoming blue-light CDs etc. Have we got any valid excuse for not doing this? Putting some articles, essays and books online and maintaining them there is obviously not enough and has not proceeded far enough as yet and may never do so. The same applies to books in print. Already with microfilm complete publishing and library and information services could have been achieved - but the medium remains too unpopular and may remain so for a long time if not forever. The costs for establishing and maintaining very large websites at state of the art can be very high. See under costs. At least the duplicating costs of 650Mbs to 3.2 Gbs of texts on a single CD-ROM are down to a short copy period, a bit of electricity and a 50 cents blank, which could be air-mailed world-wide for less than the price of most printed books. By all means, if you can, establish an electronic world library but, at least at this stage, rather than offering only the downloading of one or a few texts from it, develop it to the stage where a large combination of libertarian files, filling a CD-ROM, can be assembled from such an electronic library, automatically and then printed out on a CD-ROM and sent cheaply and fast enough by snail mail. One should be able to wait for reading matter that will one will take hundreds to thousands of hours or days to read. Instant or access within minutes is only desirable for short texts or single books - to the extent that the latter are already on line. So far only a fraction of all freedom books is. Not even a complete list of all the online libertarian books seems to have been provided there so far. Please correct me, if I am wrong.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIBERTARIAN TEXT COMPILATIONS ON CD-ROMS: None of those listed would be under any obligation to get their material included with particular other material that they do dislike. They should push for their own kind of assortment of libertarian texts among like-minded people on or off this list.

DIFFICULTIES: The greatest difficulty with assembling libertarian texts on CD-ROMs seems to exist for individuals or small groups in assembling 650 Mbs at a time to fill one. But then they would not be forced to fill a CD-ROM on their first attempt. They could partly fill it and invite others to add their material to it, later, for the second and following editions.

DIGITIZING AND SPREADING OF ALL FREEDOM TEXTS: That all freedom texts ought to become digitized, as soon as possible, is already largely agreed upon. But on whether all of them could or should be offered online or on CDs, or on both, cross-referenced, is still an unsettled question. So far the CD-option, in spite of its considerable size, cost and other advantages, has been vastly underutilized. Whether in full and free competition with each other, one or the other form will come to predominate is not yet determined. So far online use is much ahead, but that could change if the CD-ROM alternative is sufficiently considered and used. Compare how much CDs do already predominate in music, software, games, encyclopaedias and directories. Other electronic book options are still in flux, with none of them having become very popular. The publishers and readers of the future will decide the question, hopefully much better informed than they are now. - For liberty lovers it should be self-evident that both of these media should be fully utilized in their strengths and freely compete with each other and with all other alternative media. Only then will we come to realize the advantages and disadvantages of them and make fully informed and rational choice of them. - I believe that they will come to supplement each other, very effectively, but this remains to be seen. Furthermore, I hold that we cannot afford to ignore the CD-ROM options any more than we can afford to ignore the online options. Event he humble and supposedly outdated 1.44 Mbs floppy disk, if used for zipped texts, can carry about 6 Mbs of text, i.e., one large to several small books. Moreover, automatic production of CD-ROMs, on demand, offering 650 - 800 Mbs or, zippped, ca. 2.6 to 3.2 Gbs texts, would have considerable advantages over each reader searching for and downloading as much information on his own and thousands to ten-thousands of other readers doing the same. - A comprehensive libertarian electronic library, offering on CD-ROM duplicates any wanted libertarian texts, would have great advantages over downloading numerous reference texts even at the highest present downloading speeds. One does not need most texts any faster than one has time and energy to read them. Access to short texts or single books, immediately wanted, could still be online. But for a whole special freedom library via air-mail one might have to wait all of 10 days! For them electronic transmission speed is not essential.

DIRECTORIES: Like nation-wide telephone directories, now usually available on a single CD-ROM, instead of on dozens to hundreds of printed volumes, directories to all libertarians, world-wide, that want to be listed and can afford to be listed as such, could also most economically offered on one or a few CD-ROMs and annually updated, with in-between updates being available on a website.

DIRECTORY OF LIBERTARIANS ACCORDING TO THEIR SPECIAL INTERESTS: If such a directory did already exist then this special list for those interested in the CD-ROM options would probably be superfluous as well.

DIRECTORY, LIBERTARIAN: At number of libertarian directories has already been started on the Web, one with direct e-mail links to libertarian scholars. But if all the more different libertarian interest addresses, electronic and otherwise would be included, then a website would become almost unmanageably large. Like with local and even continental phone books, a more economical alternative would be a CD-ROM edition, annually replaced and supplemented by a website that brought nothing but changes since the last edition. I for one would want to include all anarchists as well, and in general all freedom lovers who would want to be listed in it, at least with one of their e-mail addresses. Name and address alone would mostly not be sufficiently informative. Affiliations and special interests should be mentioned as well, naturally only on a voluntary basis. By now one e-mail address would be almost obligatory.

DISECONOMICS OF SEPARATE SEARCH & DOWNLOADING EFFORTS AND CONNECTION CHARGES FOR MANY LIBERTARIANS, WHO ARE, LARGELY, INTERESTED IN THE SAME KINDS OF TEXTS: Assume that it is a popular title and that you as well as ten-thousand other people download it into your system. Then how much do you and ten-thousand others spend altogether, in searching and downloading labour time and in connection fees, in order for each of you getting it on your separate and private disk drives? Imagine the time, labour and fee savings if, instead, that title and 300-500 others, were compiled by a few collaborators on a single CD-ROM and sold to them cheaply by mail? Why should thousands to ten-thousands of freedom lovers have to look up and download largely the same material separately, rather than using division of labour? A few of us could be downloading almost all the freedom information that is already offered on the Internet (that of some lasting value). These few could add to this information as much as they like and could, from other and private sources, and then offer their compilation on CD-ROM to all who are interested and do want to save themselves labours, costs and troubles. Should freedom lovers waste their spare time and funds unnecessarily just on acquiring texts, with the supposedly the highest technology, without considering possible further cost and labour savings? - If each libertarian separately downloads and fills his own libertarian CD-ROM then this is rather uneconomic compared with each buying, very cheaply, largely the same information on a single CD-ROM, compiled for all other libertarians by a few libertarians, and perhaps all libertarian information offered there and elsewhere, on only a few CD-ROMs.. - According to a recent experience I would have needed 400 hours to download enough libertarian information from the Internet to fill a CD-ROM. Apart from the chore involved, this would have cost me ca. $ 1200 in connection fees. And yet a group could have compiled this information for me on a duplicated CD-ROM, costing the group, once the information is digitized and edited, only 40 cents ( in A $!) for the blank to run a duplicate off, on a private PC. Commercial duplicators could run off several CD duplicates at the same time. At the costs of the label, packing and mailing and these material costs still remain low. They could have sold an as cheap duplicate profitably for about $ 5-50 and I would have felt that I would have got a bargain with it even at $ 50. (Especially if the scanning and proof reading is not done by paid professionals but by libertarians, as a labor of love, for their favorite texts.) - How much would 650 Mbs printed, i.e., ca. 300-500 libertarian books, cost me now in print, paper, binding, postage and handling? Aren't such possible savings obvious enough? If the particular libertarian texts, that I want, were spread over 10 or more CD-ROMs then this would hardly matter, either, especially if one libertarian CD-ROM could guide me to the contents of all the others and all libertarian texts might be reproduced on as few as 300 CD-ROMs, i.e., might also be affordable, for many libertarians, for their private reference library. - So far, libertarians view largely the same information again and again, reading it either online, or downloading it from the website. See the often large figures on visitors to a site! For book reproductions there we should not be proud of large numbers of visitors being registered but ashamed to waste the time and money of so many when we could serve them so much better with CD-ROMs. What a waste of our money and energies! To the extent that freedom lovers want to acquire largely the same pro-freedom information, they could do so most economically by getting it on CD-ROMs, produced for them by a few other freedom lovers. They should also consider that in their individual searches, using less than perfect browsers (and at a time when not all libertarian sites are interconnected as yet) and with their own downloading efforts, they might miss many libertarian sites that might be of great interest to them. On libertarian CD-ROMs all libertarian sites could all be "fished out" from the Internet ocean and then very cheaply offered for sale, ideally by the website providers themselves, by a group of patient and skilled searchers doing this job for all of us. See also under: INTERNET, WEB, ONLINE, DOWNLOADING.

DISPERSED INFORMATION THAT HAS TO BE LABORIOUSLY COLLECTED FROM THE INTERNET AND OTHER MEDIA: Archival collections can be reproduced, at ridiculously low material costs, so far only on CD-ROMs, which are even cheaper for large quantities of information than are microfilms.

DISTRIBUTION METHODS: The independent producers of different libertarian CD-ROMs might agree upon different distribution methods but one should expect that they would not mind being listed in a common list for all such products.

DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION: Is it sufficiently comprehensive and automated already on the Internet, especially for libertarian and anarchist information? Obviously, only a fraction of the websites makes so far money for their providers or at least covers their costs. It is true, that one does not have to worry about distribution there, if one permits online reading and downloading and copying. One can also get some satisfaction from getting the number of accesses to one's pages recorded there. On the other hand, one's site might never be found or accessed by those who might be interested in it. The chance that it will be found and somewhat perused, if not studied, is much larger, is it is part of a whole special library that is offered on a CD-ROM. Moreover, The number of people who can access a CD-ROM, but are not connected to the Internet, is probably larger than the number of those who are on the Internet. - Add to that the human hoarding instinct, that lead to many personal reference libraries, some of them so large that they reduce living space. CD-ROMs (linked to updating sites) could satisfy this instinct and free-up living space. On the latter aspect, I have already observed second-hand printed encyclopedias being very cheaply on sale in second-hand bookshops and my own grandchildren rarely if ever referring to the printed editions. In music and games CD-ROMs have already taken over. Regarding software the issue is still in doubt - but, anyhow, computer magazines continue to offer 1-3 CD-ROMs as freebees with their printed magazines. - Most people have the wrong impression that distribution from the Internet is free. This is true for those who have already paid for unlimited access or whose Internet service account is paid for, mostly (apart from some personal e-mail accounts) by others, as it is for many academics, researchers and professionals, for whom their employer pays these costs. For others considerable costs are involved for their connection costs, coming roughly to the costs of a printed book or two per month. - Moreover, for their readers, in many to most cases, reading online or downloading and screen reading offline, are associated with considerable costs. The search and downloading costs as well as the reading costs could be greatly reduced by offering whole special reference libraries on CD-ROM, as cheaply as is possible with this medium. - How long would it take you to download Encyclopedia Britannica from the Internet? Would you not rather buy it on a $ 100 CD-ROM? Admittedly, on the Internet it offers additional search and reference options and links. - If one wants to make some money from one's writings, then selling them on CD-ROM, in combination with other such offers, seems to be an attractive option and the chores involved could be delegated, for a fee, to some suitable agency.

DISTRIBUTION OPTIONS FOR THE FINISHED LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMs. Which ones will be used by different compilers for their disks, will differ. But an attempt might be made to list all or at least many of the options. - A particular disk, compiled by a particular group, might provide a copy to each of them and then permit them and even invite them to reproduce and give away or sell duplicates made by them as they please, with the intention to spread freedom ideas as widely and rapidly as possible, not to make merely a financial profit. We would all gain indirectly if freedom ideas became widely spread. - Contributors to a disk might appoint one of them or an agency to duplicate their CD and to sell these duplicates, just sending the group of authors a percentage from all sales made. - As an advertisement stunt for the CD-ROM as a libertarian publishing and reading medium, the contents of one such CD-ROM, optimally filled, might be put on a very large website and then people who would be interested not only in some of the contents but all of it, should be invited to provide some feedback on how much it had cost them in labor and connection fees, to download the whole contents and then to compare these expenses with ordering the CD, waiting for it and paying its price. Even that would not be a quite fair comparison to the CD-ROM offer, since on it all these sites would have been already collected and effectively combined, a job which someone searching for the same files on the Internet, and then downloading and combining them at home, would have to undertake for himself, at his expense. Moreover, all troubles with various files, in these attempts, would be on his own shoulders. For the files on a CD-ROM these troubles would be undertaken by one person or a small group - for many other people, the buyers of the disk. - If CDs of this kind do contain copyrighted material, this could be so indicated, as it is on the Internet and copyrights advocates could reproduce their own disks, all with copyrighted material only, probably at a higher price than those containing not copyrighted material. They could also make different decisions on how any profits might be distributed among their members. That would be their problem. Seeing that so many copyrighted books could be offered on a single CD-ROM, that disk would either have to be sold very expensively or the share in the profit for each of the published authors of such a disk would be very small per disk sold. Let free enterprise competition and consumer sovereignty decide upon future text publishing and reading.

DIVERSITY OF FREEDOM INTERESTS: Indeed, even our freedom interests and priorities are not identical, in detail, but the few CD-ROMs that would be required to provide all the unchanging classical and specialized freedom texts, could cater to all our special interests, like any other complete and conventional library could, if it were already established and if it were situated near us. Any special kind of libertarian interest could be expressed in one or on a few CD-ROMs, which could be separately listed and ordered - once all libertarian information is so compiled and made available in cheap CD-ROM duplicates.

DIVISION OF LABOR AND THE CD-ROM PROJECT: "… it's possible to complete very large projects by taking a succession of small, relatively painless steps. … while many big jobs can be tackled one step at a time, sometimes it's better to take two steps at a time. Or even more." - Stanley Schmidt in editorial, ANALOG, March 30^th, 1981. Between us we have the capacity and should have the will to provide, cheaply and soon, all freedom texts for ourselves and for anyone else who should become interested in them.

DIVISION OF LABOUR AMONG LIBERTARIANS FOR DIGITIZING TEXTS BY KEYBOARDING OR SCANNING: If the texts are not already digitized, as the few freedom books and all other texts on the Internet are - from where they could be, rather laboriously, expensively and time-consumingly downloaded, to fill a CD-ROM (taking for this about 400 hours with my 2 year old system (a Pentium II, 450 Mhz, with a 56 Modem, and at my personal operating speed) then division of labour for keyboarding or scanning-in & correcting the scanned books, could be arranged for each book title. Only thus could an individual's text contribution effort be made quite bearable for him. In practice, one website or e-mail address could offer a list which would publish proposals to digitize certain books and invite help with these jobs. Each proponent could give an e-mail address and state that he would do at least e.g. one tenths of the job involved with one book - once another ten would name themselves as helpers for the title he had proposed. The potential helpers would be listed with their e-mail address as well and once enough are listed the project could proceed rather fast. Possibly advance orders for the digitized book, on floppy or e-mail, could be placed with the convenor, as a further encouragement to go ahead with the digitizing of a particular freedom book. And groups of compilers could combine to offer all their texts on a single CD-ROM. There are many ways to use this freedom option.. The list on the CD-ROM project is intended to promote such collaboration, without forcing anyone into becoming a member of an existing organization and compliance with its rules. Those listed can group and organize themselves, or ignore each other as much as they like. Between them, in a market-like cooperation, they could cover this field.

DIVISION OF LABOUR TO FILL LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS: To fill them some division of labour will have to be arranged but that should not be too difficult for ideologues of the division of labour, free markets, free trade, free enterprise, private initiative and fully free competition, using all available and suitable resources and machines and channels. - Libertarians supposedly subscribe to e.g. division of labour rather than self-sufficiency. They believe in international cooperation and free trade. They should fully apply these and others of their convictions to their text reproductions and acquisitions as well, using either of the affordable and efficient alternative media. Among these CD-ROMs are outstanding, at least in their capacity and cost savings. Indeed, their capacity is so large that filling them will require considerable collaboration among libertarians, as would the production of 200-2,000 conventional books at a time. Why should numerous libertarians and anarchists have to separately search for and download xyz pages, rather than a few libertarian surveying and downloading the lot and offering them on a few CD-ROM? Since when are e.g. the free market libertarians against cost and labour savings? I do hope that you will not adopt the following stand: Rather leave most libertarian writings unpublished, out of print, in one language only or priced out of reach of all too many, or accessible only with considerable costs and labours, than resort to a change in publishing and reading habits! - Between us we have the information, skills, labor power, interest and patience, time and energy to tackle this project to its conclusion. Between us we have the ideas and solutions for most or the remaining problems of out times but we have not yet comprehensively and widely offered them as blueprints, cheaply, permanently, to almost everyone, in all major languages. With CD-ROMs we could, but, naturally, we should not confine ourselves only to them, or to microfiche or to any other medium but should utilize all of them in their strength. - No one should be expected to participate beyond his interests, energy, time and capacity. But these could be mobilized with this medium especially for the particular freedom texts that one likes most. And the labors involved could come to be shared with many like-interested people - although these people might never meet in person but, perhaps, only through e-mail or snail mail. - A comprehensive list of people interested in this project could get enough groups going, made up of those listed, to produce, rather soon, the first and later many more cooperatively compiled libertarian CD-ROMs, until the field is covered. Long before that this list, as such, would have made itself superfluous. But it might be continued as a literature list for the libertarian CDs offered or as a list of current libertarian projects.

DOWNLOADERS, SCANNERS, KEYBOARDERS & COMPILERS & CONTRIBUTORS OF PRIVATE FILES: Some groups might concentrate merely on downloading everything already digitized and available for this project on the Internet or to induce the website authors and providers to collaborate. Other groups might concentrate on digitizing the numerous freedom texts not yet available on the Internet & in other affordable alternative media. Others might concentrate on writing on their PCs and including their own writings and comments. Others should offer their services as compilers and editors of libertarian CD-ROMs. Others might do some quantity burning of them, once one such edition is finished. All should notify one-agreed upon address of what they have already to offer or have in the works. There they could and should also ask for collaboration, of the kind that they would welcome.

DOWNLOADING LABOURS & COSTS STILL TOO HIGH & TIME CONSUMING. MOREOVER, THEY DO NOT AS YET EASILY REACH ALL FREEDOM INFORMATION THAT IS ALREADY ON THE INTERNET: In autumn 2000 I just had ca. 100 Internet connection hours left with my service provider and only about a month to use them or lose them. So I used them, with numerous breaks in-between, swearing at lost or slow connections, skipping them and the to me less interesting material, merely downloading material, as fast as I could, rather than reading it. Prolonged downloading, I found out, can also be a considerable chore & keyboarding muscle strain. I would hate to have to do that as a paid job for 8 hours straight every day. I downloaded, when possible, mostly in html, since that required less keystrokes, and left the job of reading, selection and editing for possible inclusion in LMP microfiche for later. The drawback with this was that I had to wait for the downloading of many pictures that I was not interested in. Trying to get only the text separately was often too difficult or time consuming or impossible. Result of that effort: On the one hand: The pleasure of a few unexpected "discoveries" that were of great interest to me. The total of texts thus saved in 100 hours was ca. 14,000 files (many sites offer multiple files) coming to 157 Mbs. (In plain texts the downloading would have gone faster but I would have to find and download many more plain text files to fill a single CD-ROM.) I used up my otherwise forfeited connection time and gained many libertarian Mbs for it, some of which could be used to fill future LMP microfiche. On the other hand, and, please, do ponder this fact, to fill a single CD-ROM with 650 Mbs I would have had to spend ca. 400 hours of such labours and their associated costs - assuming that there are already enough freedom websites on the Internet to fill a single freedom CD-ROM or even several. If I could fill 10 libertarian CD-ROMs from that source, it would have taken me ca. 4,000 hours! I shudder at the thought! No wonder, no one seems to have made such a compilation so far and offers it on the market. After that one month of effort I was a new convert: DOWNLOADING SEPARATELY AND INDIVIDUALLY MANY LIBERTARIAN FILES WASTES TIME, LABOUR & CONNECTION FEES! Has anyone as yet undertaken that labour or were all deterred by it? This experience gave me an appreciation of the power of CD-ROMs and the disadvantages of extensive text downloading from the Internet. - Numerous websites are incomplete and faulty. (My own plain LMP site, a first effort, had recently also developed some broken links, which my own and very limited digital skills were unable to repair. A European friend did this for me - and then his website crashed and his connection with his provider, supposedly due to a virus.)

DOWNLOADING LIBERTARIAN INFORMATION: How many MBs of libertarian information do you download p.a.? How much does that cost you in telephone and connection fees? Consider the CD-ROM alternative, and that of floppies and microfiche. By all means, use the Internet - for what it is best. Other media for what they are best in! - Are texts online the optimal and most economical way to offer and receive them? Some texts - yes! All texts - no!

DOWNLOADING SPEEDS AND TIME & COSTS: If there were on the Internet any single libertarian site offering the automatic downloading of 650 Mbs at a time, how much downloading time would it required for most present PC systems? How much would that cost a downloader altogether? I do not know. You tell me! Why should each libertarian have to spend as much in connection fees, when as much could be easily and fast enough, for most purposes, offered on a single CD-ROM, air mailed? Shouldn't most libertarians be able to recognize the waste involved? True, if you only want to view and download a few pages, quite the latest ones, online access is optimal. But for freedom books, of which so far only all too few are offered on-line, this access is not yet optimal. Admittedly, scanning and downloading speeds are increasing and may one day, one year, one decade, make the online compilation of a complete freedom library, as well as the downloading from it, easy and cheap. But we are not there yet. In the meantime there is traffic congestion on the Internet and we slow down each other by excess online use that could be avoided by optimal CD-ROM use.

DOWNLOADING TIP: If you download many separate files separately (instead of putting many of them together into file folders), onto a CDROM, in ADAPTEC disk format, then you will find that after about 35 - 40 Mbs the downloading slows down considerably. You will be up to its optimal speed again only once you start a new disk. They are cheap enough to do so. I bought mine in retail for only A $ 2 each. (Prices for the cheapest, by June 02, are down to A $ 39 cents.) A final, published and integrated libertarian CD-ROM will probably combine batches of different file folders and thus speed up the process of accessing them. It seems that the directory to a disk, in most programs, has only so many entry options for separate files or file folders.

DOWNLOADING TROUBLES FOR INDIVIDUALS: How many hours of my recent 100 hours of searching and downloading were wasted, from my point of view, by the downloading of illustrations, by broken links, stuck websites, obtrusive advertising and mistakes on my side? How many of them were spent on still all too incomplete directories, links and literature lists? I also found numerous scanning or typing mistakes, which more collaboration in website or CD-ROM compilation could have avoided. Many but not enough sites offer text-only versions, as well, which usually download much faster. I do wish that most or all would also offer the option for downloading the whole website in a single effort, instead of in many and boring separate steps. Moreover, I wish that a single and comprehensive libertarian links list would lead me with certainty to all libertarian sites - and back to the list again. The back button did not always lead back. Often I got stuck and had to go back to the beginnings and trace my course again, through something that was still too close to a labyrinth. Moreover, with already more than 60,000 viruses or vandals active on the Internet and viruses transmittable through websites as well, not only through e-mail, the risk of large individual downloading efforts is considerable. Even professional defences against new kinds of such aggressions do always lag somewhat behind. For texts gathered on a master CD-ROM the defence measures could be comprehensive and once the duplicates are laser-burned into CD-ROMs, they are immune to further attacks. Re-writable disks would not be.

DVDs: Once all libertarian texts are already digitized and available on floppies, CD-ROMs or online, they could, perhaps, be offered on as few as 40 - 50 DVDs, assuming that 300 CD-ROMs would suffice for all libertarian writings. To fill the first libertarian DVD with Gbs of libertarian information would, obviously, require much more collaboration between libertarians than does the filling of a CD-ROM with libertarian texts. Moreover, drives for them are not yet as wide-spread as are CD-ROM drives and less is known on their durability. You would lose much more in information if one of their formats were discontinued of if one of the disks were damaged. The prices for these disks and their burners have also come done very much. For the time being, I believe that 650 - 800 Mbs cheap to quality CD-ROMs are good and powerful enough for us to be used extensively. Conversion into later and better disks would be possible.

ECONOMICS, COST & LABOUR SAVINGS BY OFFERING LONG LIBERTARIAN TEXTS OF LASTING VALUE ON CD-ROMs: Would YOU rather spend 400 hours searching on and downloading from the internet to compile 650 Mbs of freedom information, than buying a single freedom text CD-ROM from a supplier somewhere in the world? It might cost you only $ 5-50, including air mail, if the compilation and supply of such disks becomes competitive. Blanks and their duplication, when produced in quantities, are down to A $ 50 cents. Our numerous, separate downloading efforts for information, that is largely identical or related, like all freedom information, is rather wasteful of time, energy and labour. This waste is comparable to a situation in which both printing and photocopying have been invented but printing is not used. Instead, every reader has to laboriously, and expensively photocopy each book that he wants from a single copy in a library. Or would you rather wait another unknown number of years or decades until all freedom information is offered on the Internet and can be downloaded from there in any desired batches within seconds, at almost zero costs? Complete libertarian text access can already be achieved now, with present technologies, at very affordable prices.

EDITING AND COMPUTER SKILLS: If enough libertarian MB offers for this project are soon compiled, then it is only a question of finding libertarians able and willing to edit them into the first cooperatively compiled and integrated text-only libertarian CD-ROM, using its maximum potential, via OCR scanned and proofread texts that are also zipped. I for one would not grant anyone or any group an exclusive franchise but would rather suggest an "open cooperative" (see the writings of Theodor Hertzka on this) for this purpose, one that would reward each participant according to their labour and capital (here: or quantity of text) input. With this medium, too, and for on-demand production only, hardly any finance capital input would be required. Moreover, there are many texts that are not or no longer copyrighted or for which the copyrights holders, like for websites, would make copyrights claims only e.g. for the commercial duplication of printed texts.

EDITING JOB FOR THE FIRST LIBERTARIAN TEXT-ONLY CD-ROM & OTHER POSSIBLE COLLABORATIONS: Optimally arranging all this material on one or several CD-ROMs would require many more skills than I have and am likely to acquire soon enough. But many libertarians do already possess this skill & knowledge and might be willing to apply it to this job. Please suggest yourself or some of your associates for this job. Here, too, some division of labour would be advisable. A group of compilers & editors could easily collaborate via e-mail. An integrated collection of freedom websites on CD-ROMs could save much duplication of lists and links and texts & could combine the efforts of many searches & searchers. Each participating publisher of a libertarian CD-ROM could also add many libertarian, private and digitized files for which he wants publicity. The aim of a comprehensive freedom library on CD-ROM could lead to workshops which, between their members, keyboard or scan in more freedom books, perhaps adding their comments, for one or the other of the next libertarian CD-ROM editions. Obviously, the keyboarding, scanning and correction labours for a single book, to become digitized, is still a major job. But this job could be shared between a dozen or more people, all favoring a particular book not yet so accessible. The initiator could state, e.g. in an annual libertarian CD-ROM, issued as a "libertarian year book": I do intend to include title x in the next edition - but need help to do so without it becoming too much of a chore for me or any participant. The whole book proposed, or chapters of it, could be shared via photocopies, with those who do not possess a copy of it. The initial appeal could contain an abstract of the book and a review by the one proposing it for scanning. - Surely, at least a dozen freedom lovers and computer fans could be found who would be interested in any single good freedom book? Between them they could also share the labours of acquiring permissions for copyrighted texts.

EDITORSHIP OF LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMs: These powerful alternative media deserve better computer and editorial skills than I could provide, at least at this stage. Anyhow, no one can do all such labors for all others, not even when using this powerful technology.

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING: So many computer users and writers on computers seem to assume that CD-ROM publishing is not part and parcel of electronic publishing. That only online efforts are to be counted or could be effective. But they do not propose that e.g., all music, games, software, directories and encyclopaedias are to be published only online. Since most libertarians want to publish and spread only relatively short texts electronically and this is their only contribution towards complete libertarian publishing, library and information services, I can understand that they are satisfied with that option. But when it comes to thousands of Mbs or Gbs of libertarian publishing, and finally to complete, lasting and secure libertarian publishing, at very affordable prices and with minimal labor and connection costs in accessing large quantities of such knowledge, then, obviously, websites are not yet optimal for most people. That seems hard to understand for many academics, whose connection costs, at high speed, are covered by the universities. I have still to see a fair and complete survey of all the electronic publishing and reading options and one that includes unbiased benchmark comparisons with all other media.

ENTRIES REQUIRED OR SOMEWHAT HELPFUL: Name or cover name, e-mail contact, website, type of material already digitized and available for this project, its estimated quantity in Kbs or Mbs. (Such figures would vary, for the same texts, according to the format used.) Optional entries could be: snail mail address, FAX and Tel. number. Some might not want to give their e-mail address, either, since that might lead to still more junk mail for them. But they should leave some way or the other to contact them, E.g via their website or postal box number. Moreover, they should be induced to send information on changes of their addresses, since e-mail addresses seem to change even faster than snail mail addresses do and much of the hoped-for collaboration will have to take place by e-mailing, if not by sending floppies or partly filled CD-ROMs through the Post Offices.

EXISTING MARKET FOR FREEDOM TEXTS: What percentage of all freedom books do you find now available. in full text, online, or in your nearest large bookshop or library or in your own private library? How often did you have to omit purchasing new freedom books because you could not afford their prices? What percentage of all freedom books are already offered in one or the other of the cheap alternative media - but with the facts about this remaining largely unknown? I do not know of a single collection of freedom books only, on any text-only CD-ROM. Do you? To me that is too glaring an omission, one so scandalous and shameful for supposed students, scholars and lovers of liberty, than I cannot bear remaining silent on this.

FEEDBACK ON SCANNERS & SCANNING PROGRAMS, LOCATION OF SCARCE TEXTS, BURNERS AND BURNING SOFTWARE: All such information would also be helpful to many who will enter their names to the list of the CD-ROM project.

FILLING THE FIRST AND TEXT-ONLY LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMs WITH ALREADY DIGITIZED TEXTS, COMING TO 650 Mbs, IS THE ONLY REMAINING MAJOR "PROBLEM". I on my own can neither gather as many libertarian digitized texts nor arrange them optimally on one CD-ROM. I would rather have more skilled and as interested people undertake this job, in partnership with others or in mutual aid or collaboration agreements. Furthermore, I am and will remain almost fully engaged with my Libertarian Microfiche Publishing pilot scheme for the next 5 years. Nevertheless, I would like to promote, as little or much as I can, the idea of this freedom of expression and information opportunity as well and awareness of the necessity for considerable libertarian collaboration for it, while going on being busy with my LMP efforts, at least until I have reached 2,000 Peace Plans issues on 2,000 microfiche. (That means there are now only 232 to go. I might reach that aim in 3-4 years - and even then you might still go on ignoring that opportunity for yourself as you have ignored your floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing options.)

FINANCE: An individual could finance such publishing efforts. I do live in relative poverty but have subsidized my LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING for 20 years out of my small income and would be willing to pay for the pressing of the first few hundred copies of the first collaboratively and text-only libertarian CD-ROM, optimally filled, taking my share in duplicates of this CD-ROM. But most computer buffs could cover the initial small material and service outlays themselves, speculating that they could recover them fast by selling a few of the finished CD-ROMs. Some time ago & with one Australian firm, the charge for commercial CD-ROM duplication was as low as A $ 1.10 per pressed CD-ROM, in batches of a few hundred. The most recent hint I received on the production costs of pressing CD-ROM duplicates indicated 50 cents. Computer magazines find them so cheap that they attach often not just one but up to 3 of them, as give-aways.

FIRST EDITION OF A TEXT ONLY LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS & THE VARIOUS SPECIAL INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM INTERESTS: While a first cooperatively compiled pro-freedom CD-ROM might not contain ONLY material that is of highest interest to you, you could, most likely, find much of interest to you there. And nothing would hinder you and like-minded people to compile and produce still more specialized pro-freedom CD-ROMs. The first 2 libertarian yearbooks, in the early seventies, could not, like most other freedom books, bring much or all new freedom information but they still do make for SOME interesting reading now. That is why I microfiched them. On a first and text-only CD-ROM about 500 times as much information could be offered. Thus a libertarian CD-ROM, more so than a newspaper, and almost like a libertarian encyclopaedia, could cater, somewhat, to almost all special libertarian interests. Inevitably, further specialization would follow, with further editions, until finally all texts are made thus accessible.

FIRST EDITION OF A TEXT-ONLY LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM - A SUGGESTION FOR ITS COMPILATION: Somewhat decorated, illustrated, coloured sites, movie clips and other fancy designs should not be automatically excluded now or in the future. Here, too, the customers could be offered what they want, at least in the long run. However, for the first libertarian CD-ROM, I would prefer a higher information density via text-only writings. Moreover, to popularize this publishing and reading alternative, the first text-only CD-ROM should represent as wide a spectrum of freedom ideas as possible. By all means, do provide, in future, and order only CD-ROMs that are as decorative as you like them. I hold that with the multimedia format the advantage of offering libertarian texts on CD-ROM, as against on websites only, can almost disappear, since then, as with music CD-ROMs, only relatively little text could be offered on them. What is more important for the movement: easy and fast enough access to all of the texts or the decorated presentation of all too few of them?

FIRST EDITION TO COVER MUCH OF THE FREEDOM SPECTRUM: Obviously, the first compilation should gather in as much of the whole freedom spectrum as possible, rather than favoring any special freedom interests only. It should not only reproduce many varied libertarian texts but be also a handbook or yearbook on the libertarian movement. Let me know how many Mbs, roughly estimated and what kind of freedom information you are able and willing to offer to this project. I will continue to list the accumulating the total and the kind of freedom Mbs offered and will invite anyone interested and able to combine all these offers in the first single libertarian CD-ROM or, if as much information is soon offered, in a few libertarian CD-ROMs. I would rather have someone else undertake this first organizing effort as well! The opportunity is there - will you use it?

FIRST JUST ONE LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM. LATER PERHAPS 300 OF THEM. Would more than 300 be needed? After the first libertarian CD-ROM has appeared, several different ones might follow soon, e.g. one for upholders of copyrights and a separate one for not or no longer copyrighted texts. The propertarians or anarcho- capitalists, the limited government advocates and the left or anti-property anarchists, likewise, might want to sort their texts out and offer them on different CD-ROMs. Then, and between them, the attempt could and should be made to offer ALL freedom writings (all those of some lasting value) on CD-ROMs. Perhaps no more than 300 CD-ROMs might be required for this, presuming the existence of 150,000 libertarian books, or their page equivalents of other writings of some lasting value. Please, do compile a libertarian bibliography proving that even more freedom titles do exist!

FLOW CHART DISCUSSIONS (COMPILATIONS OF INVOLVED DISCUSSIONS, WHOSE FACTS AND ARGUMENTS GROW LIKE LEAVES ON TWIGS AND BRANCHES, AWAY FROM THE ORIGINAL QUESTION, BUT ALWAYS REMAINING CONNECTED: I am not yet convinced that e.g. alphabetized handbooks, links inserted in texts, numerous linked websites and FAQs are good enough alternatives to "flow chart discussions". The latter can be laboriously compiled, to a considerable information density, on large sheets of paper, and by an individual (remembering many of his discussions or arguments found in his reading) and much easier by a like-minded group. With cheap duplication and communication options for the participants, these collaborators would not have to come together at a certain time and place. But photocopy prices for such large sheets, as well as postage rates, are almost prohibitive and mailing originals is risky. I once lent out several such sheets discussing the supposedly existing overpopulation problem. The P.O. managed to lose these originals in their return mailing. Such paper sheets (4x6 feet), each containing dozens to hundreds of entries, in a naturally grown "shrub" of arguments, around the main theme as a seed or starting point, all interconnected by branches, with the arguments represented on its leaves, could be cheaply reproduced, 6 at a time, on a single microfiche. There exist also special programs to produce them and access them on computer screens. Many libertarian proposals lead to very involved discussions (e.g. abortion, money, rights, forceful defence, limited vs. no government, free will) and could, perhaps, be optimally carried on in this format and brought more rapidly to a visible and so far unrefuted conclusions, than in the standard sequential, page by page format or merely by many inserted links. If such a discussion is offered on computer screens, then links could be an additional advantage to the graphical connection via "branches" and "twigs". Arrows could also be added for cross linkages. So could alphabetical indexes and location indicators. Much discussion and experimentation with this enlightenment approach seems still required. My own efforts, since I placed the first such discussion on paper, back in 1957, has not gone beyond assembling a few start-ups of such discussions on paper and describing the method in several articles and letters. With this method much repetition could be avoided, results or lack of them would easily show up. Still unanswered questions and arguments could be answered by different people in different locations and at different times and yet all could be visibly combined and, while still in the process of completion, duplicated and more widely distributed, until this written discussion is close to finalized and then cheaply duplicated and spread, as a new kind of specialized "book".

FOREIGN AID WITH COMPREHENSIVE FREEDOM INFORMATION: See under: HELPING FOREIGN FREEDOM LOVERS.

FREEDOM BOOKS: HOW MANY ARE YOU ABLE AND WILLING TO READ IN A LONG LIFE? Probably no one, in a normal life span, would be able or willing to read more freedom texts than can be provided on a mere 10-40 CD-ROMs. (I believe that the record for books read and somewhat annotated by an individual still stands at around 20,000 titles: Lord Chesterton's private library of read and annotated books.)

FREEDOM CD-ROMS, TEXT ONLY: Did you ever see, anywhere, a single text-only and optimally filled CD-ROM that offered only freedom writings? If you did, please let me know the address of the provider! You can easily find thousands of games and software CD-ROMs, and ten-thousands of music CD-ROMs but only very few with special book collections, mainly only several encyclopaedias. Imagine as many CD-ROMs as are used for music, being used to spread enlightenment rather than entertainment! Do we really need more music? We certainly need more enlightenment!

FREEDOM INFORMATION GAP. SCARCITY & INCOMPLETENESS OF BOOKSHOP & LIBRARY AS WELL AS WEBSITE OFFERS: Just consider the fact that most cities do not yet contain large freedom libraries or freedom bookshops. Not a single comprehensive freedom library exists as yet in the whole world, although paper and print have been used for a long time. Paper goes back to about 3,500 B.C. and extensive printing about 500 years.) Computer fans have had decades to deliver all freedom texts electronically. Did they? - On the Web so far only a fraction of all freedom books are offered & all its lists are still incomplete, sometimes shockingly so. How can we reach complete freedom information fast, much more cheaply and with less labour and equipment costs? Are there any laws, in most countries, e.g. North Korea, Cuba & China excepted, that would prevent us from making optimal use of all affordable and efficient alternative media for our purposes? Are we so addicted to paper and the Web that we can't tear ourselves away from them for long enough to complete the job by other means?

FREEDOM INFORMATION IS INCOMPLETE: How incomplete the freedom is that can be achieved with incomplete and difficult access to freedom ideas, is something that every libertarian can observe daily.

FREEDOM INFORMATION WITHOUT COPYRIGHTS RESTRICTIONS: Obviously, libertarian CD-ROM publishing (at least for all long texts, books, magazine sets, encyclopaedias & other reference works) would be an enormous opportunity for those glad to offer their freedom information free of charge, without copyrights claims. Sooner or later, I hope, that their information, combined, e.g. on CD-ROMs, will out-compete the copyrights restricted freedom information. The latter could be offered as well through abstracts, bibliographies, indexes, reviews and discussions. A libertarian encyclopaedia, a libertarian ideas archive and a libertarian handbook of the best refutations, all supplied on CD-ROMs, could play a large role. The sooner all not copyrighted libertarian information is offered together, on alternative media, the greater will its influence become compared with the libertarian information restricted by legal copyrights claims.

FREEDOM LIBRARY, SIZE? If it is true that a mere 300 CD-ROMs could contain a complete libertarian library, then even the smallest room in a house would be large enough to house it. And in this format it might be affordable to almost everyone wanting such a reference library on hand. The lifetime libertarian reading of a libertarian might then fit into a shoe box. Seeing the spread of DVDs and the still larger potential of upcoming blue light CDs, it is not inconceivable that in a few years a single CD might come to contain all libertarian writings. Can we afford to ignore this opportunity?

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND INFORMATION OPPORTUNITY - VASTLY UNDERUTILIZED: Many people, even libertarians, are struck by selective blindness. It occurs towards certain ideas, facts, definitions and also alternative media. Can the one of the blind spots that most libertarians still suffer under, namely selective blindness for their CD-ROM options for their favorite publishing and reading matter, be cured at all? I sure hope so.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND INFORMATION OPPORTUNITY: To me it seems self-evident that libertarians should utilize all the alternative media in their particular strengths to record and communicate all their messages, from concise slogans to whole encyclopaedias and archives.

FREEDOM PAGES, BOOKS MAGAZINES, PAMPHLETS, ARTICLES, LEAFLETS, LETTERS? How many freedom pages were ever written, and are still preserved somewhere? No one knows. At best we get some more or less educated guesses on their number. But we do now possess affordable alternative media to cheaply and efficiently make all of them fully, permanently and cheaply accessible. Can we afford not to do so? - Most of us oppose gun registration and control but should we not, in our own interest, "register" all freedom texts on CD-ROMs, in order to have all of them within our reach and to make it possible for all decent citizens to acquire, bear and arm themselves with them, using them for their defence and also for "aggressive" self-liberation efforts? (I am one of the early believers in panarchism, whose principle is: To each the government or non-governmental society of his or her dreams!)

FRONTIER: The CD-ROM publishing and reading options, especially for pro-freedom texts, do also constitute a so far largely unexplored frontier or uninhabited country, or unexplored and unused "space", although access to and participation in this frontier and use of that largely still uninhabited "country" and "space" are quite legal, relatively easy and very cheap. Occupying it might not be as exciting as occupying a newly discovered continent or planet - but it could even bring space exploration and life extension closer or faster to reality. Words, ideas, facts and figures, sufficiently complete and published, could become the magical carpets or space ships that could get us there. All too many are still blind to this frontier, this freedom opportunity or discount it in favor of their still unrealized and relatively costly utopia of getting everything online. Freedom lovers should be willing to utilize all freedom opportunities and all affordable, powerful and lasting media.

GIFTS TO LIBERTARIAN FRIENDS: Copies of libertarian CD-ROMs could make very welcome and yet small and cheap gifts for visits to libertarian friends or to people who might become libertarians, once they can be induced to read those of the texts on a CD-ROM that might appeal to them. E.g., it might contain some of the wide-ranging leaflet collections e.g. of ISIL or the Libertarian Alliance or the essay collection, mainly from FEE & IMPRIMIS, of Libertyhaven.com. (Suggestion by Christian Butterbach, in my own words. - J.Z.)

GO AHEAD, DON'T PLAN FOR EVER OR TOO LONG: Many of the remaining problems will be solved during the "doing" rather than via still more writings, talks and discussions of the subject. If mistakes are made with the first libertarian CD-ROMs then these could soon be eliminated in subsequent issues.

GROWTH OF THE LIST OF PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THE CD-ROM PROJECT, TOWARDS THE STAGE WHERE IT WOULD MAKE ITSELF SUPERFLUOUS: Leaving advocacy to one person only, like me, for his multiple but still limited e-mail sending on the project, can only achieve so much. Other avenues have to be explored. There are many better salesmen and sales methods around. - The project should be discussed and advocated in the libertarian press and on libertarian websites. And those in favour should make a habit of including a least a short note or website reference to the project in their e-mail correspondence and websites. It should me mentioned in a common libertarian PROJECTS LIST as well as in a LIBERTARIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA and a LIBERTARIAN IDEAS ARCHIVE, both to be established still, and in the attempt to compile and publish a comprehensive libertarian directory, probably also on CD-ROM, with an URL referring to an updating site. - Libertarian magazines might find it worthwhile to offer their back issues and much additional material on a CD-ROM, free of charge, like the computer magazines do, or only for an extra payment or order. Naturally each of them should mention and discuss this project at least once. The effect of optimal use of this medium could be immense and should be of interest to all of them.

HARD COPY: CD-ROMs and microfiche do also provide hard copies of texts, although the one needs computer programs and computers to be read and the other special reading machines. Paper editions were and remain convenient for many purposes - and can be derived both from CD-ROMs and microfiche, at a price. But in production and retail costs per page, that they make possible, they cannot compete when compilations of thousands to hundred-thousands of pages are involved. Indeed, for some the material, storage and distribution costs do not matter - but for others they do. CD-ROMs could come to be constitute the poor man's library (together with cheap, second-hand computers, which have at least a functioning CD-ROM drive), like cash is the poor man's credit card. In my travels in the U.S., 12 years ago, I met a very distinguished libertarian with a huge private library - who would never touch as lowly editions as paperback ones. His books were all properly bound books. He could afford them. Good luck to him. But he hardly set an example to be followed by all others. As for the argument that computerized texts and microfiche do require reading machines - just contemplate how many people need reading glasses, which are, essentially, simple machines as well.

HELPING FOREIGN FREEDOM LOVERS IN UNDERDEVELOPED, BUT ALREADY SOMEWHAT LIBERATED COUNTRIES, WITH SUFFICIENT QUANTITIES OF FREEDOM INFORMATION: How much more efficient could the various pro-freedom "missionaries" have been, who visited e.g. Russia, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, if they had been so equipped? Instead, we had e.g. unrepentant Georgists, advocates of "reformed" Central Banks (continued as "currency boards") and Territorial Constitutionalists offering their "advice". No one did or could offer comprehensive freedom information, least of all on all monetary freedom, voluntary taxation and panarchist options. The latter would have offered full exterritorial autonomy to all of the over 100 ethnic communities in the former USSR, and to many more, who would rather differentiate themselves in other ways, doing their own things for and to themselves. Monetary freedom could have ended inflation, stagflation and deflation almost instantly, eased and multiplied turnovers of goods, labour and services and led to rapid capital growth and development, also attracting much foreign capital. The introduction of voluntary taxation and competing public services, charging for services, could have led to rapid progress. The wrongs and harm of all the remaining bureaucracies and monopolies could have been confined to volunteer communities. These, having to bear the costs of the remaining statist absurdities themselves and fully and seeing the progress of enlightened volunteer communities around them, would have lost many of their members fast. - Some of the most important freedom information is still is not accessible to everyone who would be interested or suffers under a cloud of prejudices, errors and myths that are still popular and not systematically and sufficiently refuted by libertarians, in an encyclopedic effort. Whatever freedom information is already offered, is largely ignored when it is offered only in obscure and out of print titles or on unpopular media like my libertarian microfiche.

HIGH TECHNOLOGY? It certainly is not user friendly yet. Computerized high technology is so "plain and simple" - that there are numerous computer user groups established in attempts of the members to help each other. I'm member of a local one, the only libertarian there, and, to my knowledge, in this whole district of ten-thousands of people. I have not heard of the need of a user group of typewriter or microfilm users. Typewriters offer only a few dozen options, while e.g. word processing programs offer about 1,500. Admittedly, I would not want to go back to using manual or electronic typewriters because world processors do offer significant advantages. On the other hand, I had to labour hard and long transform hundreds of files in a discontinued word processor format (SPRINT) into WORD files. Texts written on different typewriters do not need translation into other software. Texts written in different word processor programs often do. Whole bookshelves and even bookshop rooms are filled with reference writings for computer systems - mostly still printed on paper! My system cost me ca. A $ 10,000 two years ago - all the spare funds I had then - and is already outdated now! Should I update it, spending perhaps $ 5,000, when I have them available, or should I rather finance the microfilming of another 100 - 200 libertarian books in my LMP "PEACE PLANS" series with that amount? I made the same comparisons when pondering whether I should attend the two most recent ISIL meetings. Each attendance would have cost me the price for dozens of additional freedom books in my series - and would, at this stage, be unlikely to gain me a single new libertarian microfiche user or libertarian CD-ROM advocate, because libertarians, like anarchists, are not yet mentally prepared for such a usage and individual efforts to try to induce people to take up something that is new to them are mostly failures. Compare how much backing computer developments got by the mass media, with the few articles they offered on micrographic options. Can libertarian computer users be persuaded to make better use at least of their floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing and reading options? That remains to be seen. So far they seem to have failed to persuade themselves to accept these media for their literature. Libertarian paper presses have largely ignored that option, too, instead of freely discussing all freedom of expression and information options for libertarians.

IDEAL ALTERNATIVE MEDIA. SHOULD WE WAIT FOR THEM? WHO IS PREPARED TO TAKE A LIBERTARIAN INITIATIVE WITH THE PRESENT AFFORDABLE AND POWERFUL AS WELL AS EASY AND LONG ENOUGH LASTING MEDIA? How many precedents and how close to zero prices and labors do freedom lovers expect to be provided with before they will begin to effectively utilize them for their literature? Are they willing to learn e.g. from the example of THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE, which offers about 5,000 texts, not all books, on a single CD-ROM? Do they expect future government libertarians to provide them with all freedom texts free of charge, although with maybe no more than 300 CD-ROMs they could do so now, for themselves and by themselves? Would they rather leave most libertarian texts unpublished or out of print or available only in expensive and temporary edition than provide and use them on microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs? If a a number of libertarian activists could, between them, provide all libertarian information, that is of lasting value, permanently and cheaply as well as relatively easily, on, maybe, no more than 300 CD-ROMs, then isn't it rather scandalous that this job isn't done, is not even seriously considered and discussed and tackled by a sufficient number of libertarians?

IDEAS ARCHIVE AND TALENT REGISTRY: Such a market, information service and directory could, among many other projects, speed up the optimal utilization of CD-ROMs by libertarians for libertarian texts. The ideas market may be the most important market of all, for libertarians as well. Libertarians more than other people should be fully aware how insufficiently some of the most valuable ideas and talents are known and utilized so far and how small the percentage of the total population is that they have so far reached with conventional or online marketing efforts for ideas and talents. For details see PEACE PLANS No. 183. Still only available on microfiche, in German and English, also with microfiched editions of its subsequent publications, which, alas, did not combine some of the best ideas then available.

IDEAS ARCHIVE, LIBERTARIAN: CD-ROMs may also be ideal to list, with some details, the contents of a comprehensive libertarian Ideas Archive, the first attempt to establish a world-wide free market for such ideas that would bring systematically, by the very fact of its existence and the name it could soon make for itself, supply and demand in this sphere together, ending the prolonged struggles and frequent failures of isolated freedom advocates and activists. Even the libertarian think tanks have not yet got all their acts and all their publications together - although ATLAS has made a good beginning in this direction. But they and it do still rely mainly on printed paper and conferences! Such an institution could and should closely collaborate with compilations of libertarian abstracts, reviews, bibliographies, directories and projects lists, libertarian news services, discussion groups and think tanks. For details see PEACE PLANS No. 20, now available via e-mail

INCENTIVES, FINANCIAL: To appeal to financial incentives, any coop producing copyrighted material might share any profits derived from their sales according to the number of pages contributed. Or they might pay more for the pages of famous contributors. Alternatively, they might permit all contributors to freely copy and try to sell these disks on their own account, each thereby helping to spread the texts of all others as well. See also under COPYRIGHTS. For me it is most important to make all valuable libertarian ideas and other information as widely and cheaply available to anyone interested, even if that were done by a non-profit group or one subsidized, with labor and small money contributions, by the participants.

INCOMPLETELY FILLED LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS SHOULD BE COMPILED WITH THE STANDING INVITATION TO SUBMIT MORE MATERIAL TOWARDS FILLING THEM. - If one were to wait with each such publishing attempt until one has enough material together to optimally fill one CD-ROM, then such a project might be delayed almost indefinitely. But coming forward with it and inviting with it more material from others, more such offers might be made and at least some of them could and should be combined, with the consent of their producers. All such incompletely filled CD-ROM offers should, naturally, also be mentioned in the List of the CD-ROM project. Moreover, it would be no financial burden at all to produce at least annually updated and better filled editions, sold only upon demand, with their availability indicated on a much frequented website.

INDEX, ALPHABETICAL, TO ALL LIBERTARIAN WRITINGS: CD-ROMs would have space for that. Automatic sorting and indexing programs can make the job much easier. Abstracts and reviews often omit to mention significant ideas more or less hidden in books except for very attentive readers. So far, because of the costs involved, few books contain long alphabetical indexes and those offered are often still rather incomplete. Electronically, they could be automatically compiled and contain every significant word or phrase and could be of unlimited length. Or they could be published with an internal search engine. But then it would also be desirable to produce an indexing libertarian CD-ROM, perhaps with the aid of such search engines, that would provide a combined index to the libertarian CD-ROMs so far produced. Combined indexes for libertarian books were only rarely compiled or published. Those of large sets of back issues of magazines are often too expensive to print. CD-ROMs have almost unlimited and cheap room for them. We have now relative easy and automated programs to integrate alphabetized indexes to libertarian books and significant theses and articles - in a single libertarian index. Those to individual libertarian books, if they had to be omitted or were all too short in the printed editions, could be provided for a small fee by e-mail or on floppy disk. When Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen wrote his classical book on Trustee Acts and their negative effects upon industrial investment credit and employment, no other book on this subject had appeared. References to the subject were hard to find. But he was lucky to meet a Hamburg second-hand book dealer, specializing on economics books, whose hobby it was to index and summarize their contents. From this special and private collection effort he could and did supply Rittershausen with dozens if not hundreds of references. (From my faulty memory of a report by Ulrich von Beckerath.)

INFORMATION REVOLUTION: Unfortunately, the electronic and supposedly comprehensive information explosion has not yet provided all freedom texts in electronic formats. It has left most libertarians quite insufficiently informed on their microfilm, floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing options. It has not even managed to compile and publish an accurate comparison tabulation of costs and ease per page publishing in all the diverse media. Where, online or in books, is there a fair and comprehensive comparison between ALL the different media, their costs per page for the publisher and for the reader, and regarding all or most of their strengths and weaknesses? Benchmark tests should cover all media. (See my Prize offer!) If such a tabulated survey had been provided. then there would be far less misunderstandings on the diverse alternative media options and more sound microeconomic decisions would be made by potential publishers and readers. Then almost every reader could also come to extensively act as a compiler, editor and publisher, producing only upon demand, in whatever cheap, easy and efficient alternative medium he prefers - whatever texts he loves most, to the extent that copyrights re no obstacles. Moreover, with some effort on his side, he could often get the permission for such publishing, as I did for a quite a few of my PEACE PLANS editions on microfiche. - Most of the bookshops and most of the libraries do not offer you ANY title on your microfilm reading and publishing options, far less on those using CD-ROMs. But at least you can purchase no, in better computer shops, a number of programs for the use of burners. But how many libertarian interest book titles can they or you point out that have been provided on CD-ROMs?

INFORMATION SERVICES FOR LIBERTARIANS AND CHOICE OF MEDIA: Even freedom lovers have not yet provided comprehensive information services for themselves, although the means to do so have become easier, cheaper and more efficient all the time. Computer users have even neglected floppy disks and CD-ROMs for the reproduction of freedom texts, not only microfilm (as an easy, powerful, fast, automated, computerized and affordable peripheral print-out and storage option for long text compilation - if one uses a modern micrographic service bureau).

INITIATIVE FOR LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM EDITIONS SHOULD COME FROM LIBERTARIANS. INITIATIVE VS. APATHY. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE OR MUTUAL AID VS. STATISM: Has statism invaded the libertarian movement as well? Should libertarians wait until government librarians do reproduce all freedom texts for them, in expensive and tax-supported programs? Or do CD-ROM plain texts obviously require no financial support but merely labor and skill collaboration among freedom loving people? - Twelve years ago, when I visited the LP headquarters in Washington, I was informed that it has had an offer by a microfilm service bureau to film all its LP NEWS for a mere $ 300.. It didn't have as little spare cash then and may never have taken up this offer later on. (Surely, an appeal in the LP NEWS could have raised as little?) I said to my informant that I would have done the job free of charge for them - if only they would supply me with all he copies. But they did have only a few samples of back-issues on hand and were, apparently, not prepared to compile and send me a full set for the purpose. So my offer was not taken up, either. I would even have even been willing, then, to pay them $ 300 for this job, done by someone else, provided only they would have included in it a reference to my LMP offers and would have sent me a duplicate of this set. I did not find enough free enterprise spirit there and then. But at the time I visited, in 1990, most members of the office were participating in yet another LP conference. I did, later on, microfiche the few copies of LP NEWS that I managed to collect. Now all issues may be in the Internet. But how long would it take you to download all of them from there, if you wanted to? And how much would you have to pay in connection fees if you wanted to read all of them there and thus? Admittedly, if you only want to do some short reference reading, then the online connection or reading from microfilmed editions, in a large library, would be the way to go. If I remember rightly a relatively recent e-mail indicating the financial situation of the US national LP, its expenses come to something like 30,000 a day! How much libertarian information could they combine and spread, with such a budget, if, instead of remaining politically active, they were to use CD-ROMs for their enlightenment efforts, even if they had to pay professionals to fill these CD-ROMs optimally with libertarian texts and could not rely on their members' labor of love for this? But then, they might not have been able to run up as high a budget and to get as many members as they have, if they had not engaged in the usual political and territorial game, only recently made a bit more interesting to me by Carol Moore's efforts to introduce individual secessionism and voluntary and exterritorial autonomy for volunteer communities in its platform. My proposals on financing a libertarian party to victory, in PEACE PLANS 19c, now available online, by capitalistically anticipating the expropriation of all national, state and local government assets and their privatization, in form of suitable securities, in the hands of all citizens or taxpayers, with the LP charging its brokerage fee for this transformation and anticipating this brokerage fee by its own Liberty Bonds, has so far been largely ignored by all LP members and directors in all countries. If they cannot even think sufficiently about concrete and powerful alternative media like microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs for libertarian texts, then we should not expect too much of them in other spheres.

INITIATORS OF LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS: Already some of those listed have stated limited experiences with such attempts and others are involved in working towards their first CD-ROM editions. Almost all of them could use more help - and wider interest in their finished product, if it is finally a finished product or for their intermediate output, if their effort comes, in the first issue or issues, only to partly filled CD-ROMs. The distribution of such partly filled CD-ROMs will then also act as standing invitations to help fill them, for future editions. While the costs of CD-ROMs could be easily born even for a single book, the full benefits to be derived from them can only be achieved when they are optimally filled, which, by its very size, is a difficult job for individuals or small groups. Once the list is much longer, e.g., increased tenfold or even hundred-fold, the number of CD-ROM projects that it might come to promote would be greatly increased and the finalization of each of the projects, that some of those listed are engaged in, will be speeded up by further offers of Mbs, of the kind wanted, and of skills in optimally assembling them.

INTELLECTUAL AMMUNITION DEPARTMENT: How much more efficient could all freedom lovers become in their advocacy, if their intellectual ammunition department were completely filled with freedom references on CD-ROMs? They could take such a CD-ROM, together with a laptop, to any public meeting and pull up the best of the relevant refutations, very quietly, on their screen and then convey them to the meeting, given the chance to speak, either by reading from them or by representing the best arguments they found in this way in their own terms. One does not have to be a skillful public speaker for this.

INTEREST IN THE CD-ROM PROJECT: Theoretically, all libertarians should show an interest in projects like a libertarian library, comprehensive and permanent libertarian publishing and in the compilation of other reference works like directories, bibliographies, review compilations and alphabetical indexes, not only to single books or small sets of books, but whole small special freedom libraries, on single CD-ROMs, in the same way as they ought all to be interested in libertarian publishing in print on paper, on microfilm and on floppy disks. Alas, prejudices, apathy and ignorance exist in that sphere as well, even among libertarians.

INTERNET INFORMATION. HOW OFTEN IS INFORMATION REQUIRED ALMOST INSTANTLY? How often do you need INSTANT access rather than CERTAIN access to ALL relevant information WITHIN A FEW DAYS? Certain, fast enough and easy access to ALL freedom information may be more important, as far as most freedom solutions and pro-freedom efforts are concerned, than access only to a fraction of all freedom answers, at electronic speeds, via browser services on your computer screen. The tradition of freedom writings is so far only fractionally accessible on the Internet and it may take many years, if not many more decades still, before finally all freedom writings are made so accessible. It would be much more economical and simple to provide all of it now on CD-ROMs and any desired segments of it in this format.

INTERNET OFFERS & LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS: To my knowledge the Internet does not yet offer a single text-only libertarian or anarchist CD-ROM. - In Jura Books, some time ago, I noticed two multi-media titles by Noam Chomsky (not exactly my favourite anarchist), which brought only very few of his writings and lectures. - Nor does the Internet provide per page cost comparisons and other comparisons between all of the alternative media now available to us. (See my PRIZE offer!) It does not even sufficiently counter the public and supposedly "informed" opinion that microfilm involves an outdated and inefficient technology, although e.g. in accuracy and speed of scanning (up to 800 documents a minute - and each of these documents may contain 2-12 small pages) and in automatically producing duplicates (of a 98-1350 pages microfiche every 3-8 seconds) it is still cutting edge technology. - Powerful, cheap, easy, lasting and individually manageable as libertarian microfiche are, we ought to consider that libertarian CD-ROMs could reproduce, in a single libertarian CD-ROM and a materials cost of only 50 cents each per commercially pressed duplicates (produced in quantities of hundreds to thousands, the full text of 200-2000 libertarian books. (Through labels and cases or envelopes and postage they would cost a bit more.And they would cost the labor of assembling as much information efficiently.) Should that option remain uninteresting for us? Do we deserve full liberty if we do not appreciate and use this freedom of expression and information opportunity? The remaining difficulty consists only in gathering and properly presenting as much digitized freedom information at a time, 650 Mbs - 800 Mbs, zipped even ca. 2.6 - 3.2 Gbs, to fill a single CD-ROM. But is this an impossible task, when xyz libertarians, world-wide, can be interlinked within seconds by e-mail and can transmit whole books, if already digitized, as e-mail attachments within a few minutes, up to 1 MB at a time, unzipped, more if zipped?

INTERNET OFFERS OF LIBERTARIANS, COMBINED ON CD-ROM: One or very few libertarian CDs, issued annually, could probably offer all that is currently offered on the Internet. These modern libertarian "yearbooks" should refer to a single website for updates. Offering these texts and some additional classical libertarian writings, they might also be able to add current events and project reports. Or a few additional quarterlyl CD-ROMs could. - To have always the very latest information on hand is not always or very often essential but to have access to all traditional libertarian writings, yearly updated, to the extent that they need updating or could be improved by adding comments, is important for the freedom struggle, which has already gone on for all too many centuries and will not be much delayed by all the most recent libertarian information not being made available at push-button convenience and electronic speeds. Obviously, many kinds of updated information could still continue to be done optimally on websites or via e-mailed freedom newsletters.

INTERNET OPTIONS: HOW MUCH FREEDOM INFORMATION DO YOU NEED & CAN YOU GET ALMOST INSTANTLY FROM THE INTERNET? While you can get access to most existing libertarian websites relatively fast and can fast enough download a few pages, try the costs involved in downloading them by the dozens of Mbs or in 650 MB batches, enough to fill a single cheap CD-ROM. You do not have to get a life-time's freedom reading material transmitted to you within seconds or hours online, since you cannot read or even skim all of it instantly. If you want to easily and cheaply access it all or have it readily on hand, as reference material, then it would be good enough to get most of it via snail mail on microfiche, floppies or CD-ROMs. Push-button speed is not required for everything. Moreover, downloading many long texts isn't easy and cheap or without risks. Even if transmission speeds were already increased a million-fold and you could get a full freedom library downloaded in seconds, you could not read it all instantly. - This does not deny that it would be wonderful to have all freedom titles almost instantly and very cheaply available from the Internet. But we are not there yet! What fraction of all freedom titles can you download now and at what costs? Thus, under present conditions, a delay of 10 days for getting all of it e.g. on a few CD-ROMs would hardly matter. Then and via its guides you could have almost instant access to any written & published freedom information (long and unchanging texts, like most books) that you do desire, without any online connection and telephone or transmission costs & labours, except the electricity bill charges for your computer system and CD-ROM drive. Moreover, your could get this information securely, without any virus risk on disks sufficiently checked in their production for then existing viruses and safe, as ROM laser disks, from all later ones. A life-time's pro-freedom reading or reference material obtainable for a very affordable price, could be supplied by snail mail on CD-ROM within 10 days. That is fast enough for most purposes. - Daily, weekly or monthly freedom news online would be a helpful supplementary source but would usually add only very little to the essential information already contained in ten-thousands to hundred-thousands of freedom texts, if they are made available to you on CD-ROM. Whatever libertarian book you could obtain online and wanted to read immediately, you could still download but most of the texts, of not so immediate interest to you, could be fast enough obtained by snail mail on CD-ROM and other alternative media, once they are all combined on them.

INTERNET USAGE IN HOURS PER MONTH: According to Sue Lowe's report in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 14.11.2000, page 28, www.smh.com.au - Australians spend in the average 9.6 hours per month online, Americans 14.3, Canadians 11 and Japanese 10.3 hours. I doubt that I will soon spend another 100 hours again, within a month, merely downloading libertarian files. It isn't cheap and just too much of a chore. Anyhow, there is some MB or page limit to the libertarians offers so far available there. Can anyone tell me how many libertarian pages or Mbs are now offered on the Internet and how fast these offers grows?

INTERNET VS CD-ROMS AND CD-ROMS VS THE INTERNET: Partisans of either should not argue with each other but rather make sure that their offers supplement each other. True, the Internet options are bound to improve, but so are the CD-options. All tools have their special strengths and weaknesses. None are suitable or optimal for all purposes..

INTERNET, INDEPENDENCE FROM IT AND ITS SERVICE PROVIDERS: You could become independent of the limited number of freedom pages so far offered on the Internet and of connections to them. Your private and portable freedom library could become complete or as complete as you would want it to become. Programs are spreading for direct file exchanges between PC users, bypassing service providers and, in practice, many of the copyrights barriers. These have so far been mainly used only to spread and access music files. For me the same for text files is much more interesting. E-mail size limitations make it difficult. However, in digitized text even a 1.44 Mbs floppy disk could contain already ca. 6 Mbs and could be snail mailed.

INTERNET, INSUFFICIENTLY INFORMATIVE ON THE MICROFILM AND CD-ROM ALTERNATIVES TO IT: The image persists that the Internet does already sufficiently cover all spheres. But, try to search on the Internet for your micrographic and CD-ROM text publishing and reading alternatives and you will find only rather limited information on them, there. It is almost like approaching the Roman Catholic Church for fair and comprehensive information on Protestantism. At least I did not find much there on these subjects. If I managed to overlook significant sites there, please let me know about them, giving the URL. I found such information as scarce there - as it is in the mass media and in the libertarian and anarchist press. Partly to blame are the microfilm industry and the microfilm publishers and the producers of CD-ROMs, for not sufficiently informing the public, potential publishers and readers, about what they have to offer. Nor have readers exerted a sufficient demand for guides to what is available in these and other alternative media. Attention has been focused all too much only on the print on paper and the online options. Generally, the Internet re-enforced the public's misconceptions on microfilms and CD-ROMs as a publishing and reading medium and ignored the cheap and yet powerful enough floppy disks for the reproduction of one to several books.

INTERNET, LIBERTARIAN USAGE, LIBERTARIAN ARCHIVES & LIBRARIES AND LITERATURE LISTS: Many of them are offered but none, so far, is nearly complete. The terms "archive" and "library" are widely abused on the Internet, referring often only to very limited collections. The most extensive collection of references so far is probably that of Free-Market.Net, over 17,000, according to the last count that I have seen. An alphabetized and cross-referenced list to all these sites, with their URLs, and indicating, roughly, their size, seems to be still missing. Furthermore, I have still to see even a comprehensive authors and subjects list for the libertarian books that are already online. - J.Z., 25.6.02.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER & THE TOLERANT OR PANARCHIC APPROACH TO DIFFERENT FREEDOM OR SELF-GOVERNMENT IDEALS. FREEDOM OF ACTION & EXPERIMENTATION FOR VOLUNTEER COMMUNITIES, UNDER EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY, MUST ULTIMATELY ACCOMPANY ALL ENLIGHTENMENT EFFORTS: The combined libertarian knowledge could greatly help to provide libertarians with sufficient "power", skills and influence to achieve as much liberty for themselves as they desire for themselves, as part of a combined panarchistic effort that would aim at PIOT: Panarchy In Our Time or: To each the government or non-governmental society of his or her dreams. That kind of ideological and practised tolerance, if consistently offered to all opponents, under the condition that they stop hostile actions, would literally tend to pacify and disarm them. Any form of limited and supposedly ideal government or any form of anarchy, suggested territorially, for its whole population, will not, in the foreseeable future, become the accepted ideal for all or for the majority of people, no more so than any particular general philosophy, religion or life-style. Even when optimally and quite economically using all alternative media, we cannot expect to achieve such mass conversions soon, if ever. Freedom for tolerant actions, must accompany all merely educational enlightenment efforts and will speed them up, as much as is humanly possible, via freedom of action or free experimentation among volunteers or full exterritorial autonomy for all volunteer communities.

LEARNING & RELEARNING REQUIREMENTS: You can learn to master a microfiche reading machine within seconds to minutes. To master a computer system fully you might not even manage within years. I didn't. But to merely learn to play back a well edited CD-ROM, in the simplest and cheapest CD-ROM drive, is also an easily acquired skill. However, to optimize the arrangement in libertarian text CD-ROMs will also require considerable knowledge and skills. But, surely, there do exist many libertarians who do possess them but just haven't, as yet, bothered to apply them to this job. Show your interest in this job and they might do so.

LEGAL OBSTACLES? NONE EXIST IN THIS SPHERE IN MOST COUNTRIES. JUST INERTIA, IGNORANCE, PREJUDICE. READING & PUBLISHING HABITS, CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS HAVE TO BE OVERCOME. Are there any laws, in most countries, e.g. China, Cuba, Burma & North Korea excepted, that would prevent us from making optimal use of all affordable and efficient alternative media for our purposes? Are we so addicted to paper and the Web that we can't tear ourselves loose from them for long enough to complete the job of publishing all freedom texts by other means? Luckily we do live in an age where at least degrees of democracy are spreading.

LIBERTARIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY: Perhaps the first libertarian CD-ROM collaboration could be a bibliographical guide to all libertarian texts online and all libertarian texts offered in other media, as well as sound and movie offers on audio and video tapes and DVDs. - Dr. David Hart made this suggestion to me, for microfiche, when I started out with my Libertarian Microfiche Publishing.

LIBERTARIAN CONFERENCES & CD-ROMs: Much has been and is being spent upon libertarian conferences, which brings some great and some interested minds all too shortly and occasionally together. While we should not give up on these opportunities, we should supplement them by including all the libertarian brain children of the participants on CD-ROMs, not only specially condensed audio CDs but also text CDs. In that format all that the conference participants have to offer to other libertarians, not only during a conference, could be made permanently and cheaply accessible to all who are interested, not only fragments of their knowledge in temporary meetings with a few other libertarians. Moreover, the search and find options for researchers would thereby be greatly increased. Another drawback of conferences, as compared with full text availability of all the libertarian writings of the conference participants is, that many lectures and discussions are forced into the same time slots. Only by full audio and video recordings of all events can this drawback be somewhat overcome. But many would prefer full and permanent text availability, which in print might cost a fortune to produce and maintain but on CD-ROMs could be provided very cheaply, including even translations into the major languages.

LIBERTARIAN CORRESPONDENCE: I believe that many thoughtful libertarian letters should also be offered on CD-ROMs. I still have to fill many microfiche with thousands of pages of the correspondence of Ulrich von Beckerath. They are dense in information and contain hundreds of libertarian ideas. I believe that he is still the foremost monetary freedom advocate. To my knowledge his classical writings on this subject have not yet been surpassed by modern free banking advocates, most of whom possess, in this respect, only a more limited and less tolerant outlook and who haven't explored the techniques for monetary freedom issues as well as he did - over many decades, from about 1908 to his death in 1969. - Once I saw the sheer volume of the correspondence of an anarchist like Brian Martin, I gave up the idea of trying to microfiche his letters, or other as large correspondence accumulations, as well. But on CD-ROM there would be space for them and, seeing that he is an information technology lecturer, much of it may already be digitized. Many of your own letters, those that you would not mind seeing published, may also be already digitized in your system and they could be easily made available for CD-ROM editions. Only recently has the correspondence between Tucker and Mackay come to light, in print, in English and German. It was rather disappointing in ideas contents, being largely confined to their social meetings and some business affairs. But I feel sure that many ideas treasures are still more or less buried in the unpublished correspondence of famous or obscure libertarians.

LIBERTARIAN DISCUSSIONS ONLINE, ARCHIVED AND PERMANENTLY PUBLISHED ON CD-ROMS: These are sometimes to mostly only temporarily represented on the Internet and if archived there, then not pulled together with other such discussions, as they could be on a CD-ROM. Howard Olson, who is on the list, is working towards putting some of them on a CD-ROM and his efforts should be supported by others. To the extent that their ideas, facts and opinion exchange is somewhat rather thin in "meat", they should also be edited and condensed and combined in their best segments. However, the full texts should remain available for comparisons and referrals. There is no space or cost barrier for this with CD-ROMs.

LIBERTARIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA: I don't know of a better and more powerful medium and already widely accepted and affordable medium to compile and publish a comprehensive libertarian encyclopaedia, with annually updated editions, than to do it on the extremely cheap CD-ROMs, for which numerous plain and cheap CD-ROM drives are already existing. But please note, that we should not leave the writing of this encyclopaedia, at least its first compilation, to recognized experts only and that we are not compelled, for lack of space of pages or for financial reasons, to bring only one article by one person on any one subject. There are different libertarian viewpoints on almost every subject and CD-ROMs have the space to reproduce all of them. So at least the first and comprehensive libertarian encyclopaedia should not be censorious but open to all somewhat rational contributions. Undoubtedly, later on it would be advisable to compile some shorter and well-edited versions, compiled by recognized libertarian experts only. It might use the comprehensive one only as a materials and reference collection and for criticism of some of its offers. But at least for one kind of libertarian encyclopedic effort, like this first and "open input" one, let input also be free for everyone, like on the Internet. The experts have been wrong too often for this freedom of expression and information opportunity to be ignored. Even most of our freedom experts have their flaws or blind sides. It is true that if you keep too open a mind then there will be many attempts to throw rubbish into it. But let each make his own decisions on what is valuable and what is not, in such an "open" libertarian compilation, as he does in browsing on the Internet.

LIBERTARIAN ENDS & MEANS: In one way or the other we ought to get all libertarian writings cheaply and permanently into print and easily and fast enough, for most purposes, accessible. We are no longer confined to print on paper only, which achieved only a limited degree of enlightenment in the world, even after 500 years. Nor are we confined to online text offers, which so far reproduced all too few freedom books, or to audio or video tapes. The most efficient and widespread storage media and play back units so far are CD-ROM disks and drives. The disks are down to A $ 39 cents each and the drives to A $ 128. I have been involved since 1977 with microfiched libertarian literature reproductions that have, in some instances, brought my costs per duplicated page down to 0.03 cents. CD-ROMs could further reduce these costs, even closer to zero. How close to zero do we want them to become before we make extensive use of alternative media like microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs?

LIBERTARIAN FREEWARE? This would not be a bad start in my opinion, in form of not or no longer copyrighted libertarian texts that are offered very cheaply on CD-ROMs. On top of such "freeware" offered, libertarian compilers of such CD-ROMs might offer their consultancy services or their public speaking ability or their search and research or writing or editing ability, e.g. for other libertarian CD-ROMs. Their personal comments, to classical libertarian writings reproduced in their libertarian freeware disks, might also be appreciated by some other libertarians. It has been said that "paper is patient" and suffers being used for all kinds of purposes. The same applies to libertarian CD-ROMs. Give free reign to your imagination for their present and future use.

LIBERTARIAN LIBRARIES & PUBLISHING: Regrettably, so far most libertarians and anarchists seem to possess less of their supposedly favorite texts than would fit onto a single text-only CD-ROM, especially if all its files are zipped. Obviously, we can't MAKE them collect and read more such texts - but we COULD make ALL libertarian texts easily, permanently and cheaply ACCESSIBLE to them, especially all long texts and text compilations, at almost ridiculously low prices. Can we win at all and soon, and do we deserve to win (full freedom for ourselves and as much freedom for others as they want or can stand), if we do not even make all freedom texts easily and cheaply, as well as fast enough accessible, even if only by snail mail, at least to all scholars and students of liberty? Even large libraries possess so far only a fraction of all freedom texts. - Quite possibly, as few as 300 libertarian and text only CD-ROMs, not to speak of CVDs (maybe 40-50 only) might already be able to contain all libertarian texts that have so far accumulated - somewhere, often more or less hidden, as far as an individual searcher is concerned. If this can be done, then this ought to be done. "Noblesse oblige!" Indeed, a complete libertarian library could also be assembled on microfiche, floppy disks and in photocopies and on audio and video tapes - but not as cheaply and conveniently and in as small a space. But complete library and publishing and information services for libertarians, using CD-ROMs, require cooperation and at least some market-like organization of it.

LIBERTARIAN MAGAZINES: Since computer magazines find it worth their while now, to add 1-3 CD-ROMs to their printed issues, libertarian magazines might find a similar attempt helpful as well for their purposes. At least they could offer, upon demand and payment, all their back issues on CD-COM. Perhaps a number of such periodicals could issue a combined CD-ROM for their back issues. Jim Turney objected, that the computer magazines are under severe competition and do have a large advertising income. Indeed, libertarian magazines do not receive much, if anything, from advertising but they are in competition, too and always pressed for more space to include more material. On CD-ROM they could not only include their back issues but material they had to exclude from their printed editions, also uncensored material of material that is only of secondary importance to them. Nor would their offers have to be freebees. They could just advertise their availability and sell them upon orders only.

LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING COMPARED WITH CD-ROM PUBLISHING & READING: By advancing from 13 years of publishing on paper to 25 years of microfilm publishing, I have managed to increase my annual page output 189 times and saved uncounted labor hours per book and put out very much more than I could have afforded to reproduce on paper. Could I and other libertarians gain a similar advantage by using text-only CD-ROMs for all libertarian writings, compiled and offered in whole small special libraries on a single CD-ROM? For example, THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE offers over 5,000 texts (not all books!) on a single CD-ROM and reference works as extensive as Encyclopaedia Britannica are already offered on a single CD-ROM. This medium is, indeed, very powerful and very economical, with commercial duplicating costs down to A $ 50 cents and blanks to A $ 39 cents, in quantities. But who does so far offer or combined digitized libertarian texts in batches of 650 Mbs? The very power of CD-ROMs and the ever-changing skills, resources and labours required to gather and arrange as much information in digitized form, are a great deterrent for individuals. So far, for freedom writings, it was, apparently, a sufficient deterrent, as far as text-only CD-ROMs are concerned. To fill a CD-ROM with a few texts and otherwise sound, movement, images and colour was found to be easier but was also rather expensive. See the numerous writings on multimedia productions on CD-ROMs. Anyhow, do we want to entertain or to inform?

LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING: Why haven't I added CD-ROM publishing myself to my LMP: Libertarian Microfiche Publishing? Why do I go on with LMP, largely on my own? After 25 years and ca. 500,000 libertarian pages, it is still only a pilot scheme, one that has not yet converted enough libertarians and anarchists to this option. Wouldn't I, too, find it more economical and easier to resort to text-only CD-ROM publishing than producing libertarian books, reference works, magazine sets etc. only on supposedly outdated and intermediate technology microfiche? In my defence I can point out that, in accurate scanning, speed of scanning and duplicating texts, micrographics is still high & leading edge technology. It is also a technology without over 60,000 viruses and uncounted program bugs. Someone asserted to me recently that Microsoft programs offer more bugs than functions. That is probably exaggerated. But that it is still rather flawed is widely agreed upon. No electronic scanner scans accurately up to 800 pages per minute and no computer printer reproduces 98-1350 pages (on one duplicate microfiche) every 3-8 seconds. - I find it much more difficult and time consuming to keyboard in or scan and then correct the text of a book than to photocopy and prepare books for microfiching. As a matter of fact, I have so far only tackled the scanning of 2 brochures, which I reproduced on my website and scanned in the early issues of PEACE PLANS, Nos. 1-20, which had been produced duplicated and in offset printing on paper and my first German peace book manuscript (microfiched in PEACE PLANS 399-401) and have still to scan in its English translation (PEACE PLANS 61-63) and many other books by others that I consider to be important. For a long time I have postponed some scanning jobs because of hardware and soft-ware troubles. I am still hoping to open up a market for libertarian on microfiche, which are so much more economical than libertarian print, but that hope is fading. It will keep me busy with my pilot scheme only few 5 years, till I reach PEACE PLANS No. 2,000. Most libertarians managed to overlook this publishing effort and the estimated ca. 8,000 other microfiche (or equivalents in other microfilm media), produced by general microfilm publishers, that do also offer freedom texts. How blind, disinterested, prejudiced and custom ridden can even supposedly enlightened and radical libertarians be? Yes, I do rather blame libertarians than that medium!

LIBERTARIAN NEWS SERVICES SEEM TO NEGLECT SIGNIFICANT LIBERTARIAN IDEAS, OPTIONS & PROJECTS: What is considered newsworthy by various news media, even libertarian and anarchist media ones, does obviously not include all new or worthwhile old freedom ideas and options. Does a quite "uncensored", unbiased and open pro-freedom site exist? (Apart from information that could land them in prison.) However, I blame myself as well, for not having offered as yet, apart from the references in my two peace books (PEACE PLANS 16-18 & 61-63), an abstracts collection of the most important freedom ideas offered in my series and Ideas Archive files, many of them originating with Ulrich von Beckerath, 1882-1969.) Short hints to about 1,000 libertarian project ideas can be found in PEACE PLANS 20. I have long intended to expand this list into 1-10 page descriptions for each of these ideas - but have not yet got around to it. One man can only do so much. I should compile and offer such a collection on a website and also place it with the GLOBAL IDEAS BANK on the Internet. But using and promoting the libertarian microfiche option has kept me all too busy since 1977.

LIBERTARIAN PERIODICALS: I would almost bet that you have never seen most of the numerous libertarian periodicals of the past and present. On CD-ROMs all of them could be cheaply reproduced, with all their back issues and, likewise, samples of them could be reproduced on a single CD-ROM. But as yet you will have to search very hard to find, in the libertarian press, any article discussing this option or the micrographic one or even the floppy disk one. Instead, they go on being produced, and distributed, more & more in fancy and glossy forms and more and more expensively - ignoring their alternative media options. There is one exception to this rule, namely the e-mail newsletters, extracts or contents lists online, by which each of them tries, again, to push itself alone, instead of being swept along with the current of all libertarian periodicals being permanently and cheaply made available on powerful alternative media. - without e.g. the continuously growing virus threats.

LIBERTARIAN PIONEERS: Who will be the pioneers to compile and publish the first TEXT-ONLY libertarian CD-ROM, used to its full capacity? Add yourself to the future honors list! You might not get such a chance again. - Or has it already been published by someone?

LIBERTARIAN READING FOR A LIFETIME: How much would it cost you to get a life-time's libertarian reading on CD-ROMs? How many CD-ROMs would it take? Subscription to a single one of many e-mail or online pro-freedom news services might deliver to you most of the additional current information that you might want. Assuming that all libertarian writings would come to 150,000 book titles or their equivalent in other formats, and that a single CD-ROM might contain the equivalent of 500 books, then 300 CD-ROMs would suffice for your complete freedom library. If you bought all of them you could probably get them presently for as little as $ 5 each, i.e., for $ 1,500 you could have a complete freedom library - on a single bookshelf. You might have to add only one or a few every year to keep up with recent freedom writings. The space for your collection would not longer threaten to take over your house. But of all this reference material you might not be able to fully read, in a long and healthy as well as active reading life, more than the equivalent of 10-40 CD-ROM text disks.

LIBERTARIAN RESOURCE LISTS, LITERATURE LISTS, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, DIRECTORIES, REVIEW COMPILATIONS, ABSTRACTS ETC. ON THE INTERNET: The longest libertarian resource lists on the Internet are still very incomplete and selective, favoring only one or the other segment of the total freedom spectrum or even one or the other medium only. Just check, for instance, how few sites list the availability of freedom texts on microfiche and how libertarians and anarchists shun or accuse each other. Become aware that so far only a fraction of all freedom writings have found their way onto the Internet, even by mere listing, not to speak of full text offers, especially of books.

LIBERTARIAN TASKS FOR LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMS: Using CD-ROMs we could rapidly build up a vast libertarian encyclopaedia, bibliography, abstract and review collection, ideas archive, projects listing, directory and combined links compilation.

LIBERTARIAN TEXT ACCUMULATIONS IN PRIVATE FILES COULD BE VOLUNTARILY SHARED ON CD-ROMs. Whatever collaborators in libertarian CD-ROM publishing couldn't already (with some effort and costs, but saving these for most other libertarians) simply download from the Internet, they could easily collect, share and combine from their own digitized texts on their computers, or via cooperative scanning and correction, compilation & editing or keyboarding efforts, initiating and combining them via e-mail and their attachments. I have recently received 2 small books in this way.

LIBERTARIAN TEXT-ONLY CD-ROM, FIRST EDITION: DOES IT HAVE TO BE QUITE FILLED, WITH 650 Mbs? If it should prove to be too difficult to collect the first 650 Mbs, then we might decide that it would not be necessary to completely fill the first libertarian CD-ROM. It's very incompleteness might act as a standing invitation to help fill the next one. I was told that many of the CD-ROMs attached to computer magazines are not quite filled, either, nevertheless, the magazines find it easier or cheaper to use them than floppies. Perhaps they just want to give the impression that they do offer very much in this format. Anyhow, I got e.g. THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE several times in these attached CD-ROMs & more software than I can peruse, comprehend and use.

LIBERTARIAN WEBSITES: How many CD-ROMs would it take to archive every libertarian web page that is now online? - J.Z., 21.5.01. - I think that in most cases we should have to go online only for updates. - J.Z., 25.6.02.

LIBERTARIAN WEBSITES: Perhaps the first libertarian and collaboratively compiled CD-ROM would be no more than a handbook guides to all the libertarian sites so far offered on the Internet.

LIBERTARIAN WORLD LIBRARY & INFORMATION SERVICE SELLING CHEAP DUPLICATES IN ALTERNATIVE MEDIA OF ALL FREEDOM TEXTS: With all affordable, efficient, easy and lasting media towards complete, cheap and easily accessible freedom literature and library and information services, that would sell single titles or batches of them on cheap duplicates rather than lending them out. How can such a dream not be of interest to libertarians that do take themselves serious?

LIBERTARIAN WORLD LIBRARY ONLINE? Maybe one day we will have an online and comprehensive libertarian world library or comprehensive network compiled - and maybe any wanted part of it may one day be easily, and fully findable and fast enough, as well as cheaply enough, downloadable. But we are not there as yet and not even close. By page numbers the publicly accessible online information comes, according to one recent article, only to ca. 2.1 billion public pages (Cecilia Kang, in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 14 Nov. 2,000, referring to the market research firm Cyveillance in Washington, D.C.) or the equivalent of ca. 8 million books so far - and relatively few of these pages are made up by book pages. Compare that with a total book output of ca. 400 million books so far. Admittedly, many of these 400 million are outdated or unwanted by most. If the web pages would keep about doubling every year then it would still take about 7 years for the page numbers to reach the number of pages so far published in books (apart from the pages of their duplicates, which are, comparable to the number of downloads & views of web pages). Many more years would be required, most likely, for the digitized book pages to reach the number of original book pages ever published, unless scanning becomes much easier, faster, more accurate and automated. - After I wrote this, I found another hint in THE AUSTRALIAN, AustralianIT.com.au of 21 Nov. 2000, referring to a website called Popular Science, 50 Best of the Web, URL: www.popsci.com/features/bow00/ According to this site, the web is said to have more than 550 billion unique documents with millions more being added each day. Perhaps the first reference, referring to 2 billion "pages" meant websites, each averaging much more than 1 page? Perhaps the second number means single sheet documents or does it also mean multiple pages assembled in one "document"? Or is it a mere typo? I do not know. The discrepancy between these two estimates is enormous. However, whether the estimate of 550 billion unique documents refers to multiple pages, assembled in website documents, or single pages only, or whether it is an exaggerating typo, the question still remains, why are so few libertarian books offered so far, online? One of the possible explanations, found in another article, was that the Internet is not yet ideal for offering texts longer than 200 pages.

LIBERTARIAN YEARBOOKS: They could be produced on a CD-ROM at a length that would be hard to impossible to provide in print or on a website.

LIBERTARIANS & THEIR LITERATURE & ALTERNATIVE MEDIA REPRODUCTIONS: I try to get libertarians, who take themselves and their literature serious enough, to get, between them, all freedom writings offered, at least in one or the other alternative medium, cheaply, easily, permanently. While continuing my microfiche efforts, for a few more years, I do also recommend the use of CD-ROMs and even floppy disks for this purpose. On my own I could hardly gather enough digitized freedom information to fill a single CD-ROM and I haven't the skills to do so efficiently. But collaboration between libertarians could solve both tasks. Please help me to spread that message!

LIBRARIES, BOOKSHOPS & THEIR STOCKS OF LITERATURE: The librarians of large libraries tend to know at most how many roll film reels and microfiche they do posses, but not how many book and magazine titles they represent, far less do they know how many pro-freedom titles are contained in these microfilm collections and others of their collections. We should make our freedom information offers independent of the existing public libraries, conventional publishers and book distribution channels and also independent of the conventional media, not only by using the Internet. It has many advantages to offer but also, for book length freedom texts, many draw-backs still, that resulted in so far only few freedom books being offered on it. Consider the example of books on audio tapes. It took about 2 decades before some book dealers gave them some display space and only relatively few books are so far offered in this format. Should libertarians proceed as slowly with offering their literature in alternative, efficient, affordable and lasting formats?

LIBRARIES, MICROFILM COLLECTIONS, SCHOLARS, STUDENTS, RESEARCHERS, THE INTERNET & CD-ROMS: At least for some people the Internet has not yet made superfluous the use of large public and some private libraries, of bookshops and microfilm collections. In the same way, I presume, much more material will come to be offered, at least as back-up, in print, on microfilm and on disks - to the material offered on the Internet. Neither with paper nor microfilm have we reached complete libraries so far, but only vast special collections. With CD-ROMs complete world libraries and special libraries come much more easily within our reach, within a few years rather than within a few centuries. (Naturally, almost as much could have been achieved, also very cheaply already, per book title, with microfilm libraries.) CD-ROM libraries offer the option to sell cheap duplicates of their texts rather then lending out, free of charge or for a small fee, the originals. Moreover, their texts can be cheaply updated, without a large capital input and publishing risk. Have you tried to update web pages coming to 650 Mbs?

LIFE SPANS OF CD-ROMS: Admittedly, some of the cheaper CD-ROMs have only an expected limited life-span. One computer experts recommended re-copying them every 3-5 years, i.e., before they deteriorate. Some of the more expensive ones are expected to last even 100-125 years. That is still not as long-lasting as are good microfiche, expected to last 100-300 years or good paper editions, lasting for many centuries. Pulp paper editions can become brittle and oxidized into close to uselessness already within a few decades. Some of the colored CD-ROMs and also microfilms are light-sensitive. Some microfilms are sensitive to acid paper and humidity. But seeing that the costs of alternative media are already close enough to zero, and that replacements would be easy and cheap and usually possible fast enough, this is hardly decisive. Reading and publishing habits are. With those of the past we can only achieve as little as we have with them in the past and present. - Their life-span may be limited to a few years or decades but they can also be cheaply and fast enough copied for their life extension, before they have lost information. Anyhow, for a by now little extra charge one can purchase CD-ROMs that are already expected to last over 5 times as long as the cheapest ones.

LIFESPAN OF ONLINE INFORMATION WITHOUT MAINTENANCE EFFORTS: On paper the pages tend to remain, sometimes for hundreds of years, with good paper editions, apart from a few burned libraries and the slow oxidization of cheap papers exposed to air and light. Microfilm can have a similarly long life-span. That of CD-ROMs might be limited to years to decades. But how long does the average online page stay online without a maintenance effort and service and connection costs? I read about firms offering MONTHLY maintenance services for websites!

LIFETIME LIBERTARIAN READING: All the libertarian books that an active libertarian readers will be able to read within a normal life-span could probably be put, by now, onto a mere 10-40 CD-ROMs. And if, for reference purposes, a libertarian wanted to possess a complete freedom library, well, complete for all freedom writings up to a certain date, then 300 CD-ROMs might suffice and they could be updated with an annual CD-ROM or a few, and, on particular subjects, almost immediately, through special websites.

LINKING OF ALL LIBERTARIAN WEBSITES, INDEXING & SEARCH DIFFICULTIES: On the Internet the relevant sites are still very incompletely inter-linked. Sometimes only the personal preferences of the website compilers are shown there. To that extent these sites are still almost as diverse and separated from each other as are the xyz libertarian and anarchistic periodical paper publications and libraries. CD-ROM publishing could build easy bridges between them, turning the Internet, as far as they are concerned, into a very close net-connection, with clickable linkse. Moreover, for each book title one or several abstracts and reviews or comments could be included and all could be alphabetically indexed at length, separately and in combinations. With the limited guides provided, surfing for libertarian sites still resembles all too much the experience of being lost in a labyrinth. There is no easy sequential or subject access to all libertarian websites, although some offers, like that of free-market.net, with its references to over 17,000 resources, are already impressive. Another site offers over 5,000 FEE essays. Libertarian sites are not yet sufficiently indexed and search engines are not yet sufficient helpful in finding all of them. The index to each libertarian CD-ROM could be made almost complete and on CD-ROM a combined index to several libertarian CD-ROMs could be provided, and annually updated. Search engines could also be included in these CD-ROMs, as they are on some websites.

LIST GROWTH, TOO SLOW SO FAR: >From the slow growth of my CD-Rom projects list people might conclude that the idea is no good. I concluded that I did not or could not advocate it efficiently, e.g. enough via my limited e-mailings to some selected addresses, not even placing it on my own website, far less a popular libertarian one. How fast and how far it could grow could possibly only be found out by a very expensive and extensive snail mailing campaign, which I for one could not afford, or by it being placed on a popular libertarian website with the option for self-entries. Alternatively, the libertarian press might finally come to discuss this option sufficiently. Will it? In their use of their medium they tend to become blinkered. It keeps them busy and financially struggling, without time and energy to consider their alternative media options. Now, if placed on a popular libertarian website, then, automatically or via a webmaster's efforts, a rapid growth of the list might occur and become obvious: More and more potential collaborators would come to be listed for many different libertarian CD-ROM projects. And the output of these, on their independently produced and distributed (apart from a common list) CD-ROMs would win new converts to the medium, until the list would finally make itself superfluous because enough people would have learned about this freedom opportunity, so that it would be more and more used, to its potential, without having to publicize this opportunity any further. As such the list might disappear. As a common literature list, not only for CD-ROM output, and as a works in progress list, inviting further contributors, it might continue or be revived. To me it seems obvious that, as far as possible, the list compilation, at least its large and fast growth rate, should be done with the self-management and self-entry options that certain software appears to permit. I have never installed it but seen it indicated and made some limited entries for my purposes on some of these sites.

LONGWINDEDNESS, VERBOSITY, LENGTH OF APPEALS FOR THE CD-ROM PROJECT: That has been an all too common failing of mine. Only under pressure by Don Lobo Tigger did I finally produce a 1 page or 628 word appeal and only under the need for a short advertisement was that one finally produced. Both have so far been largely ignored by most of the libertarian and anarchist presses that I e-mailed them to. In one case even the paid for short advertisement was not reproduced. I know how overworked and forgetful one can be, seeing my own state of affairs. Anyone able and willing to draft and publish short and efficient appeals on this subject is invited to do so - in his own long-term interest. Among all the libertarian texts there are, after all, either the solutions or the avenues to the solutions of most remaining problems.

MEDIA CHOICE: SOME MEDIA VS. ALL MEDIA: Freedom lovers ought to ponder whether they should try to compile and publish all their information mainly only on paper, online, via broadcasting stations or audio- and video tapes and photocopies or whether they should utilize ALL available, efficient, easy and lasting alternative media in their particular strengths. To make a fully informed decision on this, there ought to compiled, from the Internet, if that can be done, otherwise from reference libraries, & service providers & their associations, a table giving per page publishing costs, accessing costs and all particular advantages & weaknesses of all of the diverse media. (See my Prize offer for such a tabulation.) Moreover, in a single source should be listed whatever freedom information is already available in ALL of the media, from where and at what prices. Such a listing, combined with a comprehensive freedom bibliography and abstracts and review series, would be standing invitations to finally offer all the still missing texts at least in one of the affordable, cheap and efficient alternative media. Just one more freedom website is hardly much more helpful than just one more libertarian book, magazine, lecture or conference. Luckily, there are already sites on the Web that refer to over 5,000 and even over 17,000 web resources. The 5,000+ offer consists mainly of articles provided by FEE. The 17,000 + offer is made by www.free-market.net But all lasting texts, that the associated URLs offer, could be more cheaply and easily offered on one or a few CD-ROMs! So, why aren't they offered thus?

MEDIA INSTITUTES AND MEDIA STUDIES NEGLECT SEVERAL OF THE EFFICIENT AND AFFORDABLE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA & CONCENTRATE ON THE MASS MEDIA AND RELATIVELY POPULAR ALTERNATIVE MEDIA ONLY, E.G. ALTERNATIVE PRESSES & THE INTERNET. The numerous so-called "media institutes" and "media studies" do, to my knowledge, almost exclusively deal with mass media only. I love to hear about exceptions. - Maybe they would condescend to consider alternative media for texts, like microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs, once these were already effectively used by many millions of people. - Should we have to establish a special institute for the study and utilization of all alternative media or could we do without? I hold that a fair and complete tabulation of all that the alternative media have to offer to us, might be sufficient and it could be systematically compiled, with some collaboration being arranged, e.g. via e-mail and a website, with this aim in mind. An individual does not find it easy to dig up such information on the Internet, assuming that it is already provided there, somewhere, by someone. I doubt it. If I am wrong, please point the site out to me. See my Prize offer for such a tabulation.

MICROFICHE PUBLISHING & OTHER ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: I am into libertarian microfiche publishing and you may want to publish or read many more freedom texts cheaply and easily ONLY in OTHER alternative media. Like me you may be deterred by the costs and risks of putting them in print on paper and keeping them in print in this medium and by the costs and labours of putting them online, and keeping them maintained there, or downloading them from there, and might be annoyed by broken links, and virus dangers and by the need, or practice, in most instances, to split up long texts into xyz separate files. - If that is the case then you ought to inform yourself on your other electronic publishing options, especially for long and unchanging texts. As far as I know, the Internet does not inform us on costs per page and other advantages or disadvantage of all the media, including all the alternative media. (100 LMP microfiche, your choice, are offered to the first who points out such a tabulation to me or compiles it for me and all others who would be interested in it.)

MOBILITY OF THE CD-ROM OPTION: See PORTABILITY.

MONOPOLY ORGANIZATION OR BIG BUSINESS? The first is not possible with this medium and the second is not planned or intended by me. I do not aim to become a frontline competitor in this field, either, but just, like any collector, editor and writer, a contributor to the total body of knowledge, in whatever medium I can afford, and on any subject that is of interest to me, and as such it is of great interest to me that all freedom knowledge is made as far as possible cheaply, permanently and easily accessible, even to low income people like me. That can be done, in very large and selected chunks, compiled in special subject freedom libraries on single CD-ROMs. It should be made clearer than I have done, so far, judging by the responses, that I do not want to received all their Mbs of submissions myself, to be placed by me upon a CD-ROM. I am not yet a skilled CD-ROM compiler and may never be one. Such compilers should announce themselves on this list and get together, through this list, with others they like and to whom he is acceptable, to put compatible or related or tolerantly different kinds of views on their own kind of libertarian CD-ROM - then announcing its availability there and wherever they can.

MULTIMEDIA OBSESSION & PICTURE BOOK AND MOVIE MENTALITY: Another of my pet peeves: All too many libertarian websites seem to be obsessed with the picture book mentality. They want to entertain their viewers or try to keep them awake via gimmicks. Would genuine scholars and students of liberty need such decorative and entertaining effects? I for one prefer plain text files, the "spartan" look, as Christian Butterbach calls it. However, if the customer is always right, then in future libertarian CD-ROMs might be offered in plain text format or in full html format. I for one hold that the first general libertarian CD-ROM offer should provide as many and as varied texts as possible, in plain text or rich text format only. However, one correspondent has recently persuaded me that some colored background makes for easier reading. So far I just adjusted my screen to a for me bearable degree of glare.

NEGLECT OF ALTERNATIVE LIBERTARIAN PUBLISHING AND READING OPTIONS: I have often complained about how the microfiche self-publishing and reading options have been neglected by libertarians and anarchists, although they could, e.g. on a standard microfiche, very cheaply and with a low risk, because in on demand production only, reproduce and offer for sale 1-2 books at a time. Will the CD-ROM option, of very cheaply offering 200-2,000 books at a time, or 650 -200 Mbs on a single CD-ROM, be likewise neglected or indefinitely postponed. although these disks have already been used for ten-thousands of games, music and software disks, directories and for a number of encyclopaedias?

NET, See: ONLINE & INTERNET & WEB.

NETWORKING, INTERLINKING, ORGANIZATIONS & TEXTS: Organizationally, the international libertarians as well as the libertarian think-tanks are becoming interlinked. The interlinking and publishing, permanently and cheaply, of all libertarian writings, at least in affordable alternative media, and with translations into all of the major languages, has still to be tackled. In this CD-ROMs could greatly assist.

NEVER BEFORE, PERHAPS, COULD SO FEW DO SO MUCH, AT SO LITTLE EXPENSE AND RISK, FOR SO MANY: How few libertarians would be needed to provide all freedom writings if they resorted to alternative media like microfiche, floppies or CD-ROMs? With my conversion, from paper to microfiche publishing, I have already increased my annual page output 189 times and reduced my per duplicated page output sometimes to 0.03 cents. How much more productive could we become via CD-ROMs and how much cheaper could our per-page prices be if we did, cooperatively, fill CD-ROMs with libertarian texts? Give such alternatives sufficient thought and ponder the scarcity of libertarian bookshops and libraries and how incomplete and temporary the book offers of libertarian book mailers are - and how few titles you can get from them for $ 100 - $ 500.

NUMBER OF CD-ROMs REQUIRED BY INDIVIDUAL LIBERTARIANS FOR THEIR READING AND FOR THE MOVEMENT, FOR ALL LIBERTARIAN TEXTS: As few as 10 - 40 text-only CD-ROMs might already contain as many texts as most people manage to read in a whole life-time. So why don't we provide them with most of their reading matter quite economically and easily in this format, saving living space, too, which would otherwise be taken up by many bookshelves? Why should we have to keep up armies of publishers, printers, binders, librarians and bookshop employees? All libertarian texts (150,000?) might be made accessible on as few as 300 CD-ROMs, especially if they offered all their information in text only format.

NUMBER OF COLLABORATORS REQUIRED: I have estimated that if we were confined to microfiche publishing and reading, a mere 100 - 300 libertarian activists, like myself, could already achieve COMPLETE, PERMANENT, CHEAP & EASY libertarian publishing within a few years when only using microfiche. With CD-ROMs even fewer libertarian publishing activists might be required or the project would take less time. If floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing were to be added to paper, online, audio- & video-tape publishing, then many less libertarian microfiche publishers would be needed to fill the remaining information gaps with alternative media. On as few as 300 CD-ROMs, whose blanks and pressing might cost as little as $ 150, all libertarian information might be offered within a few years. Moreover, each cheap CD-ROM we might order, from a complete libertarian publishing offer of this kind, could save us hundreds of hours of searching and downloading labours, provided only that the information we want is largely contained in specialized CD-ROMs, as freedom information could be. See: DIVERSITY OF FREEDOM INTERESTS.

NUMBER OF FREEDOM WRITINGS: What fraction of all freedom writings is now in print or online or readily accessible second-hand? We do not even know the total number of titles and pages of all freedom writings still in existence somewhere. A complete bibliography hasn't been compiled yet and the incomplete bibliographies, that do exist, usually fail to list titles offered in alternative media. Some omission in times like these!

OBJECTIONS: If the contents of libertarian CD-ROMs consists of speculative assemblies of libertarian texts produced for the market, then not all of the texts on such a CD-ROM would be wanted by the buyer and reader. That is true. However, already one or a few texts, of interest to him, could make it worthwhile for him to buy the CD-ROM - and he might later become interested in some of the other titles. At an advanced stage, when everything is available at a comprehensive libertarian electronic library, then a reader could come to order from it his kind of individualized selection of texts - automatically searched for, picked out and downloaded on a CD-ROM for him and then automatically mailed to him - if he has paid for it.

OBJECTIONS: DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN BOOK PUBLISHING ON THE WEB & ON CD-ROM: "We think that with the Internet it is possible to do the work you want to do with the CD. Books can be read on paper. With CDs or on the Internet you have to read on screens or make print-outs on paper." - This is all quite true. But what is possible is not always OPTIMAL. - Screen reading is SUBJECTIVELY not optimal for most people and both CDs and Websites suffer from that. Reading in print on paper is, subjectively, still preferred by most. Indeed. However, are all freedom texts in print on paper? All the time? At prices all people can afford? And did all freedom book manuscripts reach print on paper? I assert that because of the risks and costs involved in paper publishing many freedom writings were not published at all and, of those that were published, most are out of print most of the time and were not translated into most of the major languages, either. Alternative media, like e.g. microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs, for book publishing, offer enormous cost, storage and distribution advantages over books printed on paper. Each of these have their own advantages and disadvantages. Particularly when used only in on-demand publishing, they reduce the publishing risk and costs close enough to zero, so that even individuals with very modest resources could afford to publish many freedom texts in these formats. But to fill a single CD-ROM with 650 Mbs of zipped freedom texts goes usually beyond the texts access options and spare time labour and energy of INDIVIDUALS, as does the building of a large bridge or a skyscraper. However, by now dozens to hundreds of libertarians, world-wide, could collaborate e.g. via e-mail, to fill a single CD-ROM and several could collaborate to scan in a particular book which all of them like. - As for a comparison for books on the Internet and books on CD-ROMs: Few websites do contain as much as 650 Mbs with their internal links. In other words, a single CD-ROM, whose blank and pressing are, commercially, down to 50 cents, can contain many websites that offer books. But there are not all that many websites as yet that do offer the full text of many freedom books. Why? Firstly there is a size limit on many websites. Mine is 5 Mbs. Few have as many as 50 -100Mbs on their websites. And how many people can afford to hire web-masters or pay for maintenance contracts? Secondly, to establish and to maintain a website one has to subscribe to a service provider. If one has an e-mail subscription one usually gets a size-limited Website "free". Mine, with its 5 Mbs limit is already almost filled by my main literature list. So I cannot add much more to it. Some do also impose downloading limits. There are, indeed, free website offers, e.g. by Geocities. But there one has to put up with advertisements and the size of the sites is, again, limited. I guess one could establish many such free websites - but altogether that has not yet been extensively done by potential publishers of freedom books. One has also to look at websites, compared with CD-ROMs, from the point of view of access costs and labours for the reader. To download as much as 650 Mbs from libertarian internet sites would cost me, with my slow system, ca. 400 hours of hard and boring labour and ca. A $ 1,200 in connection fees. Others could do it faster and cheaper, but could they beat the costs of 650 Mbs of libertarian texts on a CD-ROM? Indeed, at a particular time they usually do not want to access as much as 650 Mbs and a single book of e.g. 1 Mb could be downloaded in a reasonable time and at reasonable cost. But, ARE all libertarian books already on the Internet and has one merely to pick and choose between them? - It is true, that an average collection of 650 Mbs of freedom texts would not only contain titles that are of particular interest to an individual libertarian. However, once a complete freedom library IS established, one could, if one wanted to, order the filling of one CD-ROM only with those freedom texts that one is particularly interested in. AT THIS LIBRARY THIS COULD BE DONE FAST, EASILY AND CHEAPLY, LARGELY AUTOMATICALLY.. No large downloading costs and long delays are involved THERE and the one who ordered these 650 Mbs would get only what he wants - on a CD-ROM he has ordered. It might contain his reading material for years. Surely, he could wait for it for 10 days, i.e. delivery of this small and special library for himself, by air mail? But while most freedom texts are out of print, out of reach in most libraries and bookshops, hard to get second-hand, and not yet on the Internet, or on microfilm or floppies, it would be desirable to reproduce many of them, zipped perhaps 200 - 2,000 of them, on a single and extremely cheap CD-ROM. A mere 300 CD-ROMs might already constitute a complete freedom library. When this target is reached, all these libertarian CD-ROMs making up a complete freedom library, then they could be loaded into a single memory bank or into an interlinked network. From that centre or network any wanted freedom texts could then be ordered, probably cheapest on CD-ROMs or DVDS or future Super CDs - unless the information super-highway will already be realized for all, as well as fully developed and transmission costs and times will be reduced to close enough to zero in this sphere as well. But this is not guaranteed and may still take many years, if not decades. The low costs of CD-ROMs are available NOW. Indeed, the same digitizing work is involved as is involved with establishing xyz websites, coming to 650 Mbs of texts. That has to be done by keyboarding or scanning or a combination of the two, if one considers proof-reading and corrections. Once 650 Mbs are gathered, one has to consider the economics of a) either placing and keeping all of them on the Internet, where they would require considerable maintenance work by webmasters and would be exposed to viruses, or b) getting the whole batch of 650 Mbs mailed on a single CD-ROM, initially cleared of viruses and as a laser disk in ROM format, protected from further attacks, which might happen, if one tried to download its texts from the Internet. - There are many individuals and groups who would appreciate the opportunity to possess a complete freedom library, even though only on 300 CD-ROMs, whose total price may be as little as A $ 1,500 and which certainly need not be as high as $15,000, seeing how low the prices for blanks and pressing are. Taking only the latter into consideration, the production costs for such a library are down to $ 150! Alas, wishing for such a library and establishing it are two different things. One would have to appreciate the aim sufficiently to be prepared to work together with others in the world towards reaching it cooperatively, with each adding those freedom texts he considers to be most important, with collaboration arranged by a common list, which could also prevent the duplication of such efforts. - I would have no objection at all but would welcome it very much if some libertarians WOULD establish a complete freedom library on the Internet. But I, for one ,have not even scanned and uploaded my own libertarian books there and find it still cheaper and easier to add many freedom books to my libertarian series on microfiche. Nor could I, on my own, fill a single libertarian CD-ROM with my Mbs only. When it finally comes to all freedom texts being available a) on CD-ROMs and b) online, then it is merely a question how fast, cheaply, easily and safely one can access either. Most likely, a CD-ROM freedom library will link to many libertarian news and discussion sites on the Internet. Likewise, updates will be downloaded from the Internet rather frequently, to achieve e.g. updated CD-ROM directories, abstracts, indexes, review compilations & accumulated criticism on certain books. But I believe the CD-ROM option for long and unchanging texts will remain a very economical option, which will be outcompeted only once books are also offered on DVDs, perhaps one seventh as many, at a reasonable price, and, ultimately, in the future, perhaps on a single super-CD, that might be annually updated, all libertarian books could be offered. The information super-highway would have to be speeded up enormously and become enormously cheaper, easier and more reliable in order to beat that competitive option. - Please ask yourself some questions like the following: Are libertarians systematically putting libertarian books onto the internet? - What fraction have they placed there already? How many more years or decades will it take, considering how many years it took to get the present small number of freedom texts online, to get all freedom texts online? How much would be required, in money and labours, to keep them there, in good condition, every year? (The better cd-roms are now expected to last 100-125 years!) How long do websites last without maintenance? And what are their annual maintenance costs? How soon can we expect downloading labours and costs, for many books at a time, to become insignificantly low? Aren't libertarians still spending a large percentage of their scarce resources for getting their texts in print on paper? Aren't many libertarian readers forced to restrict their literature purchases because of the prices that have to be charged for books printed on paper? How many libertarians are able to purchase all the libertarian books in print that they would like to possess? How many can afford to read those online that are already on the Internet or to download all those that would interest them, spending the time and money required for this? - The same expenditure, used for microfilming or CD-ROM publishing, could probably achieve complete libertarian publishing in a relatively short time, either on microfiche or online or on CD-ROMs - and my bets are on CD-ROMs, because of the time and cost savings involved. - I do not deny at all that books offered on websites do have their advantages, e.g. with attached forums for discussions and comments. But accumulations of such comments could be periodically added to the CD-ROM editions of these books as well - with links to the latest discussions online. - Libertarians pride themselves regarding their economic knowledge and lack of economic prejudices. Well, in this sphere they still have not sufficiently examined the microeconomics of all the alternative media. - The CD-ROM option for freedom books has been as little discussed so far as has been the microfiche and floppy disk publishing option for libertarian books. Libertarians have simply gone along with public opinion on the Internet and its future and do expect everything good to come from it only, as others expect it to come from Big Brother on Earth or THE Superman in the Sky. Previously, we had similarly high hopes attached to printing, posted letters and printed matter and to telephones. Alas, neither provided sufficient enlightenment. All had rather high costs associated with them. - Consider the alternatives or supplementary options, seriously. They are not just a matter of faith, opinion, hopes and speculations, but also of facts. These facts should be brought to light and closely examined and tested. I do not ask for more. Because, by ignoring some of our alternative media options, we may be by-passing some of our best chances to mobilise and publicise all our resources, all our literature, keeping it permanently and very cheaply in print, in all major languages, all our ideas, opinions, proposals, plans, projects, solutions, answers and refutations, even more economical and faster and easier than on the Internet!

OBJECTIONS: On mere software publishing on CD-ROMs Duncan Martell wrote in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, Oct. 24, 2,000: "Forget those CD-ROMs: it's on the Web, stupid. The age of going to the shop to buy software is almost over." - That may be true for software on CD-ROMs, perhaps soon for music CDs as well, but is it true for literature, especially libertarian literature? And has he taken into consideration how much software is still distributed "free" of separate charges, simply by attaching one to three CD-ROMs to many of the computer magazines? Not all opinions and "judgments" on the subject do fully represent its realities.

OBSCURITY, INACCESSIBILITY: No libertarian resource, idea, project, talent or text need remain obscure, inaccessible, unknown, untranslated or unpublished any longer. All could become included in all kinds of reference works. Collections of abstracts and reviews, bibliographies and indexes, could become readily accessible to all forums and discussions. They could become sufficiently criticized and supplemented. All could become easily known to all those who would be specially interested in them. They could become affordable even to libertarians with very moderate incomes. We should become independent not only of the bottlenecks for information that constitute the mass media but also those of book publishers and scholarly journals, independent of print on paper publishing and its costs and risks, independent even of the very much smaller costs and risk and labors of microfilm publishing, by coming to use CD-ROMs, from 650 - 800 Mbs, at their full potential for zipped texts (about 4 times as large, according to my own very limited experience so far), and we could do the same with DVDs and future super-CDs, like the upcoming blue light CDs - and those beyond. Ultimately, perhaps not in so very many years in the future, a single CD might be able to offer all the freedom writings that were so far produced and are still preserved, at least in one of the major languages, if not in several ones. Can we afford not to make use of such opportunities?

ON DEMAND PUBLISHING: CD-ROMs, like floppy disks and microfiche, - and in recent years also, but much more expensively, paper book publishing, can be done only upon demand, with negligible capital input being risked for every single title.

ONLINE ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS NOT OPTIMAL FOR ALL KINDS OF INFORMATION: While it is ideal for short and frequently updated as well as almost instantly needed and supplied information, there are costs, labours, delays, risks and difficulties associated with this medium which make it less than optimal for long and unchanging texts. Such texts can be very cheaply offered on a single CD-ROM. A recent downloading sprint taught me that it would have taken me 400 hours to fill CD-ROM with libertarian texts from the Internet. I would rather see some people do this job for thousands to ten-thousands of other libertarians, offering their search results cheaply on CD-ROMs, whose costs for blanks and pressing is now down to 50 cents. I for one would gladly pay $ 5 to 50 to save myself 400 hours of labour. Wouldn't you? While, at least initially, each libertarian CD-ROM might not contain exactly the kind of libertarian information that you would be looking for, a few of them might already contain most of the information that you want & as few as 300 might be able to offer all libertarian writings so far provided. And each of them could offer you more than could a printed libertarian magazine or a single shelf board filled with books.

ONLINE FLAWS: Online many faults develop & sites need maintenance. Moreover, bugs can be transmitted. Telephone and connection costs to a server are involved, expensive special cables or wireless connections are needed to speed up connections and considerable search and downloading times and labours are still needed. Moreover, almost no single search ever produces complete results. Many sites remain obscure or are picked up by web browsers only after long delays. Not even all libertarian and anarchists sites are completely inter-linked. All link lists are still very incomplete, as are the online directories, bibliographies, reviews, indexes, magazine sets and freedom books. - On CD-ROMs these flaws can be avoided, at least for long texts that remain largely unchanged, like books, essays & periodicals. A small group of libertarians could and should engage in these costs and labours for all others with similar interests, and cheaply combine and sell their findings, optimally arranged, on CD-ROMs. Division of labour and specialization, free enterprise, competition and free trade and the economic utilization of all available resources have their advantages, here, too. Libertarian CD-ROM publishing and reading could largely free us from viruses, the development of website flaws, searching and downloading labours and costs and all too long waiting periods. Many, with their website offers, imagine, like I did, that their site would stay up permanently, unchanged, as long as they subscribed to their service provider. But websites are not as stable and long lasting, once recorded and duplicated, as are printed books and laser disks. Has anyone published as yet the average healthy period or life span of a website? I have seen the offer of monthly maintenance contracts. They tend to last usually only for the length of one's subscription to the provider, or for his lifetime. Often, like e-mail addresses, they disappear without leaving a trace - unless one engages in a major search effort for their new locations. Is a market developing for second-hand websites, regardless of copyrights, like for books? If so, it is likely to develop only via mirror sites or CD-ROMs and floppy disks. Then there are also the frequent mistakes that remain in individually compiled and maintained websites, often remaining unnoticed or uncorrected for a considerable time. Only some are due to incompatible programs. The number of these mistakes, in the finished versions of CD-ROM compilations, will be greatly reduced precisely because so many different people will be usually involved in these productions and they will tend to mutually correct their remaining technical mistakes as well as their remaining flaws in their ideas and opinions. They have all the common interest to raise the level of their combined output as high as possible. Each of these compilations is their library, which they want to be able to recommend to others, almost without reservations.

ONLINE FREEDOM INFORMATION: How much doubling-up occurs there in the links listings, directories, bibliographies, abstracts and reviews, on ten-thousands of pro-freedom websites? How frequently do broken links and other flaws appear on web pages? How many maintenance efforts are required to keep their information complete? - Would perhaps a single site or a few be enough to supply all required up-dates and news? The Internet seems to be excellent for chat session and discussions and news and consumer information, events and frequently needed and updated data but not for long records that remain unchanging, like some classical books and essays. - It offers some encyclopaedias - but is not yet the equivalent to a vast and alphabetized encyclopaedia. Too many pages intended for public access are closed or hidden or remain too obscurely located for most browsers (quite apart from secret government or business records). It is so far offering e.g. only a fraction of the almost 15,000 books of quotations that were so far published, with most of them being probably out of print. The fraction of all freedom books that it offers, from all those that were ever published or that remained in manuscript form, may be similarly low.

ONLINE OPTIONS: They do, indeed, offer many advantages, are already extensively used and are likely to be much more used in the future. But this does not mean that they are optimal for all kinds of publishing and research efforts, quite on their own. For instance, we have not yet burned our private libraries nor closed all the public ones or destroyed all the large microfiche collections that have accumulated. Moreover, book publishing still goes on largely in "blocks of processed wood" and only a tiny fraction of all books so far published, and of all unpublished manuscripts has so far been put online and there are not yet enthusiastic hordes of computer users scanning and keyboarding all texts in for free use on the Internet or the limited sales options for digitized texts that it has opened up so far. An objective comparison between all the media has still to be compiled and sufficiently publicized in order to make sufficiently informed judgments about all the media options now available.

ONLINE TEXT ADVANTAGES & INCOMPLETENESS: Online texts are optimal for frequently changed information but less optimal for mass storage of largely unchanging information. Too many Internet fans have overlooked that, although in practice they have provided relatively few books and full periodical and series texts online. I have seen no comparisons of numbers of book and manuscripts made available online with those made in print, out of print and those available on microfilm, floppies and CD-ROMs. All of these alternatives seem to be still vastly underutilized.

ONLINE TEXTS: Are the already provided and unchanging freedom texts optimally and completely enough provided online and easily and fast enough as well as cheaply enough downloadable? Must we wait until this has been done? Could one or several libertarian down-loaders do the job for uncounted thousands of libertarian surfers and could and should they make their search results very cheaply and lastingly available on CD-ROM?

OPENNESS OF THE MEDIUM AND THE OPPORTUNITIES IT OFFERS TO ALMOST ALL WHO COULD BENEFIT FROM IT. It is not, like a large newspaper or journal or broadcasting station, accessible only to insiders, rich advertisers, famous writers or very selected letter writers, but to almost anybody, within his or her sphere of interests, as compiler, writer, collector or editor or commentator or critic. It is a large blank sheet or very many of them, waiting to be filled by you and then spread, upon demand, all over the world, just like floppy disks and microfiche are, audio and video tapes as well as websites. In some ways, and for texts, it is cheaper than all others that I know of (if one includes, also as CD's, the already wide-spread DVDs and the upcoming blue light CDs and still more futuristic CDs). Indeed, online progress will also come fast and go far. But has it outpaced the potential (not the practice) of CD-ROM publishing as yet, and its economics? It is true, its push-button or clicking options are more extensive. But then, a CD-ROM need not be confined to its disk. With live URL links it can link to any websites and also to the suppliers of all other libertarian CD-ROMs. Websites, journals, books and pamphlets cannot be easily entered by others with their favorable or unfavorable comments or with varied other materials. They have also rather narrow size or page limits. But CD-ROMs are so powerful that their compilers will usually eagerly look for more contributions to fill them and the more controversial they are, the more so will they be welcomed, at least by some of the compilers, for then these disks will become more talked and written about than are those which merely toe the same party line. The material production costs for 1-2000 books on one CD-ROM are certainly not an obstacle to most people not in desperate poverty.. And up to 2000 single book authors could combine their book offers into an attractive common library on a single disk, which should be easier to sell, for each of them, or their distributors, than would be their single book on one CD-ROM or floppy disk or microfiche - and, finally, even easier to sell in this format than it would be in printed form, if it had reached that stage.

OPPORTUNITY BECKS: This is a unique opportunity for freedom lovers to do something significantly towards spreading and securing freedom ideas and practices. The free market libertarians believe in free enterprise, free trade, individual initiative, competition and voluntary cooperation. Here is their chance to practise some of their basic beliefs in a very worthy project that can greatly help all of them. Will they make use of it? Their most common reaction to their microfilm and floppy disk options makes me somewhat doubtful on this. People do not always beat a path to the door where the best mouse traps are offered, not even libertarians do so. (If one ideas archive offered the door to all the best "mouse traps" then this proverbial "wisdom" might actually become true. Then the "free market for ideas", wrongly presumed to exist already, would become a reality, a complete and effcicient market, really bringing the supply of and demand for ideas and talents together.) They, too, are still largely misled by errors, myths and prejudices, here regarding online publishing and reading versus publishing and reading on microfilm, floppies and CD-ROMS. Are they prepared to enlighten themselves sufficiently on this subject or to listen to or read some truths advanced on this subject? I guess I will find out. - CD-ROMS provide an enormous opportunity for libertarians, if properly used by them: The technical and material CD-ROM freedom opportunity is there. It is very affordable, just requiring labour collaboration between like-minded people to accumulate enough texts to fill the first text-only and cooperatively compiled libertarian CD-ROMs. Will that aim be achieved via the Internet, e-mail contacts, correspondence etc? I hope so, and that it will happen soon. One should have expected fans of electronic publishing options to make more use of the floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing options than they have so far. In reality they neglected even these electronic options as much as they did and do their microfilm scanning, print-out and duplicating ones. The possibility of publishing or republishing 200 - 2,000 books on a single CD-ROM does excite me with its prospects. Why doesn't it excite you? - J.Z., 1.6.01.

OPPORTUNITY: Since the reproduction and duplication potential for texts, especially plain texts, of 650-800 Mbs CD-ROMs (not to speak of DVDs and blue light CDs), for this purpose, rather than for software, music, games, encylcopedias and directories is so large, it seems to deter most people, almost as would a large new library building, if they were expected to have to fill with their own collection. In this false image they ignore that via the Internet and scanning as well as keyboarding many people, from all over the world, in most language areas, could easily and significantly contribute to fill such a "library on a disk". They do not have to know each other personally. They can just be names, abilities, interests and Mbs offers to each other, on the common list. The rest is up to those listed with common interests. They may never come to meet personally, and may come to know of each other only via reputation, and through their texts on a common CD-ROM. But to that extent they could and should collaborate, in line with their priority interests, until the whole backlog of the job is done. Please do compare the cost savings and productivity options, as well as the permanency of such combined offers with the temporary existence of meetings and conferences of libertarians. Finally, when all their past texts are thus made cheaply and permanently accessible, then, for all their future individual and group contributions, they would have a ready market waiting for them. - On the other hand, they have not been deterred from using 1.44 Mbs floppy disks to save their smaller files. They have merely failed to use them, extensively, for the recording and spreading of libertarian books, with their memory size extended, via zipping, to about 6 Mbs, in this also almost ridiculously cheap format. Naturally, CD-ROMs, for almost the same low price, could come to offer more than 100 times as much, even unzipped. - Can we afford to remain blind to such opportunities? I guess most libertarians have, by now, dozens if not hundreds of music CD-ROMs. Since these contain as a rule only about 74 minutes of music, they may have jumped to the wrong conclusion, that CD-ROMs would have as little power regarding texts as well - and this in spite of the evidence provided by encyclopaedias and software offers on single disks. People are not always observant, logical and draw the right conclusions. Often they are much more influenced by mere images, popular notions and public opinion, even when, like libertarians, on many other points, they do oppose public opinion. We are still all children of our times and our environment. I know that the wrong image of the microfilm options has persisted for many decades and by now I tried to swim against this current for about 25 years. The Internet hasn't provided, as yet, sufficient enlightenment on this freedom option, either. People are still conditioned to consider the expense of, say, $ 50 for a good used microfiche reading machine to be an expensive luxury, while they are ready to spend the same amount for a single printed book. With the used fiche reading machine they could access hundreds to thousands of texts otherwise unobtainable to them or available only at much higher prices. In the same way, with the CD-ROM drive in their computer, they could access hundreds to thousands of libertarian texts on a single and cheap CD-ROM. But do people always rationally calculate their cheapest options? Not even the micro-economists do. And with macroeconomists creative and wide-ranging imagination is usually in short supply. They rather adhere to false and dogmatic notions and sometimes are prepared to walk over millions of corpses in the pursuit of their flawed dreams and their attempt force them upon others.

OUT OF PRINT & IN PRINT FREEDOM WRITINGS, IN ALL MEDIA: Where on the Internet do you find out how much freedom information is in print, in one or the other medium and how much is still unpublished or out of print? Where do you find out how much is offered already on microfilm, on floppy disks and on CD-ROMs? There are some directories to most microfilmed information available now. However, these directories are provided by monopoly holders, in all too expensive printed handbooks and on all too expensive CD-ROMs. There are also some guides to information provided on CD-ROMs. Alas, to my knowledge, they guide mostly only to music, games and software! Do you know of exceptions to this rule, especially of CD-ROMs offering large quantities of freedom texts? Please, tell me if you do! - I read hints that the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam has microfilmed much of its material. But I could not find out how much and whether it has been done only for preservation purposes or for the sale of duplicate films of its material. Its catalogs are accessible online but I have not yet been able to find out, there, details on its microfilm offers. Does it offer any CD-ROM texts, too, apart from their edition of Bakunin's works? Their website is: www.iisg.nl It does not indicate the quantity of their material that is on microfilm - or on CD-ROMs. Nor does it indicate which of its titles or authors are anarchistic. The Library of Congress offers also, online, extensive lists of its microfilm collections, alas, without sorting out those that deal with freedom subjects. The same applies, to my knowledge, to all the guides to microforms and CDs in print, and even to most of the large guides to books in print or out of print. I suppose many pro-freedom titles are more or less buried in these guides, and in library catalogs, unrecognizable by title and author, at least to me and others who do not know them.

PARTICIPATION IN THE PROJECT: WHAT KIND OF ENTRIES ARE WANTED? Some might merely enter that they would be interested in purchasing some finished libertarian CD-ROMs. Others might allow their websites to be included or their printed texts to be digitized for such publishing. Some might reserve copyrights, others not. Some might offer some scanning ability and facility for certain kinds of texts. Others might offer their editing and disk "burning" skills. Ideally, all should indicate how many Kbs or Mbs they can offer and in what format. They should also indicate their special interests, e-mail and website address and the kind of material that they have to offer for this project and any special knowledge and skills they are prepared to offer to it. Monetary contributions are not required at this stage but once the whole is sufficiently organized then advance payments for certain types of libertarian CD-ROMs should not necessarily be refused. They might help to get them produced faster. A few might plan to become duplicators and distributors for finished libertarian CD-ROMs, if established distributors, like Laissez Faire Books, do not take over this activity. (On the other hand, its anarchist segment might be reduced rather than expanded as a result by its recent take-over by FEE, which I do highly respect in its sphere - freedom economics and limited government. )

PDF FORMAT, IN COMBINATION WITH FREE ADOBE SOFTWARE: This was often recommended to me as an option for filling CD-ROMs. I am still in doubt about it. To me the exact reproduction of original texts on screen, via scanning texts as images, is less important than is the possibility to combine as many OCR scanned and proof-read libertarian texts on a CD-ROM as possible. In PDF only the image of the text seems to be reproduced, and this requires too many Kbs per page. Moreover, at least the printing-out of PDF files seems to go much slower, at least with my system, and, possibly, the downloading of them as well. But there seem to be advantages in scanning, by eliminating the need for proof reading. However, I would rather see a CD-ROM offer 160,000 to 220,000 pages in OCR scanned and proofread text than only ca. 4000 - 30,000 pages in PDF. But, to each his own. I would certainly not protest and oppose any effort to offer many libertarian texts in PDF. After all, even the reproduction of a single book on a CD-ROM is already economical. It merely does not offer the advantages of a small special freedom library. Nor is a PDF compilation of texts on a CD-ROM already amounting to a small special reference library but merely to a small set of books. Perhaps I am wrong about this. If so, then please enlighten me. Consider this as an open entry and growing handbook on the CD-ROM project, one that could and should be added to by anyone interested. Just send me your additions and corrections and tell me under which catchword I should include them. While it is still rather short, it could be easily transmitted via e-mail upon request, in its latest version, hopefully then being improved by YOU!

PERIODICALS, BACK ISSUES ON CD-ROMS: While most libertarian periodicals, pushed on paper, are not yet ready to convert entirely to alternative media, they would be advised to consider offering all their back issues either online or on CD-ROM or in both formats and at least on microfiche or floppy disks or via e-mail, provided they are paid for their extra troubles. There are hundreds of libertarian and thousands of anarchist magazines, newsletters and series, all more or less struggling, trying to ride a costly, risky and ancient paper and print tiger. Many of them have only a short life-span and then become rarities that are usually not seen again by most libertarians and anarchists for years to decades and only a few lucky people are able to obtain complete sets. Actually, most libertarians do not see most of them even while they are still in print! Why should they not all be combined in one or a few CD-ROMs? To the extent that they contain illustrations, I for one would prefer that these would be published separately. Rarely do illustrations convey good sound ideas well enough and their inclusion would make large inroads upon possible text offers. Anyhow, they could continue to be offered online. Maybe later on we could also proceed to reproduce illustrated editions on CD-ROMs, for those who prefer them - but I hold that the plain text editions, complete and cheap, should come first.

PHOTOCOPYING FROM TEXTSBOOKS FOR STUDENTS AS AN ANALOGY FOR INDIVIDUAL DOWNLOADING FROM THE INTERNET: 20 years ago I noticed similar dis-economies e.g. for seminar papers for students. They were expensively & laboriously photocopied from textbooks and then every student was supplied with one of these expensive sets of photocopies. copies. Seminar papers, I noticed then, could be much more economically photocopied just once and then microfiched and supplied on cheap microfiche duplicates to any large group of students. Nevertheless, most lecturers did not have the good sense to adopt that innovation, not even in the economics departments! One reason for this might have been that the lecturers themselves did not have to foot the costs and labours of the photocopying. But this process reduced their budget options. And students themselves might have taken such an initiative. Instead, they acted like sheep, too.

PORTABILITY: "I got a new mobile phone yesterday. It costs nothing more than a guaranty that I will continue to make a few calls a month, yet it plugs into my Psion organiser - another wonderful device - and lets me use the Net anywhere in the world (except for backwaters like the U.S."). - Graeme Philipson, geepee@philipson.com.au in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 10.10.00, www.it.fairfax.com.au - You could probably acquire a small and portable CD-ROM drive, as provided for music disks, and likewise connect it to a palm top. A thin pack of 10 CD-ROMs would probably be all the libertarian information most libertarians would ever want on hand, and take along to meetings, from all the libertarian information available to them on, maybe, 300 CDs. Anyhow, most libertarians could take their lap tops and a small selection of CD-ROMs along. By now many of these do fill only a fraction of a standard briefcase.

PRECEDENTS OR PIONEERING EFFORTS: Those listed are invited, nay, even begged by me, to point out any libertarian CD-ROMs already offered by someone.

PRECEDENTS: If you need precedents to grasp this proposal, consider THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE, on one CD-ROM and the number of large encyclopaedias which are offered in this format. Ponder also why so many music and software CD-ROMs are offered and so few, if any, libertarian and text-only CD-ROMs. - The Library of the Future brings on a single CD-ROM over 5,000 texts, not all book-sized but some freedom texts are already included there. Naturally, the vast number of CDs containing only music, games, software of multi-media offers could also have served as a precedent for thoughtful libertarians, always on the lookout of better chances for their own efforts. The CDs offering the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary are pretty well known, as well as are some other encyclopaedias and reference works. CD-Roms have also long become give-aways for computer magazines. Some issues even offer 2 or 3 CD-ROMs in a pack. That should have set some libertarian minds thinking. The Gutenberg Project seems to advance fast, but seems to have so far considered only offering its books online, not on CD-ROMs. Last time I read about their output they were adding about 36 titles a months. Some freedom books are already in their list. If you believe in this approach, by all means, send them your favorite titles in digitized forms for inclusion or send them to another electronic online publisher, like e.g. BOOKS ONLINE. Between them they offered, some years ago about 10,000 books. I do not know the current total of this output. Do you? The AMERICAN REFERENCE LIBRARY, also called AMERICAN FREEDOM LIBRARY (constitutionalist libertarians) offers on over 160,000 pages over 55,000 source documents, on one CD-ROM, for ca. US $ 90. The printed texts are offered for ca. $ 11,000. (Some food for thought, this difference!) I also bought, as a precedent or example to be followed by libertarians, for A $ 32.95, from Harvey Norman, the Eurekamultimedia edition, for Mac & Windows, of 4,000 Classical Works of Literature. It contains Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason, Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, some work by Rudyard Kipling and some by Mark Twain: www.eurekasoftware.com.au I am waiting for similarly comprehensive offers by anarchists and libertarians, fully utilizing the potential of a CD-ROM, on for steps towards such compilations, to be indicated in my still all too short list or otherwise. Once I get, by e-mail, 10 new addresses for this list, then I will know that the realization of this project, by those listed, will not be far away.

PRICES. See: BURNERS & CD-ROM blanks, & COSTS.

PRICES, SOME HISTORICAL HINTS ON HOW THE PRICES FOR BURNERS & DISKS HAVE COME DOWN: Recently I cam across, once again, a clipping of an article by Gareth Powell, in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD of 23/12/85, headed: Take my tip, laser discs are up and running, it's gospel. In it he pointed out, among other things: "… how about every telephone number in the US on one disk with so much space left over the publishers have added Roget's Thesaurus and a dictionary to fill up the disc? These new, information-crammed disks are the first of a flood of what, it appears, will be known as 'Vast Volume Information Technology'. Typically, each disc costs something under $ US 200 each and the laser disk player needed to get the information from the disk to your computer costs something under US $ 1,500 street price." - He was not imaginative enough when he predicted: "The disc drive itself will bottom out at around $ US 500 …" - On the other hand, at least for special literature, the growth of the use of this medium has not been as large as he expected it to be. - In a special file, CD-ROM DirectoriesANLtxt, 19 Kbs, available from me via e-mail, I have compiled some notes on how many and what kinds of CD-ROMs have been offered since. More information on this is always welcomed by me, as long as it is of some interest to libertarians.

PRICING: The pricing of libertarian CD-ROMs that contained copyrighted texts would have to be optimally set for the copyrights holders, between the prices for the printed text books that are offered in it (if they are in print) and the prices at which they could be delivered on a CD-ROM. The earnings per title in books on CD would be much smaller so the price for the CD should be increased but not so much to as to lose the advantage that could be derived from a wider spread for books on CD than for the books expensively produced and spread in print on paper. Paper and other reproduction rights could be reserved on the CD as well as on a website and a program could be placed on the CD that would prevent it being copied at all or copied several times. All such worries would be on the shoulders of advocates and users of copyrights. Those not favoring such restrictions might come to conquer the market with cheaper CD-ROM offers.

PRIZE OFFER BY LMP: 100 LMP microfiche, your choice, from my literature lists on the Web, are offered to the first who points out to me a tabulation of the advantages and disadvantages of all the alternative media, indicating e.g. their costs per page reproduced on a duplicate, or to anyone who compiles such a table for me and all others who would be interested in it. If the information revolution were already sufficiently completed, by the present Internet offers, then the compilation of such a table should be easy.

PROFIT INCENTIVES: How can one induce those seeking profits or cost recovery via copyrights, to use the CD-ROM option? Should one first of all exclude all such material - and let their owners bother to offer it themselves, in combination, on their own special CD-ROMs, possibly combined with a program that would make the copying of these disks difficult if not impossible? Should one start only with all libertarian "freeware"? This would not be a bad start in my opinion. On top of such "freeware" offered, libertarians might offer their consultancy services or their public speaking ability or their search and research capacity. Many sites do already make no copyrights claims but welcome free and extensive copying. Or should one try to include copyrighted freedom information, too, with permission of the copyrights holders? Could one induce the defenders of "intellectual property rights" to have their sites included by a cooperatively run publishing effort that would reward contributors according to the number of pages they contributed, out of any profits that might be obtained from this publishing effort? Alternatively, would they be satisfied by an agreement that allowed every participant to independently duplicate or get duplicated a collaboratively produced libertarian CD-ROM and to try to sell these duplicates on his own account? Each wcould thus attain an additional market, as he may have already tried to reach by putting his website online. It seems to me that in this way a wider text distribution might be attained - which is lastly in the interests of every freedom lover. Moreover, the advocates of copyrights could continue to offer merely lists, abstracts and reviews or selections there and sell full texts online or on paper or on CD-ROMs, floppies or microfiche, only upon payments covering their copyrights claims and prices for their offers. This is already done extensively on the Internet. Furthermore, paper reproductions of libertarian full texts, offered in a libertarian CD-ROM might, continue to be copyrights restricted. If you come to love a particular book then, provided its printed edition is not priced out of your reach, you would probably want to acquire it as well, thus indirectly increasing the income of the author and publisher of it. But I for one would not recommend prohibiting, or making dependent upon special permission, any reproductions on still unpopular media like floppy disks, microfiche & CD-ROMs, private print-outs and the few duplications which might be made from such printouts via photocopying (which is also relatively expensive and laborious per page, especially for book-length texts). At least not while these alternatives are used as little as they are now.

PROFITABILITY OF LIBERTARIAN INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET & OF THE LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM OPTION FOR BOOKS ETC: "In fact, no-one has yet developed a profitable business plan for the Net. The only people who have taken home any profits are the speculators who buy stock and then sell it to less crafty speculators."- Douglas Rushkoff, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 10.11.00. One might add: A few hardware, software and service providers profit from those using the Internet - and mostly they earned and deserved their profits. CD-ROMs can be compiled with little financial outlay by some collaborators and duplicated, apart from small batches, only upon demand, so that enterprise risk and capital investment can be minimal. See also under COPYRIGHTS.

PROFITABLE BUSINESS OR HOBBY ACTIVITY? Until sales volumes would become attractive, the whole is to be more a labor of love, a hobby and a commitment, than a new and profit-making business.

PROFITS: I do not believe that the financial profits derivable from this form of publishing will be as great, as the savings that are involved, in most cases, compared with print on paper or even with editions on the already very much cheaper microfiche editions. However, the indirect benefits for every libertarian, from this easy and cheap availability of all libertarian texts, could, sooner or later become very large. It is up to us to achieve these indirect benefits as soon as possible by completing the job as soon as possible. Somebody once remarked that most profits are derived from reducing costs rather than adding to prices. If this is true, then CD-ROMs could offer a financial profit opportunity. That is supported also by the wide-spread use of CD-ROMs for music, software, games, directories and encyclopedias. But no world-wide movement seems to have made, so far, sufficient use of this option to offer very cheaply all its writings.

PROFITS: If a way should be found to make profits from producing libertarian texts, as are made with some directories, encyclopedias, directories, and, naturally, music, games and software, supplied on CD-ROM, then such ways will be found and used. To make profits from websites has proven to be rather difficult to impossible in most cases. The average costs of large websites, professionally compiled and maintained, are often huge and only some indirect benefits can be derived from many of them by those who offer them. People are not yet conditioned to pay for online information but they are already conditioned to pay for some information coming on CD-ROMs.

PROJECTS LIST FOR LIBERTARIANS: A common marketing website for all new libertarian options, projects, ideas, sites, texts, media etc. does, apparently, not yet exist. : If such a list already existed and were widely enough publicized then the CD-ROM project as well could be greatly promoted thereby. How could free marketeers overlook the need for such a market for so long? The equivalent to the GLOBAL IDEAS BANK (alas, mainly only for "social inventions") remains to be established on the Web, by libertarians. As well, Libertarians have failed to make sufficient use of the GLOBAL IDEAS BANK www.globalideasbank.org . It does already offer some but by far not enough freedom ideas. How is this possible for libertarians, who class themselves as free marketeers, to neglect such a marketing opportunity? I do not know but I do know that what currently passes as a free market for ideas is not very accessible for freedom ideas and even the existing freedom publications and sites are not sufficiently open to new input, either. (They do have their own priorities and limited space.) This situation might change once all websites have appendixes that allow anyone to add comments to them. But a complete change in the situation requires the establishment of a libertarian Ideas Archive. That, too, could offer much on CD-ROMs.

PROJECTS LISTS: If all libertarian projects were already listed on a common list, then publicity for each of them would thereby become relatively easy, because it would be an interesting site for those either wanting new information or ideas or wanting to make a significant contribution themselves. Ideally, the Internet should already offer a projects listing that looks for collaborators for each libertarian project. My own and very incomplete listing, in PEACE PLANS 20, of libertarian projects that could and should be promoted by world-wide collaboration, came already to 1,000, back in 1977, with my last PEACE PLANS issue printed on paper. All-over the world, one should think, there would be interest, labour of love, energy & resources for thousands of libertarian projects carried on simultaneously, in a division of labour process, provided only the necessary contacts can be easily, cheaply and fast enough established and maintained. For this purpose e-mail & web surfing seem ideal and the Internet was originally invented for scholars trying to internationally collaborate in an easy way. A short list of about 50 of my own projects is contained in the introduction to my website. PEACE PLANS 20, as well as issues 1-19, are now available via e-mail from me, at least until they become available on any libertarian website or CD-ROM.

PUBLICITY AND COPYRIGHTS: My lists, advertisements and explanations of the CD-ROM project are not copyrighted and could and should be freely copied, duplicated and also freely edited and supplemented. Even a bad expression might help to inspire an excellent formulation. There are probably thousands of libertarians who could promote this project much better than I could. I wish they did, the sooner the better.

PUBLICITY FOR THIS LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM PROJECT? Firstly, no copyrights is claimed. Anyone is invited to print it out, photocopy and airmail it or to send it as an e-mail attachment to whoever he likes, preferably with his comments. Anyone is invited to attempt to turn this project into a financially profitable business, if he can. It is worth a try, anyhow. In getting more and more freedom information very easily and cheaply accessible, it can become "profitable" for millions of freedom seekers very soon. The sufficient publication and realization of a project like that described in PEACE PLANS 19C, for privatizing all public assets, could turn every Australian into a millionaire. But where and how can one today effectively publicize any libertarian project? You tell me or try it yourself. Certainly, you can afford an e-mail or a letter to a prospect that you would recommend? See also under PROJECTS LISTS. There are now several libertarian news services. Will they regard this project as "news"? Well, one can only try. Most managed to keep silent about my libertarian microfiche offers and have discussed neither the microfiche not the floppy disk or the CD-ROM publishing option or used them for themselves. "None so blind as he who will not see." They may merely apply a very narrow definition to "news". I for one hold significant new ideas, or old ones, that are still all too little known, to be newsworthy or deserving maximum publicity. What I can do is to attach a short description of the project to all my e-mail and invite my correspondents to do the same. Beyond that, I have written shortly (and sometimes at too great a length) to international groups of libertarians, their publications and some other selected addresses, by e-mail, with a summary on this subject attached. I declared that if they showed interest, then I could send the short alphabetized list so far compiled, as an attachment. Alas, such limited efforts of mine did not achieve a chain reaction and thus, after a while, I discontinued them, merely adding some references to my ordinary e-mails. You can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make it drink. - By all means, do use all your publicity skills, in your circles and media, for this project and it might come to be realized fast, for your own benefit and that of all other freedom lovers. IF YOU can manage to persuade them, contact, e.g., the various vanity presses and SF fan groups to take up this offer and to help to popularize it among libertarians as well. I tried, in vain, to approach such organizations and also second-hand book dealers with their microfiche publishing options. Antiquarians could publish rare books on microfiche or combine many of them books on CD-ROMs and sell them over and over again, although at a very much reduced price. It seems that they would rather keep them rare and expensive. As for the excuses of libertarians and anarchists for not becoming involved with this freedom of expression and information option, you do probably know them better than I do. What is obvious to one or a few is not always obvious to all or to the majority or even to a considerable minority. Libertarians should know all about that.

PUBLICITY: All entered in the list should pass on at least minimum information on this project to all their libertarian contacts, e.g. by copying short advertisements, including them in their periodicals and attaching them to their e-mails, writing up this option in articles in the libertarian press or at least by referring to the URL when the list is finally made available one a large or popular libertarian website. This pro-freedom opportunity has been neglected for all too long.

PUBLISHING AND CAPITAL RISK? CD-ROMs, too, like microfiche and floppy disk editions, could be produced only upon demand, apart from small batches to have immediately some on hand to mail them upon orders. Essentially, only some labours of love and skill are involved in compiling them. The capital required is ridiculously small. Disks are extremely cheap. Ordinary CD-ROM drives are now about A $ 100 or even cheaper and burners have been offered for as little as A $ 128. The blank CDs are down to A $ 39 cents and may come to fall even further. Thus the costs and "risks" of this enterprise would be negligible. The greatest danger and risk consists in this that libertarians are not sufficiently interested in getting all their literature cheaply, easily and permanently available, in a convenient enough format, to bother providing it thus themselves and for themselves.

PUBLISHING CAPACITY: Are there many publishers in the world who annually publish more in texts than could be placed upon a single cheap CD-ROM blank? When I left Germany, back in 1959, ca. 800 German publishers produced only 1-3 books per annum. My father was one of them. Very few were able to make a living this way. Most were idealists or special interest people who wanted to publish, even at a loss. Very few CD-ROMs could have combined all their output - at little risk and expense to themselves. But they could hardly have charged as much for their titles, in this format, as they did for them in print on paper. Nor could they have suffered as great losses with them. And they could also have offered their single titles on floppy disks, at high prices, perhaps with a program to prevent copying. Laissez Faire Books claims to offer more freedom titles than anyone else. In book form and in sales, this is probably quite right. But, in numbers of titles offered and their pages, in any medium? LMP might still be able to exceed its offers, to that extent, and Bell & Howell might, as least with its collection of anarchist pamphlets, reproduced on microfiche, which amounts, probably and still, to the largest single anarchist publishing effort ever. To my knowledge none of the anarchist groups, bookshops, publishers and periodicals took notice of this offer, discussed it and promoted it. Will libertarians come to ignore their own literature as well, to the extent that it becomes only available on CD-ROMs? That remains to be seen.

QUANTITY OF LIBERTARIAN LITERATURE, NUMBER OF TITLES AND PAGES: Alas, so far no one knows how many freedom writings were ever written, remained unpublished or were published, but are now out of print, and how many of its writings are still not translated into all major languages, because no comprehensive freedom bibliography has ever been compiled. To publish it on paper would have been too expensive. Now a comprehensive libertarian bibliography - and many other reference guides - could be cheaply compiled and published on several alternative media but all of these are still vastly under-utilized and unappreciated. A complete bibliography would also point out which libertarian titles ought to made accessible soon and permanently at least on affordable alternative media.

READING CAPACITY & OPPORTUNITY: A single and text only CD-ROM could already provide a small freedom library containing 200-2000 books or their equivalents. Ten such disks could provide probably as much freedom information as most freedom lovers want for themselves while 300 might be able to provide the lot. How much easier, cheaper, smaller or convenient do we want our freedom information to be? If we can manage to achieve that, why don't we? We certainly have not yet achieved enough with out conventional and all too incomplete, temporary and expensive reproductions of libertarian texts. Who knows what might be achieved with a complete, cheap and permanent information offer of this kind?

SALES POTENTIAL: So far the sales potential for libertarian CD-ROMs appears larger than the sales potential of online offers. Pulpless.com, with some real bargains, is exploring the latter option at least for some SF and libertarian interest books. Even single floppies, in plain text and zipped, could convey, very cheaply and fast enough for most purposes, ca. 6 Mbs. - For those who want to have nothing to do with the distribution work, like most authors of printed books, this job could be taken over by specialists for a commission. - While the profits that could be gained by a single author through a single CD-ROM that reproduced his book together with hundreds of others, would be very small, the potential audience for him is already around 500 million computer users, while printed book editions for bestsellers are still confined, mostly, to about 100,000 to 1 million impressions. And the very ease of copying CD-ROMs, even if illegally and not earning them thus even cents per copy, could make their names much more widely known and thus offer other earnings opportunities for them. An author could offer readings of or talks about his work, together with reviews and correspondence, also very cheaply, upon demand, on a CD-ROM. It would be an ideal medium to offer and spread his collected works, together with criticism and his responses to it. Look at the numerous web pages of Prof. Rudy Rummel, on the connection between liberty and peace. They constitute a voluminous work that will one day be generally considered as a classical contribution. These thousands of pages, dozens of essays and books, could be much more conveniently supplied on a single CD-ROM and sold, more cheaply, to many more people than his printed books could be.

SALESMANSHIP, EFFICIENT: If there are efficient salesmen for the CD-ROM project and, later, for libertarian CD-ROMs already produced, once quantities of them are offered for sale, then they, too, should come forward now and announce their services to all those interested in this medium. After all, most libertarians do favour division of labor as well and should not try to undertake all the required steps quite on their own or only within their group.

SAVINGS THROUGH CD-ROMS VS. ON LINE SEARCHES & DOWNLOADINGS OF MANY AND LONG TEXTS: Have you considered, in detail, the money and labour cost savings possible in getting your freedom information rather in CD-ROMs, floppies and microfiche than online? Once you have paid all your telephone and connection costs, your online pages seem to come free of charge. But if you added up the number of pages from long texts that you read or downloaded within a year, the hours spent on this and the connection charges involved, then how close to zero would the price per page of a freedom book become, if it is accessed in this way? Pushbutton convenience and fast, safe and complete downloading (IF it happens) do have considerable advantages for certain types of wanted information, but hardly for long texts that you want to have on hand for reference reading. - Rather than spending $ 250 to 500 to get 10 new freedom books, you might have to spend only $ 50 for one libertarian CD-ROM containing, say, 500 freedom books. Compared with finding them on and then downloading them from the Internet, if they were already available there, you might thus be able to save 400 hours of hard and boring downloading work and $ 1,200 in connection fees. Why not take the long term and economic point of view. Why waste part of your life span and resources unnecessarily?

SCANNING OPTIONS & DIVISION OF LABOUR TO SCAN IN WHOLE BOOKS: Scanners have greatly improved and have come very much down in their prices (One Canon scanner, with Omnipage 9 OCR program, had come down to A $ 99!) - but to scan-in a whole book, then to sufficiently proofread and correct the text, is still a major job. (Unless you scan the texts in merely as images. Then you need not correct the OCR results but can put less text onto a CD-ROM.) The correction requirement for texts scanned with OCR may be a second cause for the scarcity of freedom texts offered in this format. Keyboarding-in as much information as would fill a whole text-only CD-ROM would also take a long time, I have not yet estimated how long. - But what is difficult to impossible for an individual could become relatively light work via international division of labour among libertarians, interconnected via e-mail, once a sufficient number of libertarians have been mobilized for this project or took an initiative in this direction themselves. They could share the labours involved with each title and the proceeds from the sale of such CD-ROMs, if any either, e.g., by the number of pages each of them contributed or by allowing all contributors to make and sell duplicates of their cooperative compilation of a libertarian CD-ROM.

SCHISMS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS AMONG THE ADVOCATES: Whenever there are too many disagreements between potential collaborators then a schism would be in order. After all, 39 cents blank CD-ROMs, with a potential space for 650 Mbs unzipped and 2.6 Gbs zipped libertarian texts, are not a fortune worth arguing about. Anyone can afford them. Even the burners and scanners have become relatively cheap. But most people have to get some collaborators a) in order to get such a disk optimally filled or filled to a considerable degree and b) because the more contributions by others are included, the better chance their own contributions get to be seen by a wider audience.

SEARCH ENGINES & SPECIAL LIBERTARIAN INTERESTS: Search engines and individual search efforts might already supply you on certain subjects with more information than you can or want to handle. But they do not guaranty and cannot guarantee as yet that this information is complete and does contain the information which would have the highest priority for you. On a CD-ROM, instead, the best researchers can make information as complete as it can be, for the time being, from the IN & other sources. Supplements to annual and specialized libertarian CD-ROM editions could be subscribed to and delivered on floppies, via e-mail or online.

SEARCH ENGINES STILL FLAWED. LINKAGES STILL INCOMPLETE: We would not have to depend upon still inefficient search engines to point out all freedom sites separately, if we ourselves inter-linked all our freedom sites or listed all of them. Then a single search engine, leading to one freedom site, would lead the searcher indirectly to all others. Why have several pro-freedom web-rings when one could be enough, or one just for all libertarians and one for all anarchists? Or a single neutral one that would point out all sites that significantly stand for freedom. On CD-ROMs the results of many different web searches, with many different search engines could be combined - together with libertarian texts not yet offered on any websites.

SELF-HELP BY INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR GROUPS RATHER THAN BY A CENTRAL ORGANIZATION FOR ALL: Most of the work to be done should be done by the people listed rather than for the people listed. Imagining somebody trying to organize all printing and all broadcasting or all the use of floppy disks for the publishing of libertarian texts. CD-ROMs, like floppy disks and microfiche, are, essentially, a self-publishing option. The sooner that is realized, the more these options will become utilized in their strengths. Free enterprise and free competition in the production and distribution of libertarian texts on CD-ROMs as well as in printed books, brochures, pamphlets and periodicals.

SELF-MANAGEMENT & EXPERTS: The libertarian CD-ROM projects, suggested by this list, should be self-initiated by self-selected individuals and groups among those listed. Experts should be free to offer their services to them, by also entering themselves in the list.

SEPARATE CD-ROM PRODUCTION CIRCLES FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIBERTARIANS: More than one production circle for libertarian CD-ROM production might be necessary or advisable, e.g. libertarian and anarchist ones, and, among these, different ones for adherents to copyrights and for opponents of copyrights. Each group could do its things separately. But they should be tolerant enough to at least point out the existence of the other groups and of their offers.

SLOGANS FOR LIBERTY: My collection of this kind, in 7 volumes on 7 microfiche so far, A - Government, is already so voluminous that it certainly would not fit on a floppy disk or on my website. On a CD-ROM it could be cheaply published and come to grow, almost without limits, hopefully gradually extracting concise expressions for liberty not only from ca. 15,000 quotation books but from all libertarian writings in any format. The Internet does not, so far, offer any integrated and very large quotation collection but, to my knowledge, only a number of dispersed, different and all too short ones. Nor do most of them seem to be prepared to add an unlimited number of relevant and often required comments, critical remarks and further developed expressions, to all or many of their quotes. As if proverbial wisdom should not often need correction or supplementation, even if it originated with now famous people.

SMUGGLING FREEDOM INFORMATION: Not the least advantage of CD-ROMs is that they are so small and concealable that they could be smuggled with relative ease, like drugs are, into countries which restrict freedom of expression and information. Even packets of leaflets on paper used to be carried over the "iron curtain" and the "bamboo curtain" on balloons. CD-ROMs are cheap enough for such wasteful distribution method as well. Even if only a few got through, this might be enough, e.g., for a comprehensive libertarian military insurrection or revolution program. They could do much more good than mere leaflets. If free migration were sufficiently realized in the supposedly free countries, then these disks, on the eye-legible label, could also contain an asylum offer, for the victimizers as well as the victims in despotically ruled countries. Victimizers armed with ABC mass murder devices must be left a safe way out as well, in order not to drive them to desperate steps when their positions and powers are, finally, threatened. They should even be offered amnesty and protection IF they do at least destroy one mass murder device or surrender it or reveal its hiding place.

SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS OF OUR TIMES: Freedom offers the best, the most just, peaceful and easiest solutions to most of the remaining problems, or at least the best avenues for solving them faster. Thus it is important that all this information is finally made fully, permanently and cheaply available, even extending to the freedom options that are involved in health, longevity, intelligence expansion and space exploration and use. CD-ROMs are a medium on which all the small and large steps towards liberty could be very cheaply and permanently described and made accessible to almost everybody. (In poor countries at least groups could organize to purchase CD-ROMs and CD-ROM drives and display units, in the same way as groups of workers in the 19^th century sometimes bought expensive books, that were of interest to them, via a cooperative action. Or generous and financial groups of libertarians, in developed countries, might donate a computer and set of CD-ROMs to libertarian groups in underdeveloped countries. That would be much cheaper than donating to them many printed freedom books.) Imagine a comprehensive freedom library in every country, in every large city, even in every town and in many private libraries! Ponder also the availability of all desirable reference tools in these libraries, all or almost all, also on CD-ROMs.

SPEED OF ONLINE CONNECTIONS, THE FUTURE SUPER-INFORMATION HIGHWAY. Perhaps, one day, in the not too distant future, the speed of online connections will be so fast and the information offered so complete that the compilation and sale of special freedom libraries on CD-ROMs will become obsolete. Once you can download all freedom books in 10 seconds to 10 hours, you will not want to purchase and read them on CD-ROM. Perhaps by then your hard disk drive will be large enough for this downloading. However, we are still years to decades away from that achievement. In the meantime, libertarians ought to resort to self-help with the best or most economical and already widely accepted of those means now available for them and already enormously efficient in the quantity of information they can offer, namely, a whole small freedom library on a single CD-ROM. I would gladly have done without push-button access to libertarian information if I had always found the books I wanted or could always have afforded to buy all of them or to send book hunters after them. As it is, my own freedom library, like that of most other libertarians, and that of all public or think tank libraries, is still VERY incomplete. To my knowledge a complete freedom library does not exist anywhere as yet. Isn't that some food for thought and could it not be related to the fact that freedom is still all too incompletely realized our world?

SPEED OF ONLINE TRANSMISSION VS. SPEED OF SNAIL MAILING WHOLE SMALL FREEDOM LIBRARIES ON CD-ROMs: Seeing that one will take usually at least months, if not years, to read all or many of the texts on a libertarian CD-ROM, it hardly matters if they are snail-mailed only and take 10 days to arrive. In the meantime, one could download one or a few books that are online and that are needed almost immediately. The selection of CD-ROMs could be done via a website and the ordering at the speed of e-mail.

STARTING STEPS FOR THIS PROJECT: I for one seek contacts with libertarians who have a general interest in it and who are willing and able to invest some skilled labour in it and all those who can already offer some Mbs towards filling the first CD-ROM. I suggest that it should be a text-only one, to include as many texts as possible, and that as far as possible it should fairly cover the whole freedom spectrum. Later, more specialized ones could be produced, left and right-wing (or upwing ) ones, copyrighted ones and those without copyrights claims, as well as disks in particular languages. If you are somewhat interested in this project, do send me your address, especially an e-mail one and also the estimated number of Mbs and their special subjects, which you would be willing to contribute. - Thereupon I would update my list of such addresses and make it accessible to all interested, either by separate e-mail or on my website, hoping that soon one or several organizers and programmers would come forward, to whom I would gladly transfer my file. They could come to gather in the MB offers themselves, or refer them to collection points named in the list, assemble them properly and then offer the first small libertarian library on a single CD-ROM, the sooner the better. The first batch of pressed CD-ROMs, produced by a commercial service bureau, at the most competitive price, need only be a small one, to have some duplicates immediately on hand to fill orders. More batches need be ordered only upon demand in accordance with orders received. Once the first such disk is successful, then its example would, most likely, be followed or copied soon, by many such offers, until the whole job is done. And the whole job might require only 300 CD-ROMs, for text-only disks. But, see under COPYRIGHTS.

SUPPLEMENTARY VALUE OF CD-ROMS. Like audio and video tapes, CD-ROMs offer libraries and bookshops as well as private libraries and publishers a great and cheap supplementary option. CD-ROMs are not likely to ever supplement all other media but they can efficiently and cheaply supplement them. For me it does not matter much in which format desired information comes - as long as I can open it up easily and cheaply for my purposes. CD-ROMs have already spread into certain niche markets. They can do the same for libertarian books and other libertarian writings.

SURVEY AND TABULATION OF ALL ALTERNATIVE MEDIA WITH THEIR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES, COSTS AND COST SAVINGS, E.G. PER DUPLICATED PAGE: - No affordable and efficient alternative medium would be ignored as much, as has been the case so far, is such a survey had been provided and sufficiently published. Test your faith in the Internet by trying to compile all such information from there! Such a tabulation would be essential for rational decision making on the use of alternative media. With such a tabulation the advantages e.g. of microfiche, floppies & CD-ROMs for book publishing would not have remained as unknown or unappreciated as they are today. See under PRIZE for the reward for such a table offered by me.

TEXT SELECTION FOR THE FIRST ISSUE: What kinds of texts would be especially desirable for an annual text-only libertarian CD-ROM? So far I have got a considerable number of Mbs offered of material by and on Stirner, one longevity group and a leftist anarchist group in Melbourne. They do not sufficiently represent the broad spectrum of freedom lovers. That would be essential for a first edition. Other essential segments would be: A combined links list, a combined general freedom directory, an alphabetical author and subject bibliography, an abstracts compilation, a growing index to all its texts (later to all libertarian texts), the start of a compilation of all libertarian reviews, a first compilation towards a list of all on-going libertarian projects, contributions towards a growing libertarian encyclopaedia, and text contributions towards a growing libertarian library, including all freedom texts of the past and present. - In other words, some parts would be forever changing and growing. Others would just be reproductions of parts of an ever growing libertarian library. But even here the almost "unlimited" publishing opportunities that are involved would offer interesting options, namely the publication of extensive criticism and discussions of each significant libertarian text.

TEXTS SUITABLE OR UNSUITABLE FOR CD-ROM REPRODUCTION: Naturally, not all texts are suitable for combining and selling on CD-ROM. Those which will continue to be optimally offered on the Internet, e.g. daily news, prices etc., will continue to be offered there. But we should not expect the Internet to become dominant or exclusive or economically optimal for all purposes. This situation might change once all information is already digitized and transmission speeds as well as search engines have been vastly improved. But that might take many years still, if not decades.

TEXTS TO BE SO OFFERED: Unchanging and long-text information can be handled better and more economically this way. Libertarian CD-ROMs could go on being efficiently supplemented online, by news and updates as well as current discussions, perhaps on a single or only a few websites, instead of on thousands.

THINK TANKS: What have the dozens of libertarian think tanks to say on the subject? Are they, too, addicts to paper, websites etc. only, ignoring their more affordable & powerful alternatives? Have they considered the whole of the information market, all the alternative media, or, have they, like general media institutes, largely ignored them, in favour of conventional, expensive, labour intensive and popular media for libertarian literature production?

TRANSLATIONS OF ALL LIBERTARIAN TEXTS INTO AT LEAST ALL MAJOR LANGUAGES. The translation of many libertarian texts has often been delayed or was not undertaken at all, for many years, sometimes many decades. Among the major reasons for this were the costs and risks of conventional publishing. With alternative media these costs are reduced close enough to zero and translators could afford to offer their work in these formats themselves. This option is likely to appeal to at least many hobby translators, who could use their so published translations also as vehicles for self-advertising of whatever else they have to offer. I for one would welcome even less than perfect translations as better, in most cases, than none at all. Moreover, these could motivate better translators and lovers of the same texts, to either improve these faulty ones or produce much better ones. If they wanted to, they could reserve to themselves publishing rights for paper editions, broadcasts etc, just like many people do with their websites.

TRUST: Do not trust my estimates, assertions and statements. Do check them out. Convince yourself rather than be persuaded by my own flawed knowledge, persuasion and writing attempts. Just start from obvious facts like those, that not all freedom writings have been published so far, kept in print or sufficiently translated, largely regardless of the value of their contributions to the total liberation effort. Libertarian libraries, bookshops and mailing services are still few and very incomplete and what is offered on the very promising Internet, even after it has already existed for many years, is still very limited, at least when it comes to libertarian books, encyclopedias or special libraries. Neither the promises of printing nor of the Internet were so far fulfilled or are likely to be fulfilled in a short time. Then consider what alternatives exist to speed-up our enlightenment efforts, without ignoring, out of hand, or out of prejudices, any of the alternative media, at least not until one has come to know enough about them for an informed judgment.

UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES & AID IN FORM OF FREEDOM INFORMATION, PRIVATELY SUPPLIED: While even the somewhat developed countries are still under-supplied with pro-freedom information in conventional formats and seeing that their production, storage and distribution costs are relatively high, they have no chance to donate sufficient quantities of their kind of information in these formats to many or most people in still more underdeveloped countries. Cheap and efficient alternative media could radically change this situation. Our private foreign aid programs, in form of complete freedom information, could do more for underdeveloped countries than all other foreign aid and foreign investments combined have done so far for them.

UPDATING OF LIBERTARIAN CD-ROMs: Firstly, they are so cheap that updates could be put out annually and perhaps even quarterly. Secondly, the latest additions and corrections could be offered on special websites for them, to which each CD-ROM would refer.

VIRUS RISK & CD-ROM ADVANTAGES: By now at least 60,000 viruses have been produced and launched, starting a whole new industry, virus protection. It is mainly needed for on-line connections. CD-ROMs would need only an initial virus scan, before their duplication and would then be safe from such attacks, while being used - as far as I know. That applies at least to the CD-ROM disks, not to the read and write ones, which could be abused by those who have broken into your system. With regard to the Write Once and Read Only CD-ROMs, at most their so far unused parts could be invaded and occupied by a virus attack. When such a CD is finished and some unused space remains, then this could be used up, somehow, to prevent further entries, which might later be picked up by one's system. Their compilation could avoid much duplication on websites and would not gradually break down, sometimes even within months, e.g. by losing links.

VIRUS THREAT: The compilers and producers of a libertarian CD-ROM library could cope with the virus threat before pressing their CD-ROM output, doing thus this labor for all those, who would, if they could already get these texts online, have each for himself to take the necessary, time consuming and sometimes difficult steps. Finished laser CDs do also not need firewalls. But they could be pirated unless anti-copying programs are installed. I for one would welcome such pirating and thus even faster and wider spread of libertarian ideas at no expense and risk to their providers. - By the way, to call them merely viruses is not putting them down sufficiently. We should think of better terms, more suitable to make their producers feel ashamed. Vandals? Computer poisoners? Meddlers? Who can think of the best insulting and downputting term? You know how efficiently e.g. unionists used the term "scabs", authoritarians the term "anarchists" and the religious dogmatists the terms "witches" and "heretics". The term "arsonist" hasn't prevented all arson but hasn't made arsonists proud, either. Well poisoners were universally condemned and so are child molesters by most people. Let's try to find and popularize the most downputting and shame inducing and prevention achieving term!

VOLUME OF INFORMATION TO BE PLACED ON CD-ROMS OR TO BE PUBLISHED ON OTHER AND STILL BETTER MEDIA: There is still such a scarcity of information on the subject that no one seems to know how many Mbs of libertarian information are so far available, e.g. on the Internet, or on private HD's, i.e., how many CD-ROMs, for instance, would be required if all the libertarian website providers, as well as private libertarian information collectors, were to agree upon letting their information also be offered on CD-ROMs or if they were to do that themselves.

WAIT AND SEE? Should we wait until we could finally offer all libertarian texts on a single futuristic super CD-ROM or until our connections are good enough to download the equivalent of ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA within minutes or until all libertarian texts are finally put online? Or should we utilize presently available alternative media, that are lasting, powerful and cheap enough, to assemble as much as we can on them, thus becoming independent from service and website providers, telephone companies and relatively safe from so far more than 60,000 viruses that can be spread via e-mail or websites?

WANTED: Libertarians offering Mbs for the first text-only CD-ROM edition of long texts of lasting value. Mention at least one e-mail address, the number of Mbs you have to offer and their kind, but do not yet send them in. Wanted further are some libertarians skillful enough to arrange 650 Mbs of such libertarian texts optimally on one such disk and prepared to cooperate with each other in this project. I would to act only temporarily as an initiator and will pass on the addresses to anyone willing to go ahead with this project.

WASTE IN USING THE INTERNET: I shudder to think how many working hours libertarians WASTE, each SEPARATELY DOWNLOADING LARGELY THE SAME FREEDOM INFORMATION, rather than buying it, in very large batches and very cheaply on CD-ROMs. Moreover, these separate libertarian surfers and down-loaders do each contribute to slow down their connection speeds. Indeed, their special interests differ somewhat but any special interest libertarian CD-ROMs would be among the inevitable follow-up CD-ROM compilations and offers. And complete reproduction of all libertarian texts on CD-ROMs, perhaps as few as 300, could satisfy all special libertarian interests.

WASTE OF TIME & EFFORTS? CAN LIBERTARIANS AFFORD THEM? Imagine how much time, labour & money libertarian CD-ROM compilers and producers could thus save other searchers for pro-freedom materials. - So why wasn't it done so far? For individuals the job is too large. Some cooperation or collaboration is required and it has to be sufficiently organized. - Naturally, copyrights are an obstacle, too. But nothing prevents copyrights holders to combine their sites and then sell the result cooperatively on CD-ROM. See under COPYRIGHTS.

WEB SEARCHES: "Searching for information on the Web can be like finding your way around a new city with a bad map. You may eventually get where you want to go, but you'll get a headache along the way. With scores of search tools out there, why is it still so hard to find what you want? - Cecilia Kang, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 14.11.2000, PAGE 4. See: ONLINE & INTERNET. - The very existence of, maybe, ca. 2,000 search engines by now, seems to indicate that none of them has proven so far fully satisfactory.

WEBMASTERS & CD-ROM MASTERS: We have professional and hobby webmasters now, producing at almost any level of price and labor input. Similarly, we will get CD-ROM masters, either as professionals or as hobbyists.

WEBRINGS & CD-ROMS, LIBERTARIAN, ANARCHIST, & INDIVIDUALIST ONES: A CD-ROM could provide the equivalent of a libertarian webring of related sites. Perhaps it could offer more space than most of these webrings do offer so far. There are a number of libertarian, individualist and anarchist web-rings. But has anyone tried to arrange for an OPEN pro-freedom webring, one that would simply list all that want to be so listed? I for one do not master my website and its requirements sufficiently to be able to easily include all these webring links and buttons. So far I have not managed to include even one. Nor have I even seriously tried to do so. (I just mention many URLs and e-mail addresses in my literature list, indicating their microfiched texts.) One should not oneself need ANY website designer skills to be listed in a common interest links list. An e-mail notification of the existence of a new pro-freedom site, with its URL, to a single and common libertarian website list, should be enough. There it could and should be listed, almost immediately, by author, title and subject. The provider of such a common list could probably make some money by selling ad space. Then freedom website providers and freedom website browsers would not depend on knowing the URL, or name and would not depend upon rather inefficient browsers, accessing only a fraction of all freedom sites and bringing all too many unwanted references. One freedom site or portal could then lead them to all of the others. They would not miss out on any of the new or still obscure ones. Much duplication of texts, links, lists and directories could be avoided. And most of that information could also be offered in an annual Freedom "yearbook" on a CD-ROM, with reference to a particular website for updates.

WEBSITE PRESENTATIONS OF THIS LIST: What will happen when not only one or two websites help to publicize this list but a dozen or even several dozen? Presently, this possibility is under consideration by Dagny, Hubert Jongen and Christian Butterfield. Should then all of them carry their different and separate additional entries or should all these entries be somehow, laboriously or simply be integrated? The most sensible approach, it seems to me, would for them to refer to a common URL for additional entries and then, periodically, update their own list from there. Others might think of better options.

WEBSITE SPACE & E-MAIL SPACE ARE LIMITED: Whole small libraries are more economically compiled and transmitted on CD-ROMs, at least under current conditions for most Internet users. Moreover, the Internet has still only all too few libertarian texts to offer. Once libertarian texts are newly digitized, for CD-ROM issues, then their fans should, naturally, also be free to offer them online. The space available on a relatively small number of CD-ROMs is almost unlimited for libertarian texts. With most websites one reaches set Mbs limits usually much sooner.

WEBSITES, LIBERTARIAN AND ANARCHIST ONES, ARCHIVING THEM: I hold that all of them should become at least annually archived on CD-ROMs. All relevant current information could be accessed via URLs mentioned on the last CD-ROM edition. Individual downloading for short texts or single books makes sense. But for the downloading of whole libraries this is comparable to the huge effort of manually copying all of them, for all those individuals who want to possess the whole library, and to do this manually, by one scribe or whole classes of them, dictated to, in times before the printing press was invented.

WEBSITES, PERSONAL, LIMITED SPACE BY SERVICE PROVIDERS. My service provider limits me to 5 Mbs. On them I can only reproduce ca. half of my present literature list. I know that there are some "free" and larger website options but they get partly filled with advertisements. CD-ROMs have no such narrow limits. And accessing them is much cheaper. Whatever someone cannot fit into his e-mail or his website - he could offer on a CD-ROM. Even on a 1.44 Mbs floppy disk, in TXT only and zipped, he could offer ca. 6 Mbs, i.e., much more than most libertarian and anarchist websites have to offer.

WEBSITES: How many dozen or even hundreds, if not thousands of average-size websites could be put onto a single CD-ROM? How many libertarian and anarchist websites do exist so far and what is their estimated total contents in Mbs or Gbs? I can understand if somebody does not know such figures - but not if he is not even curious about them.

WHAT CAN I DO? Anything that is peaceful and tolerant, anything creative and productive, in accordance with your special interests and abilities. The medium of blank CD-ROMs is like a sheet of white paper, to be filled by you or with your help. Admittedly, with regard to CD-ROMs, a rather large "sheet of paper" or very many of them. The largest estimate I remember seeing was 220,000 pages. Add to this the zipping options. Subtract multi-media frills, which do not really add much, in most cases, to the power of ideas, expressed in words. You probably have at least some rare libertarian texts in your possession or know where they can be found and you can do your bit, monetarily very affordable, to make them permanently and very cheaply accessible to others, perhaps also in a translation provided by yourself. Do you love certain freedom texts enough for that? If so then do express your love for them in this way. Potentially, already now, your could thereby reach about 500 million people. - You should rather ask yourself: What, if anything, should I now omit or fail to do? What should I now forget? Which opportunity should I now neglect? The "machinery for freedom" or tool kit for liberty is now very extensive (although, alas, not yet fully listed and evaluated) and you should pick and choose among them - after sufficiently informing yourself about them. Some of these means are also very cheap, very small and, nevertheless, very powerful. What more could we ask for?

WORKSHOP CIRCLES TO PROVIDE DESIRABLE & COMPLETE (frequently updated) LIBERTARIAN REFERENCE WORKS: The work towards complete libertarian abstracts, review, bibliographical, quotes, ideas, projects, address and links collections, could and should be shared - because these jobs tend to be too large for individuals. How much and how little individuals can do is often demonstrated on their websites & by their periodical and book output. At least when they used print on paper it was never enough, even after centuries of such publishing and for decades it has not been enough with those electronic media now mainly used for texts.

Obviously, the breaking-up of a large project into numerous small parts can also be done in the thinking about it, by alphabetizing thoughts that come to mind about it. Moreover, if one's memory is flawed, like mine, then it can help to have such thoughts alphabetically arranged for future reference. The elimination of repetitive thoughts was not, like in most brain storming efforts, my primary consideration. I would rather worry about having omitted one or several important points, i.e., having not stated it even once.

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In spite of my extensive and prolonged commitment to one alternative medium, namely microfiche, I do want you to consider also your book publishing options on floppy disks, one to six books at a time (especially in plain text and zipped, ca. 6 Mbs are possible!) and those on CD-ROMs, 200 or even 2,000 books at a time, the latter at almost ridiculously low costs for blank disks and disk pressing, per book title or book page.

How many or how few libertarians would be required to fill ca. 300 CD-ROMs with all of the libertarian writings ever produced and still preserved somewhere?

This medium would also save enormous labours, costs and time in downloading quantities of libertarian websites. - Why should each individual libertarian among thousands to ten-thousands undertake such labours (About 400 hours, for 650 Mbs, to fill one CD-ROM, or correspondingly less downloading hours for many less Mbs of libertarian information, wanted at a particular time) when a few could do it for all of us and sell us their downloads, largely covering our own libertarian interests, on a single CD-ROM? Why should one have to access a libertarian encyclopedia online (if it were already provided there) instead of getting it cheaply and handily at home, on a single CD-ROM?

Maybe as few as 10 - 40 and text-only libertarian CD-ROMs could offer us as much as we would ever get around to or would want to read of freedom texts, nothing but freedom texts, in a normal life span of the present length? But it would be nice, for occasional reference reading, to have the lot of the classical and neoclassical freedom texts, and of all more or less obscure freedom writings, ready on hand, at home, even portable, in a comprehensive freedom reference library, contained in a mere 300 CD-ROM. The Internet usage for libertarians could then be confined e.g. to news, business opportunities, information for customers, travel arrangements etc. They could save themselves the costs of reading online and of downloading costs, risks and labours for their libertarian reading.

CD-ROMs blanks can be produced and sold for as little as A $ 39 cents. Not bad, as material production costs for 200-2,000 books. It's really surprising that libertarians have not yet made extensive use of this option. But then, they have not even exhausted all their photocopy, microfiche and floppy disk options for reproducing scarce tests. - I do actively seek competing publishers publishing on microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs on the road to a complete offer of libertarian information on at least one or the other alternative, efficient, affordable, easy and lasting medium.

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If you think you have to ignore your microfilm options then do at least utilize your floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing options, to supplement the attractive options which the Internet provides you with.

In form of microfiche, floppies and especially CD-ROMs you could contribute significantly towards making all libertarian writings fully, cheaply and permanently available to all interested. Your private freedom reference library could become complete or as complete as you want it to be. You could then take your favorite or essential freedom reference books with you to most places of civilization and consult them there whenever and wherever you want to, with small and portable equipment. Cheap duplicates could either be made on the spot or ordered fast enough, for those wanting them. You could then sell or lend out cheap duplicates of any freedom texts to anyone interested, i.e., without risking any rare originals you may possess..

Already too many years have passed in which this project could have been realized. Do not wait until, maybe, government librarians pick it up. Help end the scandal that most libertarian writings are still unpublished or out of print, not translated or inaccessible - while efficient, lasting, easy and cheap alternative media exist for them and, by now, in most countries, no law exists against their use.

We could and should produce libertarian literature in batches of 650 - 800 Mbs on CD-ROMs, towards complete, easy, cheap & lasting libertarian publishing. Zipped in plain text that could mean batches of 2.6 to 3.2 Gbs!

We could form coops or partnerships for profit sharing, if any, or agree upon a mutual concession: Anyone who has contributed material to one or several libertarian CD-ROMs may then independently duplicate and sell them. By all means, make other contracts if you can agree upon them!

The libertarian information revolution has barely begun! Should we continue to stick mainly only to conventional methods and media, which haven't achieved more than they have and perhaps could not, e.g. paper editions, and website, audio- and video tapes, or broadcast options, seminars, associations, conferences, think tanks, or should we UTILIZE ALL AFFORDABLE, EFFICIENT, POWERFUL AND EASY ALTERNATIVE MEDIA TOWARDS LIBERTY?

Help to combine, through cheap alternative media, all freedom text offers, all freedom ideas and projects, talents and resources, that could and should be fully mobilized and made cheaply and permanently accessible to all.

The French Encyclopaedists were on the right track - but did not persist in it. The hit the publishing barrier for editions printed on paper. The libertarian movement has still to undertake a similar effort, with modern media, including the affordable and efficient alternative ones.

The very existence of the Internet and of the huge publicity in its favour have blinded us to the potentials of some of the powerful, easy, lasting and cheap alternatives to it. We have, largely, put our still all too few eggs into this single basket or the expensive and risky one of the ancient print on paper method (apart from some broadcasting and audio and video tape efforts, and limited on-demand publishing via photocopiers, like the Libertarian Alliance in London has done for many years).

Towards a complete, privately organized and financed, open, permanent and affordable intellectual ammunition department, offering all freedom texts in full, complete bibliographies, abstracts and review compilations, directories and links lists, a libertarian ideas archive and encyclopaedia of the best refutations, a very extensive FAQ compilation and even an alphabetical index to all libertarian writings, all at very affordable per page or per title prices. News and discussions could be left to Internet sites.

Please ponder and discuss this option, pass it on and republish it as widely as you can, with your comments.

What are you waiting for? A government's librarian to take the initiative with pro freedom titles?

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100 libertarian microfiche - your choice from the LMP literature lists, are offered to the first one who provides me with a tabulation of all or most of the publishing advantages that all the alternative media have to offer, e.g. in costs per page reproduced, for texts of 10, 100 and 1000 pages. It should be a comprehensive benchmark test, excluding no alternative media and indicating their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Ignorance on alternative media option is still all too large. The Internet has not yet significantly reduced it but rather added another media bias, that in favour of the Internet!

Another 100 libertarian microfiche - your choice from the LMP literature list (see my website), are offered to the first who proves to me that any other publisher has already offered more freedom pages, more cheaply and permanently, in any medium, than I have, in my LMP pilot scheme, on microfiche. I would love to help a bit to make that other collection better known as well. Moreover, it would help me avoid titles that are already offered by others. I already know about the anarchist pamphlet collection on microfiche. Its titles are more expensive than mine. I also know about free-market.net. But it offers only abstracts and links to sites published by others.

LMP: LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING, WANTS COMPETITORS & COOPERATORS: I have been putting libertarian texts onto microfiche since 1977 and will continue to do so for another few years, until I reach PEACE PLANS issue 2,000. But I am not a microfilm fanatic. I do actively seek libertarians prepared to compete and collaborate with me, using e.g. microfiche, floppies and CD-ROMs, as well as websites, towards the common aim of making ALL freedom writings (that need publicity to achieve their purpose) available to all, in all major languages, cheaply, easily and permanently.

Towards a super-nova explosion of all freedom information! We can't make all people read, study and apply it - but enough people will find it useful to advance towards their self-liberation.

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John Zube, LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING, P.O. Box 52 or 35 Oxley St., Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia, e-mail: jzube@acenet.com.au Tel. (02) 48 771 436. No FAX! Website: www.acenet.com.au/~jzube

LMP's website offers a 2,000 pages (almost 5 Mbs) guide to the PEACE PLANS issues that LMP has produced since 1977, containing, on about 500,000 pages, libertarian and anarchist books, pamphlets, magazines, newsletters, dissertations, bibliographies, directories, indexes, essays & articles, letter, review & leaflet collections, etc., with an average of over 300 pages per microfiche: $ 1 cash each, post-free for orders of at least 10, or 2 International Reply Coupons or $ 2 other non-cash, with small cheques not accepted. Has any other individual published more freedom texts, more cheaply, in any medium? A supplementary LMP list for Peace Plans 1546-1620 can be found on: http://www.butterbach.net/lmp/ The supplementary lists (alphabetical and by PP numbers) of PP 1546-1768, coming to almost 6 Mbs., is, so far, not yet offered on a website but only available in plain text and zipped down to ca. 1.3 Mbs on a floppy disk, or in 2 large zipped files as e-mail attachments. - J.Z., 28.6.02.

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The following is a one page advertising that I wish to see either reproduced in the libertarian press or first replaced by a better one. File: CDROM628words

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LIBERTARIAN CD-ROM PUBLISHING & LIBERTARIAN LIBRARY

WHAT?

Complete libertarian publishing library & information services for all freedom texts not yet cheaply, permanently & easily accessible in any medium, supplementing & listing all of freedom texts etc. offered in all media, or cheaply combining them, with permission, if required.

BY WHAT MEANS?

CD-ROMs, zipped, later CVDs, then still better disks, until all freedom texts can be found on the Internet & large & multiple websites are easy, fast & cheap enough to set up, maintain & download

A public & growing list indicating all interested & inviting independent collaboration or competition.

CD-ROM disks, drives & burners are already wide-spread & cheap. CD-ROMs are commercially pressed for as little as 50 cents. Each can contain, zipped, 200 to 2,000 book titles. A lifetime's freedom reading on a mere 10 CD-ROMs! A complete freedom library on perhaps no more than 300 CD-ROMs!

Filling them will not only require extensive downloading & e-mailing of already digitized texts but also extensive digitizing, mainly as a labour of love. Luckily, scanners have become cheap & efficient & division of labour for large jobs is an ancient invention.

WHO?

Anyone interested in contributing libertarian Mbs, keyboarding, scanning, proof-reading, editing & computer skills & copyrights permissions. CD-ROMs, like microfiche & floppies, are essentially self-help media but do mostly need collaborators to fill them. With cheap, lasting, powerful & efficient alternative media anyone can be a publisher, editor & compiler.

HOW?

By keyboarding, scanning, downloading, alone or in association with others. Sending Kbs & Mbs on floppies, partly filled CD-ROMs or via e-mail - to the compilers of CD-ROMs.

By dividing the chores of e.g. digitizing whole books into manageable portions between those who like a particular book.

By collaborating with & publicizing all who have already taken steps in this direction. See the slowly growing list of interested people.

WHY?

Because it is possible now, affordable, & achievable by enough interested people.

We could use all our resources at our fingertips. We have never had them yet. On CD-ROMs they could be made cheaply & conveniently accessible & linked to current websites. In combination they could be rather useful. Sufficient knowledge could give us considerable influence.

Climbing the mountains of liberty knowledge would not only provide us with a great view but also realistic blueprints, the best programs, strategies, tactics, advice, refutations & references. Remaining disagreements would come closer to being settled. All valuable ideas, discoveries, talents & opportunities could be brought to light & made widely accessible. The Internet can do much but not yet everything or optimally.

WHEN?

As soon as the growing list of interested people contains enough libertarian Mbs to fill the first libertarian & cooperatively compiled CD-ROM.

PRECEDENTS, DEMONSTRATIONS, EXAMPLES:

Few will be as productive with this medium as Dr. David Hart has already been, who produced 4 CD-ROMs on his own, mainly on classical French Liberalism.

Compare Encyclopaedia Britannica & The Library of the Future, each on one CD-ROM. The latter contains over 5,000 titles, not all book-sized, but includes some freedom texts.

There are thousands of music, games & software CD-ROMs.

It's high time for more libertarians to use this freedom of expression & information opportunity, at least for freedom texts not yet otherwise available.

PIOT, John Zube, 3rd of October 2001.

(PIOT: Panarchy In Our Time or: To each the government or non-governmental society of his or her dreams!)

CONTACTS:

John Zube, LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING, since 1977, Libertarian PEACE PLANS series since 1964:

www.acenet.com.au/~jzube Supplementary LMP list: http://www.butterbach.net

jzube@acenet.com.au Also: Research Centre for Monetary Freedom, On Panarchy, Slogans for Liberty. 1768 PEACE PLANS issues so far (March 2002) ca. 500,000 pages.

John Humphreys, LIBERTARIAN LIBRARY: www.geocities.com/libertarian_library/

AUSTRALIAN LIBERTARIAN SOCIETY: www.geocities.com/libertarian_society

libertarian_aust1@yahoo.com Also: ALS e-Newsletter & ALS Forum

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