A Whisper in the Night

[ecosophia]

Buy physical books now. Great ones, good ones, bad ones, ones you happen to like. Store them safely as you would treasures. They are. Some will become unavailable soon, I suspect, for reasons that may not be stated candidly. If I’m wrong, what have you lost?

We, the library

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) February 12, 2021

This seems uncomfortably appropriate to me just now...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of uncomfortable things, assume that I want a digital copy of one of your books that is not available as such, for personal use. So, I buy one and I scan it. Then, how do I dispose of the paper copy? I don't want to violate copyrights.

You know, for all talk of preservation of paper, I might face the opposite issue, a huge occult library might become a painted target on my head.

[ecosophia]

1) Donate it to a charity that will sell it.

2) If you think that electronic media are private, think again. Nothing that happens on, or by means of, the internet is ever private, so if you have a huge digital library of occult books, that fact is even more public than if you have an equivalent library of printed books.

[(Anonymous)]

Charities around here wouldn't accept such books. Is a donation to a used bookstore acceptable?

[ecosophia]

Yes. You can even sell it to them.

[(Anonymous)]

That's great.

We are living in strange times.

[lincoln_lynx]

Worst yet, it's not clear what, or how virtual ownership laws will shake out. If your entire digital library is tied in with Amazon they could send the whole kit and caboodle down the memory hole.

[(Anonymous)]

This already happened a few years ago when Amazon famously deleted 1984 (of all books!) off many people’s Kindles. It was a mistake and they apologised and restored it but it shows what they can do.

I actually have an Amazon list of books to buy in print which I already own on Kindle (including many of JMG’s) when I have the space in my new house to store several hundred.

I also keep backups on my own computer of everything- email, photos, my archive of saved Web articles etc. I don’t trust the cloud.

Oh and I bought a personal copy of the Sacred Texts and Survivor Library archives - highly recommended

[(Anonymous)]

Just cold store them until the copyright expires or the US ceases to exist in any position to enforce anything. Per copyright.gov that could theoretically take "for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years."

But, personally, I'd say this country is cooked and your holding period might be as little as 10-20 years.

[(Anonymous)]

Specifically, Greer's books are protected with magic workings I do not want to trigger, that's actually why I'm specifically asking about his books. Some of Greer's peak oil books are available in PDF format, but the other ones are nearly useless, because most of the so-called "reflowable" e-books do not have page numbers, and because of this they are not easy to quote. To have proper digital versions with page numbers, it is necessary to digitize them.