Eben Moglen

Books are the first mass-produced article in Western society. They are the cheapest method of making large amounts of information available by broad public access available in analog technology. And they are still grossly expensive, difficult to move, cumbersome to keep and catalog and maintain, and very difficult for people to have access to who are not already located in socially central places. They are also vulnerable, as anybody who remembers the burning of the Sarajevo library will recall vividly. It takes a day with contemporary technology to destroy the libraries it takes centuries to build. And in times of great social stress, libraries burn.