I have been cruising many of the lists and boards this tour and there seems to be explanation, theory wanted by the newbies as to what limited public distribution is all about and why some of us (normally tapers) practice it. In theory it sounds great that everyone can have an identical copy to the master, it is an advancement in technology. Unfortunately advances in technology (SHN) brings up new problems we have never had to face before

Clearly many of these servers are Public or Quasi Public servers. That meaning anyone can log in and grab the show in perfect replication of the master. While 98 out of a 100 people who did this are good people, the other 2 are doing it so they can download it and start selling it. Its a case of a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else. One thing you will find with the strict tapers and older guys is that the thing that is paramount to them is things that get distributed through them do not get sold. Many of my friends traded masters to newbies early in the tour and there stuff ended up on ebay, usually because it was upped to a server in shn (although it was never encoded in shn by the master taper) and downloaded by somebody going into one of these FTP's. I call a Quasi Public server the ElevaSHN servers or the exit servers, whoever is logging in could be someone completely misrepresenting themselves and we will have no idea. Many of the names themselves are so ridiculous that its obvious there aliases. Interestingly enough the tapers usually are the ones with the most straight up names on the list. Regardless, its not hard for anyone to figure out how to get on the EXIT or ElevaSHN servers.

Trees and vines also pose the same problem, we really don't know who any of these people are and what they are up to. So I still practice trading the way I used to, when I trade a show out 1 for 1 to someone, I have a physical address, I probably have some discussion with them, and there is a implicit trust that goes between the 2 people who trade that each person is going to protect the interest of the others tape as best he can. This is not a foolproof system, but it works better than massive fast distribution to the public where god knows who is getting it. All tapers I have traded with have no problem with our shows being traded 1 for 1, as each person helps each other out a bit. I cant think of more than 1 or 2 guys in 15 years who just wouldn't trade at all, there few and far between. But when we specify trading on a 1:1 basis it means there is some sort of footprint left as to where things went, when it went wrong and whatnot. A dynamic IP address does not provide that at all. So what I am saying is the shows all do get out in time, but it just takes a little longer than you want. But at least this way the shows are always being traded between people who are looking out for the other persons best interests.

What is different from before, what are these new challenges. It used to be that the bootleggers were in the forms of companies, who had paid people to go out and tape shows and directly supply the tape, the tapers knew who they were and they lived in sort of a separate world. Sometimes they would snag someone's tape, but it was more difficult for them, as most people knew who they were or they ended up getting a multi generated tape that showed some degradation. With SHN and all digital floating about, and the big companies now being gone and gravitating towards millions of home brewed shops selling on ebay, it is much, much harder for us to keep control of things ultimately being sold. These home brewed shops can easily infiltrate the public and quasi public servers and go to work, either in the form of anonymous auctions , or my new personal favorite, pizza money guy. Pizza money guy is the starving student that prices it so its not extreme, but so he makes about $5 a disc so that he can spend hours and hours doing clones (actually with a 16x burner, minutes) to make his $100 a week pizza money. So excuses like I need to pay for my tickets, pay for my travel, make an incremental amount of money for my time (that is the definition of work, therefore your working for money) don't wash..You either trade them or you don't. So this paragraph leads us back to the original goal of the taper, to keep the good from being sold, as we want absolutely no part of that, and we will do anything we can to slow down the distribution to prevent this, to the point of ceasing trading if we feel its causing any harm.

Of course the final grand argument, that is everything floated freely none of this would be an issue. Well, socialism all sounded like a good idea to. Bottom line is it will never get that way, there will always be people getting paid 6 figures or high five's who are not going to send out two blanks and an envelope, there always going to  look to pay for stuff. They do not spend hours on newsgroups, looking at email and posts from people who have posted 3453 times in one year. There will always be people supplying them ,and I do not want to be part of the world that gets those suppliers the good to supply. I cant prevent it 100% but ill do everything I can to slow it down. That's what the slow and limited distribution process is all about

so on your shn files if your concerned about the issues I am , just add the following to your text files

**no public ftp server access**

***only to be traded on a 1 for 1 basis***

that way we don't have to keep reading these posts that "well, i didn't see it in the text file" excuses. Main reason for this, especially in the case of Corey's recordings, he didn't make the shn's, there really not true shns, they were made by someone down the line, without Corey being aware of it.

As many of you know, I mainly trade CDR audio anyway, so I do not have to have 300 discs for 1 tour, half of which are just essentially data backups. EAC Secure mode, feurio seem to do the job just fine for me. Its come a long way since mis-sped analog tapes. I mainly use SHN for unproved traders or shows that suffer the problem of being re-edited and i have no idea of what I am getting..

Nobody has to agree with me, don't expect they will, if you do agree and want to "sign on" to it feel free to email you and ill add your name. But since nobody will probably read this its not an issue anyway.

scott z