Master copies and the temptation
‘Do you ever think of viewing it?’ […] ‘Whether or not the A.F.R. ever even recover this alleged Master copy from the DuPlessis burglary,’ Steeply said quietly; ‘still, you guys have a Read-Only copy, at least one, you’ve told us, no?’ […] ‘Nobody has this mysterious Master, but we’ve all got Read-Only’s—all the anti-O.N.A.N. cells have at least one Read-Only, we’re pretty sure.’
Context
Pre-dawn on the Tucson outcropping, the serial's quietest installment: Steeply opens with the personal question and then takes a census of the prints. Master vs. Read-Only is film-distribution economics applied to a weapon — who holds the negative, who holds the exhibition copies — and the whole insurgent ecology (A.F.R., cells, razzles) is mapped by which generation of copy it owns. The samizdat circulates exactly the way underground film circulates, and both spooks talk about it that way.