The ecology of copies — Read-Only everywhere, no Master; the dissemination-as-weapon thesis

pivotal · 30 April – 1 May YDAU; standing YDAU condition

• When: the copy-inventory is taken across the 30 April – 1 May YDAU serial; the strategic thesis is standing A.F.R. doctrine
• What: The whole plot turns on a copy-protection fact. Confiscated Read-Only copies of the samizdat are already in many hands: "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" (the despised copyless Albertans excepted), and U.S.O.U.S. holds razzle-confiscated copies from Berkeley and Boston. But a Read-Only copy cannot be duplicated and disseminated; only a duplicable Master serves the A.F.R.'s purpose, which is not blackmail or re-cartography but demonstration — to make the U.S. so unable to resist the pleasure that it destroys itself and forces Canada to expel Québec. Marathe frames the object as a mirror held to an appetite — "This is a U.S.A. production, this Entertainment cartridge. Made by an American man in the U.S.A." — turned on a nation of people who would "die — and let its children die, each one — for the so-called perfect Entertainment," "fed this death of pleasure with spoons, in their warm homes, alone, unmoving." The A.F.R. holds copies and "finds the theories of content irrelevant"; it wants only the Master. See the AFR thread (event 8), event 10; Marathe's timeline (event 11).