The Culture: Preserving The Game From Hostile Owners

How will the hobby be able to maintain access to works?

Through the adoption of a method developed and executed by dissident book publishers to circumvent censorship regimes outside the United States. Without naming names, it works like this:

• Files get procured and (if not already so prepared) optimized for Print On Demand production.
• Actors set up accounts at places where users can sell POD products.
• Actors upload unlisted (i.e. "private") files, intended for the user to buy POD copies at cost for things like giveaways or bookfaires; the smarter ones will use psuedononymous file names if they can. As only that user can see the file, other users will not find it as it is not indexed for searching; this is no different than a Private/Unlisted YouTube video upload.
• The actor sets up a second front for the publishing operation, one with a catalog or one that shills its offerings often on social media, under a wholly different name; this is the public-facing side of the publishing operation. There is a contact email, or maybe a catalog page, but no storefront as such; you email what you want to the contact list along with a mailing address. They email back acknowledgement, a price, and a place to send the payment. Smarter operators do this via a third party account with little or no Common Reporting Standards compliance.
• The money paid to the publishing front is transfered to the account with the POD listing. The POD account pays for copies of the book to be made and sent; the smarter ones send it to their on-file address and then resend it from there to the buyer.
• The buyer gets their books at a slightly slower rate than otherwise would be the case, but they do get brand new copies of otherwise out-of-print books.

The hobbyist version cuts out a lot of the cloak-and-dagger middleman steps; a Clubhouse member runs the POD account, and members can just give him money in person (preferably in cash) for new copies of the manuals.

As the Clubhouse network expands internationally, even this can be phased out or minimized due to being able to make effective use of the same international arbitrage techniques that we saw documented in the Pandora and Panama Papers- and, quite frankly, we should and we will.

Of course the digital files, for those prefering PDFs to use on tablets or other suitable e-readers, will be available for free. (If you know where to look, they already are.) A little time with an ebook suit like Calibre and you can also get them in ePub and MOBI formats.

Once the manuals are no longer imprisoned, the hobbyists can use older versions of the game to seize control of the User Network from the corporate owners of the Brand. Moving the necessary elements around is quick and easy to do, especially once hobbyists get savvy on their use (and become disciplined at OPSEC).

The end of corporate control of the hobby is at hand. We no longer need the industry.