What’s more, by gambling money up front to qualify for royalties from TeleRead, writers and commercial publishers could bypass the librarians. Book people such as Laura Fillmore could thrive under this approach. A national library could offer e-books not only to citizens directly but also to independent-minded entrepreneurs such as Fillmore, who could charge for their custom links. I loved the idealism she showed in suggesting that ASCII be free. It was a good model in many cases for today. But I feared that as computers grew better for book reading—and it would happen eventually, with or without a TeleRead program—free ASCII would take away too many paying customers. And if ASCII books weren’t free? Then, more than ever, piracy would occur regardless of various legal and technological precautions. So the answer should be free national digital libraries—well stocked and with fair pay for writers and publishers—to reduce the temptation to bypass copy protection. Use tracking to report dialup counts and pay originators of material, but not for billing. _That_ was the way to take full advantage of the technology and keep market incentives while promoting literacy. Rich countries would be the first to start libraries of this kind. They could safeguard their intellectual property by helping poorer countries get books online if the latter agreed to honor copyright laws. The time would come for national and international Electronic Peace Corps to make this possible. EPCs could help upgrade Third World phone systems on site and share knowledge via e-books, e-mail, two-way video, and otherwise. To enforce global copyright law, we needed carrots as well as sticks. What’s more, governments could protect books with technology far less cumbersome than the $25 gadgets that the pay-per-read bookstore in Virginia used. _Then_ e-text stood a chance. I thought of the old merchant down South: Safes were useful, but only if the customers could enjoy an air-conditioner—an easy-to-use digital library for all of a country’s citizens.