The CS vs audio books

[Bood Samel]

I imagine that people like Erin Tarn who write books that are intended to be subversive realize to maximize the effectiveness of what they do that audiobooks of their texts are far more effective way of reaching the masses given that the majority of them are illiterate. So do the CS copy hard drives when searching people? I imagine they would have to. It's far easier to get a mp3 of Erin Tarn into chi-town then her books!

[Bood Samel]

I imagine that given now that everything we have can make video and audio recordings that its safe to say so can the helmet, optics, etc of full environmental armor, power armor, etc..Let alone cybernetic eyes. Subversive recordings, weather audio or video, would have to be more of security risk for the CS then printed material. I bet ISS spends tons of time spying on harddrives more then it does burning books.

[Tor]

Probably handled by the canonical Coalition Digital Reaper in the Rifter.

[Rallan]

They're probably pretty strict about who owns recording devices and hardware in the first place. as well as imposing technical limitations on hardware that's available for sale so that it's hard (or downright impossible) to copy and transfer data from unapproved sources onto equipment that's legal to own in the Coalition States.

Imagine an mp3 player that doesn't have any data storage capacity at all, and it can only play audio tracks by streaming them. And it can only stream tracks from the official government store on the official government intranet. And every piece of content in that store was approved by the government censorship board before being put up for sale. Now imagine similar arrangements for every other form of media and you've got a situation where it's impossible for someone using CS-approved hardware and software to see anything illegal.

Or alternatively if you want to stay true to Rifts roots... imagine a stock dystopian future that was first imagined in the 80s, where it's just assumed that computers and multimedia will work the same way they did in the 80s. All of a sudden illegal content distribution means rebellious individuals making low fidelity copies and sharing them in person like something straight out of old Readers Digest articles about missionary work in red China.

[wyrmraker]

On an indirectly related side note, I would think that a Palladium-produced Audiobook of Coalition States vs [Insert Threat Here] done up like one of the old radio shows would be pretty entertaining.

[Bood Samel]

Probably handled by the canonical Coalition Digital Reaper in the Rifter.

Yea I could totally see that. I bet all the rookie digital reapers cut their teeth on just skimming harddrives for subversive material.

[Bood Samel]

They're probably pretty strict about who owns recording devices and hardware in the first place. as well as imposing technical limitations on hardware that's available for sale so that it's hard (or downright impossible) to copy and transfer data from unapproved sources onto equipment that's legal to own in the Coalition States.

Imagine an mp3 player that doesn't have any data storage capacity at all, and it can only play audio tracks by streaming them. And it can only stream tracks from the official government store on the official government intranet. And every piece of content in that store was approved by the government censorship board before being put up for sale. Now imagine similar arrangements for every other form of media and you've got a situation where it's impossible for someone using CS-approved hardware and software to see anything illegal.

That makes more sense then the 80s take you mentioned given that at its core rifts is about whats left over from 2098.