I certainly hope that players for DTB's will be available for Linux when the technology actually begins to bear fruit. This truly is a wonderful next step in the Talking Book program. Just think of the logistical problems of moving and caring for physical materials that this solves. There will still need to be traditional Talking Books for many years to come, but I think this is the future and it may get to a point where there won't need to be as many physical recordings produced as there are now. The one thing I see as holding things up is the one artificial technical issue and that is DRM or Digital Rights Management. How is that going to be accomplished? The standards document simply says that digital rights management will be supported but probably wisely does not prescribe exactly what sort of mechanism will be used. Hopefully, being eligible to receive traditional Talking Books and Braille materials will enable one to also receive any DTB's they are entitled to receive. In the main-stream consumer world, digital rights management has not been doing too well. Some systems are hacked almost before they are released. Other systems tend to do the opposite and malfunction in ways their developers never thought of to cause honest users of the technology to be denied service. Some rights management systems have even gained the distinction of suffering from both maladies. The crackers de fang the protection and the honest users discover that the software thinks they are thieves because of something their equipment or they accidentally did. This issue, not technology, has held up everything from digital audio tape a decade or so ago to present-day high-definition television systems. Linux and FreeBSD should actually be good test beds for this technology because it is based on open-source models and any hanky panky mechanisms such as back doors or scripting applications are a little easier to police than they are in proprietary operating systems. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group