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I think part of the change is the white pages was distributed in hard copy in your community. So only a finite number of people would have access and it would be costly to re-publish or re-distribute that hard copy information. Now anyone in the world has access and its practically cost-less to re-publish and re-distribute the information in digital form.

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> So only a finite number of people would have access and it would be costly to re-publish or re-distribute that hard copy information.

You hit the key point: information distribution has costs. It always has. And that cost always kept bad actors somewhat in check. Making information reproducible only in a local context was safe-ish.

Until the internet of course. Now it's logged on every physical drive that happened to cache your information.

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