"as if a million alaskan trees cried out in terror...and were suddenly silenced..."

State of Alaska Prints Out Palin's E-Mails; Online Distribution 'Impractical' - Slashdot:

"Three years after numerous citizens and news organizations requested the release of Sarah Palin's gubernatorial e-mails, the State of Alaska is finally making ready to make them available. In print. In Juneau. News organizations must fly or sail to Juneau and pick up the 24,000 page disclosure in person. The state claims it impractical to release the original electronic versions of the e-mails, so the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Mother Jones, ProPublica and MSNBC each plan to turn some or all of the printouts back into searchable, easily distributed electronic data. Thanks, Alaska."

"Impractical"? So you can't throw 'em up on a FTP site.  Fine.

1) that's what bittorrent was made for, and here's a legitimate use-case.

2) Anybody ever consider sneakernet?  (e.g., bits on plastic?)

No matter how big they are, there's no reason they can't just fit on a couple of dvd-roms or an 8gig flash drive. If she actually has more than 8 gig of email, I'll be stunned.