<p>Is there a way to read a locked file across a network given that you are the machine admin on the remote machine? I haven't been able to read the locked file locally, and attempting it over the network adds another layer of difficulty.</p>

Edit
It would be pretty easy if you had ISBN.  but converting from UPC to ISBN is not as easy as you'd like.
Here's some javascript code for it from
http://isbn.nu
where it's done in script
```
```
if (indexisbn.indexOf("978") == 0) {
   isbn = isbn.substr(3,9);
   var xsum = 0;
   var add = 0;
   var i = 0;
   for (i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
        add = isbn.substr(i,1);
        xsum += (10 - i) * add;
   }
   xsum %= 11;
   xsum = 11 - xsum;
   if (xsum == 10) { xsum = "X"; }
   if (xsum == 11) { xsum = "0"; }
   isbn += xsum;
}
```
```
However, that only converts from UPC to ISBN
some
of the time.
You may want to look at the
barcode scanning project page
, too - one person's journey to scan books.
So you know about
Amazon Web Services
.  But that assumes amazon has the book and has scanned in the UPC.
You can also try the
UPCdatabase
at
http://www.upcdatabase.com/item/
{UPC}, but this is also incomplete - at least it's growing..
The library of congress database is also incomplete with UPCs so far (although it's pretty comprehensive), and is harder to get automated.
Currently, it seems like you'd have to write this yourself in order to have a high-level lookup that returns simple information (and tries each service)