Darknet

Steve Jobs bans Wiley titles

I missed this bit of looniness out of Silicon Valley this past week, but Katie Hafner's got it covered in today's New York Times: Steve Jobs's Review of His Biography: Ban It.

The imperial Jobs has decreed that no Wiley & Sons book shall be sold at any of Apple's retail stores.

As it happens, my book Darknet, published by Wiley, goes on sale next month, and its subject matter is aimed squarely at the innovation-loving technology crowd that the Apple stores target.

Nice going, Steve. Punish your customers.

From Katie's article:

In an image-obsessed fit of pique, Apple Computer has banished books published by John Wiley & Sons from the shelves of Apple's 105 retail stores - all because of Wiley's plans to publish an unauthorized biography of Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive.

It is not clear whether Mr. Jobs or anyone else at Apple has read the book - "iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business," by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, which will go on sale next month. ...

In recent months, Apple showed its penchant for secrecy by suing a Harvard student who operates a Web site for Apple enthusiasts, accusing him of trying to induce Apple employees to divulge company trade secrets. It also filed lawsuits to stop leaks of company information on several Web sites that traffic in Apple news.

Welcome to the Future

Chuck Olsen, the filmmaker/blogger who made the documentary "Blogumentary," has a new video that just went up as the lead video on Ourmedia:

Welcome to the Future.

All about what happened when he tried to take some video footage of his favorite band.

Von Lohmann on Congress's latest

Fred von Lohmann of EFF analyzes the Family Movie and Copyright Act and concludes the public has more to gain than to lose from the bill, on the whole.

Buzz about 'Darknet'

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, reasonable conservative, extolled "Darknet" at BlogNashville.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the liberal blog Daily Kos with JD in New York, May 2005. (Photo by Doc Searls)

Here's the word on Darknet:

"There are few who see the future clearly, and even fewer who can explain what they see. This brilliant, beautifully written book sees, and explains. We will never understand how different it will be till we live it. But this will get you close. ... A fantastic book and wonderful collection of stories and analysis around new media issues."

— Lawrence Lessig
Author of Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code (blog)

"Darknet is both fascinating and important. J.D. Lasica provides a detailed inside view of a culture many Americans are barely aware of, and vividly describes struggles that are already shaping the long-term balance of economic, creative, and ideological power around the world."

— James Fallows
National correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and a regular on PBS's NewsHour

"Terrific book — could not have come out at a better time!"

— Michael Petricone
Vice President, Technology Policy
Consumer Electronics Association

"J.D. Lasica is the most talented technology writer working today. Nobody is better at explaining how things work and why things matter. Darknet is a great contribution to our understanding of the terrifying and wonderful opportunities that digitization, networking, and techno-cultural democracy offer us."

— Siva Vaidhyanathan
Author of The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (blog)

"J.D. Lasica skillfully tells the story of the critical battle between free speech and copyright in the age of the Internet. If an intellectual property lockdown ever comes about, Darknet will remind us of the creative bounty we're missing."

— Steven Levy
Newsweek columnist, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

"The people who most need to read J.D. Lasica's thoughtful and provocative new book are, unfortunately, the least likely to do so. They are the members of Congress, entertainment executives and intellectual property zealots who want to control digital information rather than allow marvelous new technologies to democratize it. The rest of us — voters and average people — should read it for them, and then demand that our rights and needs get at least equal weight in this vital debate.

— Dan Gillmor
Author of We the Media (blog)

"I really liked this book. We're basically on the same page ... though I hope some of J.D.'s predictions turn out to be wrong. Go read it."

— Glenn Reynolds
Instapundit

"The first comprehensive look at the restrictions being placed on our digital freedoms by the major media powers."

— Howard Rheingold
Author of Smart Mobs (blog)

"Over the next several years, there will be no more important issue for the future of the Internet and, indeed, all media than the battle that will be fought between corporate giants and consumers over who will control the information future. J.D. Lasica’s new book, Darknet, is an indispensable primer and guide to the copyright wars for those who want to protect their digital rights from the dark forces of big media that seek to take them away. So, rip, mix and burn and, most of all, read his book, if you want information to be as free as it should be."

— Kara Swisher
Wall Street Journal columnist and author of There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future

“A terrific read. J.D. Lasica pulls no punches in this compelling report from the front as he introduces us to the technology, politics and people who are right now deciding the future of ideas."

— David Weinberger
Author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined (blog)

"Darknet sheds a bright light on the dark future Hollywood has planned for the Net."

— Doc Searls
Blog godfather and co-author, The Cluetrain Manifesto (blog)

"The entertainment companies are stealing your future — robbing you blind with locks and laws and rhetoric that turns anyone who makes and shares culture without their permission into a crook. Get mad, get even, get on the darknet and fight back."

— Cory Doctorow
Co-editor of boingboing.net and author of Eastern Standard Tribe

"Who'd want to hang out on the boring old Internet when the other kids are on the darknet?"

— Paul Boutin
Slate (blog)

Reviews in the media

Dan Mitchell in the New York Times writes in "Picking the Media's Digital Lock":

Mr. Lasica, a journalist, brings a storyteller's flair to the subject, but what really makes Darknet unique is that it was born online and lives there still at www.darknet.com. The book, just one part of the overall project, was written in collaboration with its audience via a wiki - a Web application that allows any user to add or edit content. At the site, Mr. Lasica and his readers continue to share news and expand on the ideas presented in the book. His site also offers many excerpts.

Bernard Goldbach in the Irish Examiner:

I bought the book because Lasica writes presciently about the "digital rights" inherent in my lifestyle. Like many of my friends, I want to reuse the things I buy. I want to be able to record music from CD to play back on my iPod and then add those tracks to a playlist on a shared server. I want to continue buying DVDs and then using them in class.

I want to return from a three week holiday and watch the Desperate Housewives episode I missed. But if the entertainment industry gets its way, I will have to pay separately for each of these things.

Or I become a digital freedom fighter on the darknet.

Jason Silverman in Wired News:

In his comprehensive, sometimes chilling new book, Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, Lasica details the entertainment industry's strategies for maintaining control of content in the rip-mix-burn age.

Darknet (read an excerpt) paints a picture of a culture war that pits Hollywood, which wants to lock down every byte of content, against its technologically empowered audience, which enjoys manipulating and sharing digital info.

While researching the book, Lasica interviewed hundreds of experts, including industry executives, lobbyists, lawyers and Silicon Valley insiders.

Richard Pachter in the Miami Herald has this: The gatekeepers strive to stifle innovation.

If the future of America is not in manufacturing but in the creation of intellectual property, we're in big trouble. Writer J.D. Lasica reveals that access to the new creative digital domain is being severely limited by the incumbent owners and controllers of popular culture.

Columnist Michael Rogers of MSNBC.com writes, Will Hollywood Lock Up Our Movies?

J.D. Lasica’s excellent new book, "Darknet: Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation," [is] a comprehensive look at the current battle over how record and movie companies will protect their digital property from piracy — and what media consumers may lose in the process. ...

In short, an enormous struggle over the protection of intellectual property is underway between the media industry and a loose confederation of digital freedom fighters. Lasica details every aspect of how overly strict control on media could hurt consumers: The new generation of media users, who sample existing works to create new ones, would be locked out by copy protection. Restrictions on commercial content may impact how individuals can use self-created media — some new video cameras, for example, create files that can’t easily be distributed to others. Educators might not be able to take “fair use” snippets of films to illustrate classroom lectures, the way they currently quote from books. Lasica even shows how upcoming efforts to make computers safer from online scams could also give media companies more control over the content we buy. ...

The solutions that Lasica offers in his conclusion are sensible, and should be required reading for media companies. ... What’s perhaps most striking is how little most consumers are aware of what’s at stake.

Daniel Conover in the Charleston, South Carolina, Post and Courier has Two futures: One active, one passive.

Grassroots media pioneer J.D. Lasica has perched prominently at the silicon intersection of culture and technology for much of the past decade, building a solid reputation among both journalists and the technorati. His first book is a welcome addition to the digital media debate, offering an honest critique of the current situation and a well-reasoned prescription for what should be done.

Though he recognizes and defends the value of copyright protection, Lasica has only slight patience for the entertainment cartel's self-serving rhetoric. "Darknet" is the story of an outlaw underground of innovators who are creating a digital future that, if brought into the light, could offer society a truly democratic media. Rather than embracing that future, Hollywood has used the law to bludgeon it. Billions of dollars are at stake, but so is something even more important: control.

Attorney Denise Howell interviews me on her IT Conversations podcast Sound Policy:

Why is Hollywood fighting the new digital and remix generation? Do they have a good reason to? Why aren't we allowed to copy a DVD that we legally purchased onto a computer without breaking the law? JD Lasica, renowned author of 'Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation' and co-founder of OurMedia.org speaks to host Denise Howell about Darknet, Hollywood, the Internet, and us.

Elizabeth L. Dodge at Blogcritics.org:

The author shows that the new consumer is not an illegal download junkie, but rather someone who wants convenience on his own terms and, yes, is willing to pay a fair price for creative content. ... I recommend Darknet to our federal and state legislators, to anyone with an interest in public policy, in emerging copyright law, in the future of entertainment, whatever form it may take, in the future of the arts. Or indeed, for anyone with an iPod or an MP3 phone.

Dana Blankenhorn in ZDNet writes:

This is a good read, covering the waterfront from movies and music to games. Lasica's prose is accessible, his sources are numerous, and his attitude is more like that of, say, a BSD advocate than a GPL one. ... There are worse things to take to a beach this summer.

Film Cynic at BlogCritics.org writes:

The past year has brought a wonderful trilogy of seemingly unrelated books that expose the downward spiral of Hollywood. Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession by Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing explores the unfortunate importance of marketing in the movie business [and] Edward Jay Epstein’s The Big Picture ...

Darknet completes the arc, despite a larger interest than movies alone. By reading the other books prior to Lasica, though, a deeper disdain for Hollywood contributes to the more cynical cautionary side to the digital argument.

Robert Pritchett in the June issue of macCompanion:

Man, you are going to so love this book! ... The premise for the book is based on the age-old concept that we own what we buy and that once bought, we can freely give away what we obtained. The laws as they stand now and for the foreseeable future point to lobbying efforts by mass-media moguls making all acts illegal that they don’t control.

From Library Journal's review of Darknet:

An online journalist and blogger (newmediamusings.com), Lasica has written a book for anyone who has ever downloaded music, movies, or other entertainment products from the Internet. Probed here is the phenomenon of "darknets," networks of people who rely on closed-off digital spaces for the purpose of sharing copyrighted digital material privately with others. As entertainment companies continue to shut down public P2P networks of illegal file sharing such as KaZaA, Lasica speculates that many more darknets will spring up to accommodate the desire for sharing such media. He describes how corporations will continue their attempts to lock down our entertainment devices so they become no more useful than a receptacle for one-way transmission of media products restricted by the companies producing them. This new lockdown culture could result in not being able to copy a song from a CD (legitimately purchased or otherwise), watch a recorded DVD (legitimately purchased or otherwise), or store a copy of a television program for more than a day. In the end, Lasica offers a ten-point "digital culture road map" that can both serve to protect intellectual property and to provide consumers with the ability to express, sample, and share. An absorbing book; highly recommended for most libraries.—Joe Accardi

Siva Vaidhyanathan writes in American Scholar:

J.D. Lasica’s new book, Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation (Wiley), explores the central technological question dominating the information and entertainment fields: how much autonomy should individuals have over their mediascapes? Should we be able to program our own personal soundtracks? Or should we rely on the menus offered us by companies struggling to maintain our attention and secure our subscriptions? Should we be able to take pieces of this, slices of that, elements of this other thing, and create a pastiche of cultural signs, thus remaking the meaning of the original works?

Bloggers and other voices

I'm reading J.D. Lasica's Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, and I'm blown away. Highly recommended if you're interested in the way that citizen media is butting heads with increasingly draconian intellectual property laws.

— Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
The Daily Kos

Darknets (a concept brought to the fore by J.D. Lasica's wonderful book: "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation") are, for lack of a better way to describe them, private P2P networks. In theory, you have to know someone already in the network to gain entry.

— Shelly Palmer
Emmy Awards Advanced Media Committee

J.D. Lasica has written a well researched and important contribution to the the debate about what our digital society will look like in "Darknet"... History has shown, once you have stormed the Bastille, you don't go back to your day jobs.

When one combines Darknet with Robery McChesneys book "The problem with the Media,: it looks like a US civil war is being fought between the old analogue media world and the people that want more control over their media choices. I imagine this will only intensify over the coming years. ...

But what I really like about Darknet is Lasica's efforts to proscribe a world that could work for everybody.

— Alan Moore
Communities Dominate Brands

J.D. Lasica tells the story in Darknet of the net that has increasingly tightened around the display and use of media in digital form as Hollywood, record labels, and other creative industries have attempted to legislate and criminalize what either perfectly legitimate uses of media or perfectly innocent uses. The body of law that bought-and-paid-for legislators have implemented on behalf comes from a very small number of industries that don't actually drive the economy but do drive campaign contributions.
Darknet brings together lots of themes and strands into one clear narrative that makes for good reading and is a thorough introduction. It tied together many pieces for me that I didn't understand from reading many different articles about darknets--no Bush jokes, please, it's a singular concept and a plural set of networks--and the array of copy protection and legal protection in use.

— Glenn Fleishman
Seattle journalist and blogger

Darknet arrives just in time. The rancorous policy battles over the design and uses of the Internet and other digital technologies are only going to intensify. I cannot think of another book that offers such a sweeping, intelligent survey of recent media developments in such a lucid, entertaining way.

Lasica gives us an entertaining tour of some of the most interesting developments in participatory media – and the counter-measures that Hollywood and the record industry are furiously developing. One chapter, “Cool Toys That Hollywood Wants to Ban,” looks at all the ingenious monkeywrenches that media companies are trying to introduce into tech design ...

Darknet is a much-needed antidote to the rank propaganda that content industries have been peddling for too long to a credulous press. It helps clarify that how we allow our creativity and knowledge to circulate will determine what sort of people and society we will be. (See full review)

— David Bollier
author of Brand Name Bullies

No amount of legal constraints will roll back the way an entire generation leverages the broadband they use to connect their worlds. JD Lasica often draws the same conclusion in several chapters of his book Darknet, a collection of examples from all corners of society that shows how people use their digital devices to play or record things. Their behaviour--now firmly part of the mindset of a generation--upsets the content industry and many lawmakers.

— Bernie Goldbach
university lecturer and blogger at IrishEyes

I've got to tell you that everybody on my staff has your book. I have not seen anyone else synthesize as well exactly the kinds of experiences we've had over the last couple of years, including your insights into how you've chronicled people doing certain things.

It's a colorful, educational book that every employee who comes to Orb has to read. You did a great job of putting so much data and so many interviews in there. I'm not sure what kind of feedback you get from people who are not in the melee that we're all in, but for us it was: every single page we're going, Yeah, yeah, yeah! That's exactly the way it is.

— Jim Behrens, CEO, Orb Networks

Mr. Lasica has an eye and an ear for the telling and illustrative anecdote. ... The more I read, the more I realized just how much dang work Mr. Lasica put into this book. If you use the Internet at all, you should read this book. If you use digital media without an Internet connection (how odd!), you should read this book. If you read this book, you’ll get a much better idea of where we are now, why we’re there, where we might go, and why the ride will be bumpy.

— Shelley Henderson of the Media Bloggers Association

Everyone should check out: DARKNET: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation. J.D. Lasica talks candidly about our rights as end users, and Hollywood’s thirst for more money. I’ve never read a book that discussed the normal underground world of file sharing and digital media like this one. It’s a must read if you keep up on the Music and Movie industry legal battles.

— Drew Olanoff
The Blog Factory

It's very smart marketing by JD, who essentially wrote the book in public amongst his peers. And it's proof that, in my view, a more open digital rights policy (JD offers a mini version for free, along with endnotes, software tools, a blog, other source material and discussion) and actually increase sales. That the book itself is about digital rights and the future of media makes the irony all that much sweeter: the author is proving his case with his own digital rights. Call it walking the talk.

— Tom Watson
My dirty life and times

A short review: I'm about half way through Darknet and this is a great book, not only because it's about important issues, but because is so damned well reported and written. Kudos and thanks.

— Mark Hamilton
Notes from a teacher

Perhaps it’s that I’m used to holding out to read books a bit after the hype has died down, but JD Lasica’s Darknet is downright freaky in how current events it still feels. I’m only about halfway through now, but it’s been very good. And weird. It’s like not having to zip around and hunt and read blogposts to get the back story. JD said he finished it last summer, but it was clearly edited to include events up to late 2004 .... It’s so current it’s freaky.

I’ll write more later, but wanted to throw out how relevant the book is immediately. The stories about people (a bunch of whom I know) are much crisper than either Howard Rheingold or Neil Gershenfeld manage - somehow the interviewees speak more for themselves without extraneous description. Usually I take personal stories as just color and dialogue, but JD does a good job here weaving them into the larger narrative.

— Eleanor Kruszewski
ellementK

"If you want to understand the intersection between user rights and copyrights, I think you'll want to read Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation. Don't skip the foreword by Howard Rheingold, whose commentary about fair use lays a good foundation.

Beyond the book itself, I appreciate the way JD, a long-time colleague at the Online Journalism Review, used the web as he wrote -- it's the first book I ever tried to "edit" via a wiki -- and is trying to use it post-publication as an extension of the book. ...

— Staci D. Kramer
Executive Editor, PaidContent.org (personal blog)

"Go check out J.D. Lasica's article in Legal Affairs, about downloading movies. It's fun, and explains why everyone should be worried about the senseless 'digital prohibition' we're now living in. His new book is 'Darknet : Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation'. Easily the most narrative driven book on the subject."

— progressivereader
Roundup of IP books on Amazon: So you'd like to understand how "copyright" became "we own everything"

Not sure of the value of a dinosaur's endorsement, but very, very nicely done. I'll be talking it up in my shop.

— Scott Atkinson
News Director, WWNY TV, Watertown NY

How IP law went off the tracks

Duke's Jamie Boyle on how intellectual property law has gone so far off the rails. Read his "Deconstructing Stupidity" in the Financial Times.

The incredibly shrinking iTunes

George on how Apple keeps whittling away what its customers like about iTunes.

Grassroots media social gathering

Three weeks from today, we'll be holding a citizens media social gathering at CNET headquarters in San Francisco's SOMA. Here are the details:

When: Friday the 13th (we're not superstitious, are we?), 6-9 pm

Where: CNET, 235 Second St., between Howard and Folsom

What: a dual event ...

- book release party for my book "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation" (Wiley & Sons), which will be out by then.

- a citizens media social gathering, with members of various citizens media groups getting together for the first time. Some members are flying in from acround the country and Canada for the weekend, which includes an invitation-only retreat on Saturday.

The retreat is already overbooked, so if you'd like to meet some of the individuals involved in these efforts, come on down on Friday the 13th.

We'll have appetizers and wine. We're currently looking for a DJ to provide a couple of hours of mashups and remix music, so let me know if you know of anyone.

Send me an email if you plan to attend. We don't want to throw the doors wide to hundreds of people, but we do want to be as inclusive as possible.

Regular readers of this blog -- and anyone interested in grassroots media and the personal media revolution -- are most welcome. Hope to see you there!

Redesign

You'll be seeing some changes to this blog over the next week or two as I redesign it and build it out as the publication date for my book nears. So, forgive the mess during reconstructive surgery ...

For Hollywood, anti-piracy bill is both sweet, sour

LA Times: Anti-Piracy Bill Sweet, Sour for Hollywood. It would stiffen penalties for bootlegging but also legalize products used to edit content of DVDs. Excerpt:

Congress is poised to pass a bill ratcheting up the penalties for movie and music bootlegging, handing Hollywood a long-sought victory in its drive to prosecute pirates.

But the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which the House is expected to approve today, includes a bitter pill for the studios: It would legalize products that electronically snip offensive scenes or words from DVDs.

The measure — which President Bush is expected to sign — would in effect terminate a lawsuit that film directors and Hollywood studios brought against ClearPlay Inc., a company whose electronic filters let viewers skip over violent, suggestive or profane sections of DVDs. A federal judge in Colorado has yet to rule on the case. ...

I've written about the ClearPlay case and believe Hollywood just refuses to accept the realities of the digital age. Congress, surprisingly, may force its hand.

Google lets you upload video -- with strings attached

On Friday afternoon, I uploaded my first video to Google under its new video upload program. The process was pretty similar in some ways to Ourmedia's upload process, with a few exceptions:

- They have curators -- a gatekeeper function -- which isn't too surprising. But that's a competitive advantage Ourmedia will always have over Google video. Here it is three days later, and I still haven't received word one from Google about the status of my video (they haven't "verified" it yet).

- Their taxonomy sucks. I frankly expected better of Google. The video we're seeing on the Net does not fall into Hollywood categories of "drama, comedy," etc. I can be a little bit of a taxonomy snob now, having spent months working through the various metadata schemas that we settled upon for Ourmedia -- to make finding this stuff easier for our users.

- Whlie they ask for less metadata, it's interesting -- and disappointing -- that designating rights is not a part of the upload process. There's no option to assign your media a Creative Commons license, permitting others not only to access your work but to reuse it creatively -- to remix it, borrow from it, quote from it, build upon it.

Because the default for all Google videos is traditional copyright, it is presumably illegal to download a video from Google and share it, or retransmit it to another site, or use it on a commercial site (there are many works on Ourmedia that can be used by commercial entties -- because the owner specifically permitted those uses).

There's also some noise in the blogosphere about what Google may do with your video, given their Terms of Service, which is quite a bit denser (and filled with lawyerese) than Ourmedia's terms of service: You own your own material. Ourmedia claims no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to our service.

At BoingBoing, Jacob Kaplan-Moss writes:

I've taken a look at the Video Uploader terms of service, and they contain some... suspect clauses, including the provision that Google can bill you for excessive bandwidth. Thought you might be interested...

Couple of other differences:

Google video doesn't support Flash. Ourmedia does.

Ourmedia also will freely host audio files, podcasts, images, text documents, software, games and more. Google doesn't.

Overall, though, Google's foray into video is a welcome addition to the cause of spreading the personal media revolution. Now: which of the other search engines will provide free hosting for grassroots media -- and will join an open media registry so those works can be freely shared and accessed?

PVR Blog has more here.