Acknowledgments

This book was a collaborative effort. The insights and occasional bits of wisdom you may find between these covers owe their origins to others. Any mistakes, omissions, or lapses in reporting are mine alone.

Darknet benefited enormously from an online brain trust of grasssroots contributors. Draft chapters were circulated in three places: the Darknet.com blog, where a number of readers—especially Eric Schulman—offered helpful feedback; the Darknet wiki, where Rachel Courtland and user2976 made especially valuable edits; and Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community, where the manuscript was dissected with care by Bryan Alexander, Michael Corrado, Annette Leung, Gregory D. Esau, Glen Blankenship, Charles Cameron, John Mulligan, and Jesse Walker.

Shel Israel provided generous and wise editing help with many of the chapters. Howard Rheingold offered early guidance and encouragement. I compared notes along the way with Dan Gillmor, another early proponent of participatory media. Ross Mayfield set me up with a Socialtext wiki. Jane Black started me on the right track. Keisha Franklin did some brief reporting for me in chapter 1. Ernest Miller and Ernest Svenson set me straight on several legal matters. I had illuminating conversations with Kevin Werbach and Esther Dyson at Supernova, Bob Metcalf at PopTech, and the organizers of South by Southwest and Digital Hollywood. Thomas Huntington, Jennifer Roberts, Fritz Friedman, and Jenny Miller opened doors to the right people. John Battelle, Jessica Litman, Gary Price, Robert S. Boynton, Gary Rivlin, Charles C. Mann, Joe Trippi, Hank Barry, Chris Anderson, Shayne Bowman, Chris Willis, Ben and Mena Trott, Rusty Foster, Jim Romenesko, Craig Newmark, Mark Glaser, Carrie McLaren, Håkon Styri, Rick Heller, Stephen Downes, Damien Newman, Bernie Goldbach, Glenn Fleishman, and Buzz Bruggeman also provided valuable contributions.

This book could not have been written without the generous efforts of those profiled in these pages, especially Jack Valenti, Lawrence Lessig, Warren Lieberfarb, Rev. John, Donald S. Whiteside, James M. Burger, Cary Sherman, Andrew Setos, Jaron Lanier, Gigi Sohn, Mike Godwin, Clay Shirky, Tim O’Reilly, Raven, Jim Griffin, Joe Lambert, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Bruce Forest, Jordan Greenhall, David Clayton, Stephen Balogh, Gregory L. Clayman, Mike Ramsay, John S. Hendricks, Martin Yudkovitz, Stewart Alsop, Benjamin S. Feingold, Adrian Alperovich, Jed Horowitz, Paul Kocher, John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Fred von Lohmann, Cory Doctorow, Seth Schoen, Wendy Seltzer, Joe Kraus, Chris Murray, Peter Jaszi, Miriam Nisbet, Henry Jenkins, Emery Simon, Gary Shapiro, Glenn Otis Brown, John Manferdelli, Richard Doherty, Dennis Mudd, Bob Ohlweiler, Edward Felten, Tony Abbott, Jonathan Potter, Michael Miron, Seth Greenstein, Jonathan Zittrain, Andy Wolfe, Lauren Weinstein, Ian Clarke, Cory Ondrejka, Honda Shing, Victor LaCour, Beryl Howell, Jack Driscoll, Andrew Frank, Roger McGuinn, and the underground pirates and file sharers who entrusted me with keeping their identities confidential.

Authors David Weinberger and Doc Searls helped build the intellectual framework on which I hung my arguments. Many of the issues surrounding digital rights have been explored in earlier books by gifted academics and writers such as Lessig, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Jessica Litman, David Bollier, Pamela Samuelson, and others. Building upon their works was an honor.

I’m also indebted to the talented journalists who have written with care and uncommon understanding about these issues, including Steven Levy, Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg, Drew Clark, Jon Healey, James Poniewozik, Declan McCullagh, Amy Harmon, John Markoff, Frank Rich, Leslie Walker, Scott Rosenberg, Brock Meeks, Steve Outing, Dawn C. Chmielewski, Paul Boutin, John Naughton, Heather Green, and the editorial teams at Salon, Slate, and BusinessWeek Online. Fellow bloggers helped inform my understanding of the digital culture wars, especially Dave Winer, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Jenny Levine, Marc Canter, Rebecca Blood, Meg Hourihan, Evan Williams, David Sifry, Joi Ito, Jon Lebkowsky, Anil Dash, Mitch Kapor, Seth Finkelstein, Donna Wentworth, James Grimmelmann, Robert Scoble, Mark Cuban, Halley Suitt, David Rothman, Susan Mernit, Mary Hodder, Kevin Heller, Frank Field, Sheila Lennon, Denise Howell, Steve Rubel, Ben Edelman, Tim Jarrett, Derek Powazek, Christopher Lydon, Leonard Witt, Tim Porter, Morrie Johnston, Lisa Rein, Matt Haughey, John Patrick, Mitch Ratcliffe, Om Malik, Christian Crumlish, Ben Hammersley, Scott Matthews, Dave Farber and his mailing list, and countless others.

I owe a debt to my instructors at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, especially James Frey, James Houston, and Anne Lamott, who taught me the importance of writing “shitty first drafts.”

My family provided a constant source of comfort and support through two years of travels and weekends spent in a tiny office. I love you, Mary.

Finally, a generous thank you to my agent, Deirdre Mullane (as well as to Katya Balter) at the Spieler Agency, who believed in this project from the start, and to Eric Nelson, my editor at John Wiley & Sons, who really gets it.