Will Hollywood lock up our movies?

Columnist Michael Rogers of MSNBC.com explores the issues raised in Darknet in his latest column: Will Hollywood lock up our movies? New book sheds light on fight over our digital rights.

Rogers is the first mainstream media writer to pick up on the term "digital rights" that I've been using. Excerpt:

You buy a DVD, and then loan it to your neighbor. You shoot a video of your new baby and make copies to send to everyone in the family. Your college professor shows a short clip of a classic film in class. You’re on vacation so you record three weeks of “Desperate Housewives.” These are all rights we take for granted — but in fact everything you know about owning music and movies is up in the air right now, and where it will come down is anyone’s guess.

That’s the message of J.D. Lasica’s excellent new book, "Darknet: Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation," 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. “Darknet” refers to parts of the Web unseen by the public and specifically to the world of illegal underground file-sharing — the only option, in Lasica’s view, that consumers may have if content owners are overzealous in locking up their intellectual property. ...

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.