Darknet

Scanning a million books page by page for Google

Associated Press: Scanning a million books page by page for Google.

Rip this book? Not yet

Steve Levy in Newsweek:  Rip This Book? Not Yet. The very existence of a book scanner for consumer use is one of those early warnings of turbulence to come.

Libraries shun deals to place books on Web

I had lunch today with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, and he was a bit gleeful about today's front-page story in the New York Times: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available. Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

As it should be, and why Brewster and his colleagues are right to feel proud at standing up to the restrictions imposed by the tech giants.

Free downloads of books at Google

AP:

Google Inc. on Wednesday plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain.

Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's "Inferno" and Aesop's "Fables" will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers

Information World Review: Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers. Software giant begins book digitisation, but side-steps copyright problems.

E-book project to offer free access

Associated Press: E-book project to offer free access.

Electronic book devotees may want to set aside some extra screen time this summer, as two non-profits are preparing to provide free access to 300,000 texts online.

Project Gutenberg and World eBook Library plan to make ``a third of a million'' e-books available free for a month at the first World eBook Fair. Downloads will be available at the fair's Web site from July 4, the 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg's founding, through Aug. 4.

The majority of the books will be contributed by the World eBook Library. It otherwise charges $8.95 a year for access to its database of more than 250,000 e-books, documents and articles.

But the book fair won't be the last chance for e-bookworms to devour works ranging from ``Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' to ``Old Indian Legends,'' not to mention dictionaries and thesauruses, without paying for them.

Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart said the partners are on track to make 1 million books available for the annual fair's one-month run in 2009, with more appearing in subsequent years. About 100,000, he said, will be permanently available at the handful of Project Gutenberg sites on the Internet.

``We want to give the most books to the most people,'' Hart said. ``It has been our goal since the dawn of the Internet to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.''

The Gutenberg books, typed and scanned into computers by thousands of volunteers, mostly are those that are no longer protected by copyright. They include fiction, non-fiction and reference books and will be available for worldwide readers in about 100 languages.

While the commercial e-book market remains tiny, Hart said electronic books have ``caught on without getting a lot of publicity'' and are being widely read on handheld computers, cell phones and even special programs for use on iPods.

``These people that grew up on GameBoys -- to them a GameBoy screen is the standard size,'' he said. ``To us old folks, it's too small. But they don't care.''

Based on fast-increasing demand, he predicted there will be 10 million e-books available by 2020.

``I've gotten notes from people who said they would have never, ever read Shakespeare if I hadn't put it on the Internet,'' Hart said.

Amazon book pages: not built for authors

I visited the Darknet page on Amazon.com for the first time in a couple of months. I've got to say that the format of these pages bothers me quite a bit. You have reviewers who obviously haven't read the book -- like the latest scribe, Arnaud "Arnaud" of Venice, CA -- make wildly false statements, eg, that "the book encourages file sharing" and the book is anti-artist. Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has read "Darknet" knows.

As a blogger, it's frustrating to me that there is no opportunity for the author to respond on my own book page.

Google to put books online

Missed this news in the San Jose Mercury News the other day: Google to put books online. Complete works to be available, for a fee, in digital form only.

Google is expanding its role in the publishing world from a search engine for books to a distributor making entire books available to read online.

The company launched a new program Friday that allows traditional book publishers in the United States and Britain to sell and set the price for access to full copies of their books, Google spokeswoman Megan Lamb said Monday. Consumers who purchase the access cannot save copies of the books or individual pages to their computers and can view them only through a Web browser.

``We are collaborating with publishers -- in response to demand from them -- to develop a suite of online tools that will enable publishers to experiment with new and innovative ways to generate more book revenue,'' Lamb said in an e-mail.

The new program is open only to U.S. and U.K. publishers at this point.

Several points remained unclear: whether Google would get a cut of the price paid for access to a book; whether customers who purchase access to books see advertising while they read the books; and whether independent authors will also one day sell full access to their books through the service. ...

The Anti-Lessig wiki

Mark Hamilton, who recently redesigned his notes from a teacher blog:

Lawrence Lessig, whose book Free Culture should be on your must-read list, has taken a bold step forward: the Anti-Lessig Reader. His introduction to the new wiki:

The aim of this page is to build a collection of content that criticizes my work. I’ve mapped the chapters of Free Culture, but feel free to add any other work you’d like. Also, if there is stuff that adds support, of course that can be added. But please keep it separate from the criticism. My aim is to create a simple source for “the other side of the story.”

I love it: read the book, then log in, start writing and join the discussion. Brilliant.

Is Google Book Search fair use?

Larry Lessig does one of his famous slide shows, this time on YouTube: Is Google Book Search fair use?

HarperCollins to create searchable digital library

From Tuesday's NY Times: In the latest move in the battle between publishers and search engines, HarperCollins Publishers said yesterday it would create its own digital library of all of its book and audio content and make it searchable by consumers on the Internet.

Debate on Google Book Search

The webcast (video and audio) of the New York Public Library debate about the Google Print (now Google Book Search) project is now up. Participants were Larry Lessig, Allan Adler of the Association of American Publishers, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine, David Drummond of Google, Nick Taylor of the Authors Guild and two gents from the NY Public Library. Lessig on stage with anybody is an unfair match, and he proves it again.

Throwing mud at Google

John Heilemann in New York magazine on the Google Print fight. If you like wild-eyed, unsubstantiated accusations, you'll love this piece.

Harvard's partnership with Google Books

Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, is overseeing the university's partnership with the Google Books project.

"The thing that consoles me," Mr. Verba said, "is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book."

Absolutely true. Get a clue, book publishers!

Googling literature

From Saturday's NY Times: Googling Literature: The Debate Goes Public.

Publishers brace for selling bits of books online

San Jose Merc: Publishers brace for selling bits of books online.

The race to become the iTunes of publishing

NY Times: Want 'War and Peace' Online? How About 20 Pages at a Time?

In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book. These programs would combine their already available systems of searching books online with a commercial component that could revolutionize the way that people read books.

The idea is to do for books what Apple has done for music, allowing readers to buy and download parts of individual books for their own use through their computers rather than trek to a store or receive them by mail. Consumers could purchase a single recipe from a cookbook, for example, or a chapter on rebuilding a car engine from a repair manual. ...

'Scan them all!'

Alan Herrell says of the Google Print project and other controversies related to copyrighted books: Scan them all!

O'Reilly, Lessig, 'piracy,' and common sense

A thought-provoking column by Graeme Philipson in Australia's The Age dissects some of the issues surrounding intellectual property in the digital age. Extended excerpt:

It does my heart good. It really does. Amid all the blather and hypocrisy about copyright and intellectual property, a publisher has come out and stated the bleedin' obvious - that the free flow of information helps authors, and restricting it is counterproductive and ultimately futile.

Tim O'Reilly, whose company publishes a highly successful line of technical computing titles, has come out swinging against the restrictions imposed by the current copyright regimen. His comments were made before the current controversy over the Google Print program, but they could have been made in direct response to the stupid reaction of many publishers and writers, who claim that Google's attempt to digitise the contents of some of the world's libraries is a breach of copyright.

Mr O'Reilly has written a short polemic which outlines the changed realities of the digital age as succinctly as I have ever seen it put. And this from a man who made his fortune through the traditional publishing model.

"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy," he points out. This should be self-evident to anybody with even a passing understanding of publishing, but it seems most people just don't get it.
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"More than 100,000 books are published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer than 10,000 of those books have any significant sales, and only 100,000 or so of all the books in print are carried in even the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which they will move only to the recycling bin."

The power of the internet vastly improves the likelihood of a reader and an author linking up. The same is true of music and film. The old distribution models favour a few top-selling authors and musicians, and the big Hollywood studios, to the detriment of lesser-known but in many cases more talented creative artists. ...

Professor [Lawrence] Lessig makes the point that if Google Print is illegal, so is Google itself. Google is simply indexing and organising text, which is what any library does. The fact that it is using the internet to do so is irrelevant - it just makes it easier to do what any visitor to a physical library does. All that's changed is the technology, which means the old ways need to be re-examined. ...

The authors and publishers trying to stop Google indexing their books, the music industry middlemen trying to stop file sharing, the movie moguls clinging to their 20th-century distribution models, and the software companies relying on proprietary development and physical sales, are all on the wrong side of history.

Common sense will prevail. In the meantime, be wary of anybody who benefits from the current outmoded system who defends the system using altruistic arguments. They have either deluded themselves, or they are trying to delude you.

Why Google Print is good for publishers

Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal explains why Google Print Library is good for the world -- and good for authors and book publishers -- in this video interview. Warning: Some CNBC bimbette analyst named Becky keeps shouting out, "This is stealing!"

Public Knowledge criticizes publishers’ suit against Google

Wednesday, the Association of American Publishers sued Google, saying that the Google Print project to digitize books would violate copyright. Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn responded:

"The publishers’ suit against Google is truly unfortunate and short-sighted. Those who produce books should be heartened to see a project that has as its goal the legal distribution of knowledge and insight. The publishers also stand to gain increased exposure for their books. Instead, they are taking to court a program that would only fully digitize public-domain work and would give readers only a glimpse of copyrighted material. That Google project falls squarely within the boundaries of fair use, and the publishers should recognize that.”

Dead on.

Google opens 8 book-search sites in Europe

New York Times:

Google said Monday that it had begun operating local-language sites in eight European countries for its Google Print program, its closely watched effort to make all of the world's books searchable online, expanding into territories where it has drawn fierce criticism.

The Google Print sites - for France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain - enable users to search books provided by publishers in each country as well as English-language books in the Google library for which the company has secured local rights.

Defending Google's licence to print

BBC News: Defending Google's licence to print. Google's plan to create an index of millions of books has got them into legal trouble, but technology analyst Bill Thompson thinks they should press on despite the lawsuits.

Yahoo, Archive to scan books

Meantime, Katie Hafner in Monday's NY Times reports that a group of edu, org, com and gov organizations are announcing an Open Content system in the tradition of Open Source software.

An unusual alliance of corporations, nonprofit groups and universities plans to announce today an ambitious plan to digitize hundreds of thousands of books over the next several years and put them on the Internet, with the full text accessible to anyone.

The effort is being led by Yahoo, which appears to be taking direct aim at a similar project announced by its archrival, Google, whose own program to create searchable digital copies of entire collections at leading research libraries has run into a series of challenges since it was announced nine months ago.

The new project, called the Open Content Alliance, has the wide-ranging goal of digitizing historical works of fiction along with specialized technical papers. In addition to Yahoo, its members include the Internet Archive, the University of California, and the University of Toronto, as well as the National Archive in England and others.

The digitization of print materials has been a continual effort on the part of various research libraries for the last several years. But the potential power of the new collaboration lies in the collective ability of many institutions to compare and cross-reference materials, said Daniel Greenstein, librarian for the California Digital Library at the University of California.

"This is the kind of platform we've been looking for for a long time," said Dr. Greenstein. "Libraries digitize their stuff and put it up, but none of the libraries have comprehensive collections of everything. Now we can say: 'We have this particular edition of Mark Twain, but it's not as good as that one over there,' and we add it to the collection."

The Library of Congress, for instance, has one of the largest library collections in the world, but even that collection is incomplete. "It's all about gap-filling and collection development," said Dr. Greenstein. ...

In a departure from Google's approach, the Open Content Alliance will also make the books accessible to any search engine, including Google's. (Under Google's program, a digitized book would show up only through a Google search.) And by focusing at first on works that are in the public domain - such as thousands of volumes of early American fiction - the group is sidestepping the tricky question of copyright violation. ...

When it comes to copyrighted materials, the newly formed group appears to be taking a more cautious approach by seeking permission from copyright holders and by making works available though a Creative Commons license, whereby the copyright holder stipulates how a work can be used.

"Other projects talk about snippets," said Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that is building a vast digital library. "We don't talk about snippets. We talk about books." ...

The new group is calling for others to join. And Mr. Kahle of the Internet Archive said he hoped to recruit Google.

"The thing I want to have happen out of all this is have Google join in," he said. "I know we're dealing with archcompetitors, but if there's room for these guys to bend, by the time my kid goes to college, we could have a library system that is just astonishing."

Congrats, Brewster and colleagues. An important step forward.

Digitizing books: Authors Guild has it backward

Everyone's got an opinion about Google's plan to scan books.

The typically down-the-middle Mike Langberg in today's San Jose Mercury News: Google's libraries project facing writers' block.

Vin Scelsa, host of the show "Idiot's Delight" on Sirius Satellite Radio, in a letter to the NY Times: Keep books alive.

The Authors Guild's objections to Google's plan to offer a searchable database of the collections of five libraries is analogous to the Recording Industry Association of America's imposition of limitations on digital radio (including "terrestrial" stations with Internet simulcasts) through its lobbying of Congress during creation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. ...

If authors want their work to survive, it had better be in digital libraries. If record companies want to establish new artists, they should support outlets that offer exposure. Why tie the very hands that are trying help these artists achieve their goals?

Nick Taylor, president of the Authors Guild, in a letter to the Times: Google and the Authors.

And the op-ed piece by Tim O'Reilly that started the letter exchange above: Search and Rescue. Excerpt:

AUTHORS struggle, mostly in vain, against their fated obscurity. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks sales from major booksellers, only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies. Against this backdrop, the recent Authors Guild suit against the Google Library Project is poignantly wrongheaded.

The Authors Guild claims that Google's plan to make the collections of five major libraries searchable online violates copyright law and thus harms authors' interests. As both an author and publisher, I find the Guild's position to be exactly backward. Google Library promises to be a boon to authors, publishers and readers if Google sticks to its stated goal of creating a tool that helps people discover (and potentially pay for) copyrighted works. ...

I'm with Google on this one. It would certainly be considered fair use, if, for example, I circulated a catalog of my favorite books, including a handful of quotations from each book that helps people to decide whether to buy a copy. In my mind, providing such snippets algorithmically on demand, as Google does, doesn't change that dynamic. Google allows click-through to the entire book only if the book is in the public domain or if publishers have opted in to the program. If it's unclear who owns the rights to a book, only the snippets are displayed.

A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.

Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them. Even online sellers like Amazon offer only a small fraction of the university libraries' titles. While there are many unanswered questions about how businesses will help consumers buy the books they've found through a search engine for printed materials that is as powerful as Google's current Web search, there's great likelihood that Google Print's Library Project will create new markets for forgotten content. In one bold stroke, Google will give new value to millions of orphaned works.

I'm sorry to see authors buy into the old-school protectionism of the Authors Guild, not realizing they're acting against their own self-interest. Their resistance can come only from a failure to understand the nature of the program. Google Library is intended to help readers discover copyrighted works, not to give copies away. It's a tremendous service to authors that will help them beat the dismal odds of publishing as usual.

I'm with Google and O'Reilly, and hope to see him when his Web 2.0 conference begins Wednesday.

Lessig on the Google-Authors Guild dispute

Lawrence Lessig has come down on the side of Google (as have I) in the dispute between Google and the Authors Guild. Writes Lessig:

I've been waiting to offer my opinion on this whole mess until I've thought it through, I've been reading a lot of other, much more informed peoples' opinions, and this is what I come up with.

First, information is power. If Google does not get this information out, someone else will. ...

Second, it's a fair use issue. Google is not talking about publishing the entire works of a particular author; just a tiny snippet, maybe some bibliographic information, and that's it. Think of a card catalog here in your public library. From the Official Google Blog:

"Let's be clear: Google doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries."

Thirdly, anything that is legitimately attempting to give people more access to literary works is all right by me. As an English major, I plan on using Google Print to search authors past works, find connections I hadn't thought of, and yes, probably buy some books. I'm not going to be reading whole works on my 'puter ...

Authors Guild sues Google

San Jose Mercury News Tech ticker: Google copyright violations claimed.

An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google on Tuesday of ``massive copyright infringement,'' saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot digitally scan the authors' books for commercial use without permission.

``The authors' works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use,'' The Author's Guild said in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The lawsuit asked the court to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works.

Google, based in Mountain View, said in a statement that it respects copyright. ``We regret that this group has chosen litigation to try to stop a program that will make books and the information within them more discoverable to the world,'' the company said.

Google said authors and publishers can exclude books from the program if they don't want their material included.

I'm not a member of the Author's Guild, but if I were, I would tear up my card today.

Author's uses Internet for 28th book

NY Times: Steal This Book. Or at Least Download It Free.

Wherein novelist Warren Adler, who has written 27 books, is self-publishing his 28th one electronically, and e-mailing it free, a chapter at a time, to anyone who asks. Excerpt:

The way Mr. Adler, 77 (there goes "you can't teach an old dog new tricks"), sees it, portable electronic readers will soon do to paper books what the Walkman and iPod did to boomboxes.

"Print publishing has had a great 500-year run, but the print book is morphing into the screen book," he said. ...

Nothing can guarantee a sale, but, Mr. Adler said, for as little as $295 - plus a fee for each book sold - self-publishing services will register a copyright and put a book into an electronic format that can be sold as an e-book or printed out. Up the price to $1,000 or so, and the services will send out news releases, contact reviewers and offer the book to stores and online vendors like Amazon.com.

The Times doesn't say how to get those free chapters of Adler's new novel. Here's his website.

Google-book publishers rift widens

San Jose Mercury News: More on the rift between Google and book publishers. Excerpt:

Google's ambitious project launched last year to scan all sorts of books to make their contents available on the Internet set publishers snarling. Google's solution to the controversy has publishers snarling even more.

The Mountain View company has suspended the scanning but has given publishers until November to say which copyright material it can't use. That angered publishers, who say the Internet search engine is trying to upend copyright law. ...

The Association of American Publishers ... was in the process of finalizing its proposed compromise when Google grew impatient and asked to see a preview of it, Schroeder said. After reviewing it this week, she added, ``they said, `No, we don't think that will work.' ''

You can be almost certain that the book publishers' association's proposal was a regressive, backward-looking pile of do-nothingism, as evidenced by their claim that they can't get together a list of their own titles in three months' time. Hogwash.

Google is clearly on the public's side, while the publishers are hoping to do whatever they can to prevent these works from entering into a library-type system of public access (a far cry from the public domain).

The next time you hear AAP president Pat Schroeder claim that Google is only doing this to increase its profits, ask her: Would the AAP then be in favor of the nonprofit Internet Archive digitizing these books for the public welfare?

The silence will be defeaning.

Google stops scanning of copyrighted books

Michael Liektke of the Associated Press: Google Stops Scanning of Copyrighted Books.

Stung by a publishing industry backlash, Google has halted its efforts to scan copyrighted books from some of the nation's largest university libraries so the material can be indexed in its leading Internet search engine.

The company announced the suspension, effective until November, in a notice posted on its Web site just before midnight yesterday ...

The project troubles publishers because they fear making digital versions of copyrighted books available on the Internet could open the door to unauthorized duplication and distribution, similar to the rampant online pirating that has decimated the sales in the music industry.

Um, news flash to Michael Liektke: "Pirating" has not "decimated" music industry sales. In fact, music industry sales are up. You can read all about it ... in these Associated Press stories.

Many of us were wondering how Google was going to pull off this trick, given the fierce opposition by the book publishing industry. Now we know: they're not.

Deep Blog

Darknet has been accorded a place of honor among some heavyweight tomes at DeepBlog Books. Nice.

Google's book digitization plans stir controversy

BusinessWeek Online: A Google Project Pains Publishers. The major presses are raising thorny legal issues with the search giant's initiative to digitize the books of the world's great libraries.

In a May 20 letter, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) blasts Google's so-called Print for Libraries program for posing a risk of "systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale." ...

In December, Google dropped the equivalent of a heavy encyclopedia on the publishers. With no advance notification, the search provider unveiled its Print for Libraries program, aimed at digitizing public-domain books from the likes of the New York Public Library, Oxford University's Bodleian Library, and the libraries of Harvard and Michigan universities. Google said it would make available full versions of public-domain books online, while making only "snippets" of copyrighted text available.

But in addition to storing the digitized books on its own servers, Google said it would provide digital copies to the libraries. Publishers now worry Google might someday distribute digital copies of copyrighted books without their or the author's approval. The publishers argue that libraries have no legal right to digitize copyrighted material by handing it over to Google.

Here is the text of the letter sent by the Association of American University Presses' Peter Givler to Google concerning its Print for Libraries program. Key excerpt:

The idea that once this gigantic digitization project has been completed anyone with a computer and internet access will be able to use Google to search the collections of these libraries -- including the public domain material from the New York Public Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford -- is enormously seductive. However, it also appears to be built on a fundamental violation of the copyright act, and this large-scale infringement has the potential for serious financial damage to the members of AAUP.

While many book publishers hope that libraries will simply go away in the digital age, let's hope that common sense prevails and the parties reach an agreement that allows the public access to these works.

'Anarchist' now in paperback

Siva Vaidhyanathan's important (and largely overlooked) book, The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, is now out in paperback. If you missed it the first time around, go read it.

I reviewed it on New Media Musings here last year.

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.

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