Darknet

First song downloads, now organic chemistry

NY Times: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

AFTER scanning his textbooks and making them available to anyone to download free, a contributor at the file-sharing site PirateBay.org composed a colorful message for “all publishers” of college textbooks, warning them that “myself and all other students are tired of getting” ripped off. ...

All forms of print publishing must contend with the digital transition, but college textbook publishing has a particularly nasty problem on its hands. College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere.

Consider the cost of a legitimate copy of one of the textbooks listed at the Pirate Bay, John E. McMurry’s “Organic Chemistry.” A new copy has a list price of $209.95; discounted, it’s about $150; used copies run $110 and up. To many students, those prices are outrageous, set by profit-engorged corporations (and assisted by callous professors, who choose which texts are required). Helping themselves to gratis pirated copies may seem natural, especially when hard drives are loaded with lots of other products picked up free. ...

An important vote on the open-access movement

NY Times: At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web.

Publish or perish has long been the burden  of  every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish  —  on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them. ...

Google Video lets you go to Cal for free

San Jose Mercury News: Go to UC for free, on Google Video. Berkeley campus shares 100 introductory courses.

Darknet classroom

The microcontent-savvy Bernie Goldbach at IrishEyes (yes, he teaches in Ireland) offers a mini-Darknet classroom, noting:

No amount of legal constraints will roll back the way an entire generation leverages the broadband they use to connect their worlds. ...

As a third level lecturer, I have encountered a creeping erosion to the "fair use" granted in the service of culture. Today, if I use more than 500 words from a source, I am expected to get permission. Since I do not have a research assistant who can plod after permissions, I now use "jump lists" and bibliographies. Test results show the students don't follow the lists. The end result is they don't read required material and the overall quality of essays and classroom discussion suffers. ...

Nearly half of my first year students carry connected, always-on devices. They can share photos, videos, music and assigned texts in the classroom, on the bus or in the canteen. By the end of their third year, they are creating and distributing video shorts and mashing up music, photos and graphics from their "skunkworks sandbox". Some of their stuff is edgy, often demented, and with generous helpings of originality.

This is exactly the kind of innovative, experimental grassroots creativity that we should be celebrating instead of closing off to our young people because of outdated copyright laws.

I hope Darknet gets much wider dissemination on college campuses so that these issues can be debated by the students being directly affected. Here's a start.

'Darknet' tools

Following are resources for users to take control of their digital media:

Remix culture

Creative Commons: More than 12 million works are now under a CC license. Creative Commons lets you fine-tune your copyright for the digital age.

ccMixter: Find works you can mash-up, remix and reuse with this Creative Commons tool and community music sharing site.

Beatmixed.com: A great place to learn more about the do-it-yourself, mash-up, amateur remix community.

SourceForge.net hosts the largest largest repository of open source code and applications on the Internet.

Video

VideoLAN is a free open-source video streaming player for every OS.

Burn4Free is free software that lets you burn your movies, games, and TV shows to CD and DVD.

Doom9.net is a site used by millions of visitors to back up their DVDs.

Doom9: How to rip a DVD, plus ripping and descrambling guides.

SmartRipper is a DVD VOB file extractor, or DVD ripper. It's free, though not entirely easy for newbies to install. (Here is the Doom9 guide and the DVD-replica guide to the program.)

Flash DVD Ripper is another good DVD converter software program for converting DVD to MPEG, AVI, VCD, SVCD. Cost: $31.

HandBrake is a well-regarded multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter for MacOS X and GNU/Linux.

MacTheRipper from ripDifferent is a free program that lets you rip DVDs so you can watch them on your Apple laptop instead of carrying them around during trips. It's apparently under siege by the MPAA and may have been supplanted by Fast DVD Copy, also from ripDifferent.

DownSeek lists dozens of so-called video cutters, rippers, joiners and splitters.

You can also search for DVD ripper programs at AfterDawn, BurnWorld, Digital Digest and DVDRHelp.

DVD Demystified: What are region codes?

Region-Free Guide: How to make your DVD player region-free.

Codec Corner will tell you which codecs are installed on your computer and which ones you're missing.

Doom9: How to convert from one video format to another, such as DivX, VCD, SVCD and AVI.

DVD Demystified: All about DVDs, including dozens of FAQ.

Matt Haughey's PVR Blog: All about PVRs (personal video recorders, or digital video recorders).

Doom9: How to capture analog TV programming and convert it to DivX using VirtualDub.

EFF attorney Wendy Seltzer: How to build an open-source MythTV-based high-definition personal video recorder.

About.com: Top 10 TV capture cards.

VideoHelp: How to stream video from your capture or TV tuner card, and more.

Ourmedia video: How to publish video to the Web.

Ourmedia tools: Download FireANT, the first app for subscribing to RSS video feeds.

TechSmith's Camtasia screencasting app is a terrific program for capturing video on your PC screen, though DRM defeats it in some cases.

Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro X is an unbeatable app for capturing video on Macs, regardless of the DRM built into it.

versiontracker: DVD Capture is freeware that lets you grab a screen shot from your Apple DVD player's window. You ordinarily can't do so — even from your own home movie — thanks to Apple building unreasonable restrictions into the player.

Audio

How to record Internet radio.

High Criteria's Total Recorder will let you record almost anything off your computer — streaming audio, Mic input, Line-in input as well as CDs and DVDs — and it's almost impervious to DRM. Download here.

Streamripper is an open source application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive, creating separate files for each track. Runs on Windows and Unix.

Audiograbber software grabs digital audio from CDs by copying the audio digitally — not through the soundcard — which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals.

iRecordMusic from Bitcartel for the Mac is a quasi-radio TiVo. It records streaming Internet radio feeds, whether they are served by QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player. After recording, the content is encoded as unprotected AAC (MP4), MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) or LAME MP3. Cost: US$24.95.

Hymn (Hear Your Music Anywhere) and PyMusique for iTunes allow users to strip or bypass the DRM schemes implemented by online music stores such as iTunes. Here's why some folks do it.

Ourmedia: How to publish audio to the Web.

Audiotoolsfactory is where you can find audio editing and conversion tools.

BeSweet is an audio transcoding tool that lets you convert audio files from one format to another, including MP3, AC3, WAV, MP2, AVI, Aiff, VOB and Ogg Vorbis.

Hydrogenaudio is the leading newsgroup for discussions of advanced audio encoding.

File sharing

Despite the impression given by the mainstream media, file sharing is neither illegal nor wrong — it all depends on what you're sharing. Here are some popular p2p networks, listed for educational purposes:

Multinetwork file sharing programs:

Shareaza can connect to multiple file sharing networks, such as Gnutella and eDonkey.

iSwipe connects to Gnutella, FastTrack, OpenNap and OpenFT.

Project: gIFT connectes to Gnutella, FastTrack and OpenFT.

The Poisoned Project accesses Gnutella, FastTrack and OpenFT.

MLdonkey connects to FastTrack, DirectConnect, Gnutella and more.

BitTorrent

Some of the better BitTorrent clients include Azureus and BitComet.

PirateBay lets you search or browse hundreds of thousands of torrents.

TorrentReactor claims to track the most active torrents on the Web.

TorrentSpy also breaks down torrents into browseable categories.

Media sharing networks:

isoheaven
Movies, TV shows, video games

ShareMonkey
Music, movies, video games, software

Hash link search engines:

FileDonkey
Whatabig

Warez sites:

Warez.com
AppzWorld
EasyWarez

Programs to back up a copy-protected DVD or CD:

Daemon Tools
Alcohol 120%
Clonecd

Source: Steal This File Sharing Book, by Wallace Wang

Anti-P2P software

Packeteer
Allot
AssetMetrix
Audible Magic

'Darknet' resources

Following is a clearinghouse for information about emerging media forms, the remix revolution, fair use and copyright in the digital age, and other issues addressed in Darknet. Users are welcome to add pointers to additional books, online articles and resources.

Books

We the Media
by Dan Gillmor
O'Reilly, August 2004; ISBN: 0596007337

The Media Lab
by Nicholas Negroponte
September 1988, Penguin Books; ISBN: 0140097015

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
by Lawrence Lessig
February 2005 (paperback), Penguin; ISBN: 0143034650

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
by Lawrence Lessig
October 2001, Random House; ISBN: 0375505784

Freedom of Expression (R) : Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity
by Kembrew McLeod
Doubleday. February 2005; ISBN: 0385513259

The Anarchist in the Library
by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Basic Books, April 2004; ISBN: 0465089844

Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity
by Siva Vaidhyanathan
August 2001, New York University Press; ISBN: 0814788068

Brand Name Bullies
by David Bollier
John Wiley & Sons, December 2004; ISBN: 0471679275

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
by David Bollier
Routledge, June 2003; ISBN: 0415944821

Democratizing Innovation
by Eric von Hippel
MIT Press, April 2005; ISBN: 0262002744

Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment
by William Fisher
Stanford University Press, August 2004; ISBN: 0804750130

Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age
by Adam D. Thierer and Wayne Crews (Editors)
July 2002, Cato Institute; ISBN: 1930865244

Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet
by Jessica Litman
March 2001, Prometheus Books; ISBN: 157392889

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by Howard Rheingold
November 2002, Perseus Publishing; ISBN: 0738206083

Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies
by Andy Oram (Editor)
March 2001, O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 059600110X

Steal This File Sharing Book
by Wallace Wang
No Starch Press, October 2004; ISBN: 159327050X

Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music
by John Alderman
August 2001, Perseus Publishing; ISBN: 0738204056

The Art of Digital Music
by David Battino, Kelli Richards
Backbeat Books, January 2005; ISBN: 0879308303

How to Do Everything With MP3 and Digital Music
by Dave Johnson, Rick Broida
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, November 2001; ISBN: 0072194138

Cyber Rights : Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age
by Mike Godwin
July 1998, Times Books/Crown; ISBN: 0812928342

Next: The Future Just Happened
by Michael Lewis
July 2001, W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393020371

Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization
by Pat Choate
Knopf, April 2005; ISBN: 0375402128

(suggest other titles!)

Law

Title 17 of the US Code governing copyright, including section 1201, Circumvention of copyright protection systems

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 prohibits citizens from circumventing locks on digital media even for legitimate purposes.

The No Electronic Theft Act of 1997.

Reports

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Artists, musicians and the Internet, Dec. 5, 2004.

EFF: How Not To Get Sued By The RIAA For File-Sharing (And Other Ideas to Avoid Being Treated Like a Criminal).

Organizations

Public Knowledge: This public-interest organization won the court fight against the broadcast flag.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The ACLU of digital liberties, the group is at the forefront of nearly all battles over cyberspace freedoms.

Slashdot has the most tech-savvy community online, with thousands of postings about remix culture, video and audio capture and encoding, and much, much more.

Freeculture.org: an international student campaign launched at Swarthmore College to preserve digital liberties.

The Participatory Culture Foundation is building an open platform for Internet TV and video.

Ourmedia hosts thousands of grassroots media works — forever, for free.

Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization working to support participatory culture and build a fairer music industry.

Recording Industry Association of America: The RIAA takes a slightly different point of view.

Motion Picture Association of America: So does the MPAA.

RespectCopyrights.org, a project of the MPAA.

Music United consists of musicians and artists who urge people not to share copyrighted works.

Keep Music Coming is a project of the Canadian Value of Music Coalition.

Report Piracy is sponsored by Movie Zone UK.

International Intellectual Property Alliance is a private sector coalition formed in 1984.

Other groups on the knife's blade of digital rights and copyright include Consumers Union, Consumer Electronics Association, the American Library Association, the Center for Democracy and Technology, DigitalConsumer.org, the Alliance for Digital Progress, Protectfairuse.org, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, Media Access Project, the Digital Speech Project, Boycott-RIAA.com, Anti-DMCA.org, New Yorkers for Fair Use, and Britain’s Campaign for Digital Rights.

Companies monitoring or trying to foil P2P services:

MediaDefender
Overpeer
Covenant Corp.
BayTSP
BigChampagne

Companies trying to expand the digital media marketplace:

Snocap
JunGroup

More resources

See the Tools section for information about users taking control of their digital media.

Slyck.com offers statistics on P2P network usage.

Magazine articles

There are thousands of magazine and online articles about these topics. See the Topics menu in the right nav of Darknet.com to see articles broken down by subject.

Related: 'Darknet' tools

'Darknet' in the classroom

Darknet (John Wiley & Sons, May 2005) should hold special interest for faculty members who teach courses in media studies, law, business, e-business, social studies, Internet, computing or current events. Here are the main subjects covered in Darknet:

Media

• A look at emerging media forms, videoblogs, distributed television, digital storytelling, et al.
• How the personal media revolution is changing the public's balance of power with traditional media powers
• Webcasting, digital radio, podcasting and the future of commercial radio
• The ongoing battle between media companies and empowered users over who will control the information future
• Remediation and remixing of traditional media forms
• Acceptable usage policies when incorporating video or audio into a podcast or independent movie
• Digital television and Internet television
• P2P networks and encrypted private networks (darknets)
• The videogame industry as a model for traditional media companies to emulate
• A 10-point digital culture roadmap

Copyright law and piracy

• Fair use in the digital age
• Creative Commons as an alternative to traditional copyright
• The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act as a model for other nations to follow
• File sharing, including exclusive reporting on the movie underground
• Blanket licensing
• Why "piracy" is not the real aim of the media companies in pushing for restrictions on digital technologies
• Digital rights management
• Permissions required when borrowing from the culture at large

I've heard from professors in the United States, Ireland and Sweden who plan to incorporate Darknet into their classroom curriculums. If you'd like an examination copy, or want more information about Darknet, or would like to contact other educators who plan to use the book as part of their coursework, please contact the author.

Related:

Table of Contents
Introduction
Index

Classroom use

Tilman Baumgaertel is using "Darknet" "in a class on theoretical approaches towards digital filmmaking" in Singapore.

Open Courseware, Down Under

Just got off Skype with Leigh Blackall, courseware designer for the University of Western Sydney. Leigh is giving a presentation to his colleagues tomorrow on his research into various things that will enable them to trial an Open Courseware model, including information about blogs, mediacasting, RSS, wikis, the Internet Archive, Google Video, Ourmedia, CreativeCommons and "Darknet."

Sounds like it would make a fantastic course.

Garret the copyright propagandist

PR Newswire: "Garret" is the name children selected for the "copyright crusading" ferret, who is featured in "Copyright Crusader to the Rescue."

Having a corporate-sponsored comic book is fine, I suppose, but incorporating this one-sided, misleading propagandist claptrap into the teaching curriculum is an outrage.

Here's the teachers guide and elementary and high school posters (in French, too!).

Also, here's Garret solo. See the full comic here. Sort of a "Reefer Madness" for the digital age, no?

From the release:

The "Copyright Crusader to the Rescue" is the newest addition to BSA's cyber ethics education program. The curriculum was developed to teach children about cyber ethics, including the importance of responsible computer and Internet use, respect for digital creativity and copyright protection. ...

In addition to being available for free download at http://www.playitcybersafe.com, the four-page comic book curriculum and teacher's guide were also mailed nationwide to 30,000 fourth grade teachers who subscribe to Weekly Reader. It has also reached more than one million kids and two million parents and guardians. Also available for free download on the Play It Cyber Safe Web site is BSA's first cyber ethics curriculum, "Play It Safe in Cyberspace." Since its initial distribution in 2002, the "Play It Safe in Cyberspace" curriculum has reached more than 13 million kids, parents and teachers.

Somebody -- the EFF? Creative Commons? -- needs to step up, set the record straight, and add some nuance to this discussion. Will the words "fair use" ever pass the lips of the instructors in this program? Will kids be taught that sharing music with a friend is perfectly legal? Not by the look of things.