Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation (Hardcover)

Rapid-fire advances in technology have transformed home entertainment. Not only can we store hours of television programming and music on hard drives, software has made it easy to create our own movies and songs, splicing and sampling professional-grade material into amateur productions. Entertainment conglomerates are understandably concerned, but in online journalist Lasica's reporting on the culture clash over digital distribution and remixing, corporations are simplistically portrayed as dinosaurs intent on stifling the little guy's creative freedom in order to protect their profit margins. The characterization is not entirely unmerited, but the deck feels unfairly stacked when "Big Entertainment" honchos are juxtaposed with a preacher who illegally copies and downloads movies so he can use short clips for his sermons. Similarly, Lasica infuses the allegedly inevitable triumph of "participatory culture" with a sense of entitlement and anti-corporate bias that he never fully addresses. Lasica's interviews are far-ranging, and he provides a cogent analysis of the broad problems with America's outdated legal framework for dealing with intellectual property rights and the need for the entertainment industry to adapt to new technologies. Too often, though, he falls back to an alarmist tone. With so many other works addressing this issue from both sides, it will be hard for Lasica's book to stand out from the pack. (May 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When the music-recording industry took a hard-line legal stance against file sharers, it alienated its customer base and hurt its own sales. A similar battle is brewing in the movie industry, as faster Internet speeds and video compression are making it easier to download entire movies over the Net for free. Lasica, a top online journalist, takes us into the Internet movie underground, where an elite club of pirates known as "rippers" and "crackers" secretly obtain copies of movies and release them in cyberspace. At the other extreme are the Hollywood studios, which are treating ordinary users like thieves, placing such shackles on digital media that we can't legally make a backup copy of a DVD we own and soon restricting the copying and sharing of high-definition TV. Contrast this with the freedoms that computers give us to remix, copy, and paste video and to author DVDs, and you have a scenario where ordinary producers of creative art become felons. Lasica takes the middle view that while copyrights need to be protected, the continual erosion of fair-use rights needs to be addressed. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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, William Rainey Harper Coll. Lib., Palatine, IL (Library Journal, May 1, 2005)

Rapid-fire advances in technology have transformed home entertainment. Not only can we store hours of television programming and music on hard drives, software has made it easy to create our own movies and songs, splicing and sampling professional-grade material into amateur productions. Entertainment conglomerates are understandably concerned, but in online journalist Lasica's reporting on the culture clash over digital distribution and remixing, corporations are simplistically portrayed as dinosaurs intent on stifling the little guy's creative freedom in order to protect their profit margins. The characterization is not entirely unmerited, but the deck feels unfairly stacked when "Big Entertainment" honchos are juxtaposed with a preacher who illegally copies and downloads movies so he can use short clips for his sermons. Similarly, Lasica infuses the allegedly inevitable triumph of "participatory culture" with a sense of entitlement and anti-corporate bias that he never fully addresses. Lasica's interviews are far-ranging, and he provides a cogent analysis of the broad problems with America's outdated legal framework for dealing with intellectual property rights and the need for the entertainment industry to adapt to new technologies. Too often, though, he falls back to an alarmist tone. With so many other works addressing this issue from both sides, it will be hard for Lasica's book to stand out from the pack. (May 13) (Publishers Weekly, April 11, 2005)

"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, author of There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future

"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

"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, author or Hackersand Crypto

"JD 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

"The people who most need to read JD 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

"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."
--Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture

"An indispensable primer for those who want to protect their digital rights from the dark forces of big media."
-Kara Swisher, author of aol.com
The first general interest book by a blogger edited collaboratively by his readers, Darknet reveals how Hollywood's fear of digital piracy is leading to escalating clashes between copyright holders and their customers, who love their TiVo digital video recorders, iPod music players, digital televisions, computers, and other cutting-edge devices. Drawing on unprecedented access to entertainment insiders, technology innovators, and digital provocateurs-including some who play on both sides of the war between digital pirates and entertainment conglomerates-the book shows how entertainment companies are threatening the fundamental freedoms of the digital age.

"That was a very nice presentation," a Hollywood studio chief said to a delegation from TiVo after seeing the device in action. "Now go set yourselves on fire."

What happens when the irresistible force of technological innovation meets the immovable object of big entertainment? For starters, Hollywood moguls start shooting themselves in the foot. It's easy to forget now that the big media companies were against VCRs in the '80s and CDs in the '90s. They're currently working on dumbing down your TiVo, iPod, and DVD burner. We've entered a new age of Prohibition, like in the 1920s, but with your home entertainment system at stake instead of your home bar. In both cases, the laws are so senseless and out of touch with the public that they're turning millions of us into digital outlaws.

J. D. Lasica argues that many of the future gadgets we long for might already be here if we were better able to balance the needs of Hollywood and the public it supposedly serves. Darknet takes you behind the scenes and into the trenches of this widening conflict, pulling back the curtain on the Hollywood insiders, tech innovators, and wily provocateurs who lurk in the darkest corners of cyberspace. He reveals how profoundly technology has shifted the balance of power between corporate media and regular people, and how determined many media powers are to turn back the clock, lock down our devices, and curtail fair use.

This insightful collection of stories introduces you to the people at the center of this epic struggle, from the earliest adopters of the digital lifestyle and pioneers of next-generation television to a host of ordinary people who use interactive technologies to enrich their own lives and others'. You'll meet the pastor who uses illegal movie clips to illustrate his sermons, the college counselor who runs his own digital radio station, the media employee who works undercover as a movie pirate, and the teenagers who reshot Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'll also meet the media executives and creative professionals who feel threatened by this wave of appropriation as well as the authorities charged with enforcing an increasingly Byzantine tangle of copyright law.

Lasica warns against a future in which Internet-based media serve not the user, but the interests of Hollywood and the music industry. To discover a much richer world of personal media, participatory culture, and digital rights, start reading Darknet today—then spread the word.

Praise for DARKNET

"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

"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, author of Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

"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, author of There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future

"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 entertainment and ideas. A terrific read."
—David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto

J.D. LASICA has written articles for Legal Affairs, the Washington Post, Salon, and The Industry Standard, and he blogs at NewMediaMusings.com. He's also the founder of ourmedia.org, the global home for grassroots media.

www.darknet.com