You’ve heard about the “dark web” or the “invisible web” (article –
book —
web directory –
web search)
that vast expanse of the
Web that is “completely invisible to general purpose search engines”
like Google and Yahoo. So what are “Darknets”?
According to
wikipedia
a Darknet “is a private file sharing network where users only connect to
people they trust. Typically such networks are small, often with fewer
than 10 users each.” According to
J.D. Lasica
darknets are
“the vast, gathering, lawless economy of shared music, movies,
television shows, games, software, and porn–a one-touch jukebox that
would rival the products and services of the entertainment companies.”
Why is this important to libraries? Because darknets represent the struggle between
locked-down content that cannot be acquired or preserved or shared
and content that can be added to library collections and that readers can
share and use and re-use. Darknets exist now, but they give us a glimpse
into one possible future for digital content where battles over
“intellectual property” and laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act change the way readers interact with information and change what
libraries can legally do.
The concept of Darknets started with a 2002 paper
(The Darknet and
the Future of Content Distribution) by four Microsoft researchers
who examined file sharing and how it impacts business. They
argued that “the darknet genie will not be put back into the bottle”
and
examined “the relevance of content protection and content distribution architectures”
implying that too much digital rights management (DRM) would be bad for business.
The original paper has been a popular touchstone in the arguments about
DRM. (One of my favorites is Cory Doctorow’s Microsoft
Research DRM talk in June of 2004.)
Now a new book (Darknet: Hollywood’s
War Against the Digital Generation) by J.D. Lasica, co-founder of Ourmedia.org, provides a
useful addition to this dialog. Lasica takes a middle way approach
believing that both extremes (everything should be free vs. everything
should be fee) are wrong. From the publisher’s blurb:
Darknet tells the stories of the fascinating personalities and colorful
characters on both sides of this culture clash, and details the growing
clampdown on our digital freedoms. Darknet goes behind the scenes to
pull back the curtain on Big Entertainment insiders, technology
innovators, and digital provocateurs lurking in the darkest corners of
cyberspace. We meet the double-agent who stands at the highly
specialized hub of movie pirating while consulting to Hollywood studios
on piracy; the teenage boys who spent seven years refilming Raiders of
the Lost Ark; the Columbia TriStar executive who helped develop the
movie industry’ s region-coding system and the hacker who thumbs his
nose at it; and many others who traverse the changing technological,
ethical, and legal landscape of the network age. But the rise of
digital culture has created a powerful backlash: Under the banner of
fighting piracy and protecting copyright, influential companies are
threatening to turn back the clock on our laws and our technology until
our computers become crippled, our televisions dumbed-down, our consumer
electronics devices handcuffed– and the Internet crushed as a free and
open medium. Darknet shows that there’ s a sensible middle-ground
between corporate media and digital thieves, but both sides refuse to
see it.
To get a quick idea of the the major themes of the book
listen to the Denise Howell
interview Lasica.
For more information, see the
Darknet blog
where there are excerpts from the book, links to darknets.
and much more.
