DARKNET: Hollywood's War against the Digital Generation

I'm reviewing J.D. Lasica's book DARKNET: Hollywood's War against the Digital Generation as a participant in his blogger book tour. You can find out about other blogged reviews at the Darknet blog.

I think J.D. Lasica's DARKNET is a great book about the implications of changes in digital media and copyright control, though I find the title a bit misleading. The Darknet referenced in the title refers to the anonymous private networks where file trading of illegal digital material, from copyrighted movie and music files to child porn, occurs beyond the reaches of the authorities. Yet, the focus of the book is not on the Darknet per se and, while many of the examples Lasica employs are related to movies, digital music is also a big part of the story.

Lasica puts forth the argument that the heavy handed approach of big content owners in film and music are pushing the folks who want to legally own music or movies, to be able to move the files from one device to another and to play with the material in creative ways that may actually enhance the value of the content, from legal avenues to the Darknet. He advocates finding a middle ground between overly restrictive content control and a free for all in which all content becomes free, a middle ground that would enable consumers to become cocreators while artists would still get paid for their work.

DARKNET ranges much more widely than the title indicates yet is a strongly focused book and well worth your time. Typically, when a book about topics that I regularly follow takes a broad view of recent developments, I tend to notice major gaps and misreadings. But Lasica's solid, he's got a strong grasp of the terrain, including shifts in digital media and technology, the rapid pace of those shifts transforming consumers into creative partners and big media's difficulty in keeping up with such changes leading to multifaceted attempts to squash any uncontrolled activity. Even though such books often seem dated even as they hit the bookstores, Lasica's depth of understanding ensures that DARKNET is an important take on a transitional period that will probably remain useful in understanding those changes long after the fact.

One of my critical specialties in examining a text is considering what's left out and seeing how such gaps undermine the author's arguments but Lasica didn't leave me much to work with in that regard. However, one small but noticeable gap was quite telling in that it revealed the strenghs rather than the weaknesses of Lasica's work. In discussing the phenomenon of mashups, when two or more differing musical sources are overlaid to create a new work, Lasica brings up the obvious example of The Grey Album, Danger Mouse's joining of the acapella disc of Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album. This release became an event that was quickly shut down by representatives of the copyright holder, former musical superstar Michael Jackson.

Lasica discusses some of the interesting angles of this tale but leaves out an important aspect. This event was not just appreciated by Jay-Z but precipitated by his release of an acapella version of the album intended to facilitate experiments by djs and beatmakers. In fact, the Grey Album was but one of many experiments conducted with Jay-Z's release and an example of what can happen when a major media company encourages creative reuse of copyrighted material, something Lasica advocates throughout DARKNET.

This is the point when I'd normally be launching into my discussion about how the author's lack of knowledge of hip hop caused him or her to misread the implications of an event. Yet, in Lasica's case, it proves the strength of his overall analysis and supplements his argument that big media is f*cking up by keeping users from exploring creative reuses of copyrighted material.

So get the book and read it. Encourage your library to get one or more copies. If you don't have time now, put it on the list. I really believe it will remain a worthwhile read for quite some time to come.

Related links:
Darknet - book blog with samples from the book
New Media Musings - J.D. Lasica's blog
JD Lasica's Home Page

Available from Amazon:
J.D. Lasica - DARKNET: Hollywood's War against the Digital Generation