Lasica has written an engaging book on the issue of digital rights in this age of participatory culture. The work is relevant to, and accessible by, general readers.

Lasica informs readers of the ever-growing friction between entertainment companies and digital consumers, identifying the primary cause as consumers finding new and interesting uses for the content produced by entertainment companies; the companies, in turn, ever resistant to change, and in fear of seeing their revenue stream dry up, are not willing to let go of the choke hold they have been maintaining over this content. The end result is that dissatisfied consumers, unable to use their own content as they wish, or the companies’ content in innovative ways, are turning to what the author calls darknets. Darknets, according to the author, “refer to underground or private networks where people trade files and communicate anonymously.”

The first chapter, “The Personal Media Revolution,” explains that, due to the increasing abilities of digital tools, consumers are being given the ability to create quality content, mix and match existing content, and share content more easily. Using examples from the dance club scene and fan movie derivatives, the author shows us the inflexible attitudes of companies that are making such uses illegal. “Now Playing,” examines the various laws, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, that the entertainment companies are using to put restrictions on consumers. Chapter 3, “Inside the Movie Underground,” explores the world of “release groups” that are in the business of breaking copyright laws, and releasing movies and music into the darknet, while chapter 4 returns to the subject of personal media, lamenting how rules are preventing personal choices about how to use digital content. The next two chapters, “Code Warriors” and “Cool Toys Hollywood Wants to Ban,” look at advances in compression and decompression technologies (like DivX), and how the industry is trying to crack down on their spread.

Chapter 7, “A Nation of Digital Felons,” tries to show how almost every creative digital activity is being branded as a crime. Interestingly, while most of the examples in this chapter would get public sympathy, there are a couple of anecdotes that might raise an eyebrow, even among crusaders for digital freedom. Chapter 8, “Personal Broadcasting,” talks about technologies like Internet television that are allowing individuals to be not only digital consumers, but also producers. “Edge TV,” the next chapter, walks us through cutting edge technologies like TiVo that are providing new flexibility and freedom, threatening the hold entertainment companies have historically had on how consumers view their content. Chapters 10 and 11, “The Sound of Digital Music” and “Channeling Cole Porter,” turn the reader’s attention to digital music, particularly to how the music industry, even though it was slow in taking up new technologies and tweaking its business model to fit new realities, is now turning around, slowly but surely.

Chapter 12, “Architects of Darknet,” looks at early file sharing networks like Napster and Kazaa, as well as at new ones like Waste and Tarzan. The advances made in the gaming industry, and similar issues of consumer creativity that had to be resolved, form the basis of chapter 13, “Mod Squads.” Lasica concludes the book with a chapter called “Remixing the Digital Future,” presenting a ten-point digital cultural roadmap through which he hopes to protect producers and consumers in this participatory culture.

The book is not without its share of shortcomings. The most glaring one is that, in the process of keeping the content easily understandable by a wide audience, the author skips an in-depth examination of the economic and legal issues of the topic. Sure, they are mentioned in passing here and there, but nowhere is there a real effort to analyze these factors in a comprehensive way. Another shortcoming is that the book is very US-centric. While the issue of digital freedom flows beyond the borders of the US, the book’s discussion does not. For example, it would have been interesting to consider why South Korea has been able to provide consumers with faster broadband connections to homes, while the rest of the world, including the US, is stuck with much smaller connections. At points, the discussion overlaps chapters, and feels repetitive. While the nature of the subject makes it difficult to compartmentalize the discussion, a more structured approach could have kept the repetition to a minimum.

This book, in short, seeks to educate general readers about the turning point that digital entertainment, and media in general, is at right now. If you are looking for a comprehensive, in-depth look at the issues involved, however, this book fails to deliver it.