Comments on: Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

By: Lessons from the Gmail Privacy Scare of 2004

Lessons from the Gmail Privacy Scare of 2004 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:17:30 +0000

[...] that privacy is a highly subjective and ever-changing condition. As Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis noted in their excellent recent book, Blown to Bits: The meaning of privacy has changed, and we do not [...]

By: Blown to Bits » Blog Archive » Review of Blown to Bits by Adam Thierer

Blown to Bits » Blog Archive » Review of Blown to Bits by Adam Thierer — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:10:46 +0000

[...] There is a very positive review of Blown to Bits on the site of the Progress and Freedom Foundation (crossposted to the Technology Liberation Front). [...]

By: The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 — Technology Liberation Front

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:04:29 +0000

[...] Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion by Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis, (which I reviewed here last year and named to my 2008 list). Both books surveys a vast swath of territory — privacy, [...]

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:27:02 +0000

Turns out I'd forgotten what the contract actually said. It was to go to CC in six months, not one year, and that coincided with yesterday's celebration of Creative Commons. So the entire book is now up on bitsbook.com for free download.

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:27:02 +0000

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:27:02 +0000

By: Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:50:55 +0000

Tim... It's a fair point. All I'm saying is that if one is going to play up the benefits of unrestricted file sharing and repeatedly hammer on copyright protections without offering any indications of how enforcement should work going forward, then, yes, I would think it would only make sense to practice what you preach and put the complete text online for all to download free-of-charge. However, as I mentioned in my review, the authors don't really make it clear in the text how far they want to go, so my quip may have been somewhat unfair.

Regardless, Harry Lewis has just notified me that the book goes to Creative Commons one year from original pub date (sometime in mid-2009). So it will (presumably) all be online eventually.

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:46:41 +0000

The authors have a strongly-worded chapter on copyright that generally argues for relaxing copyright protections. Interestingly, however, (unless I am missing something) I notice they don’t offer their book for free download on their site. I’m always intrigued by copyright critics who refuse to put their own content online. Apparently, it’s another case of ‘copying is good for me, but not for thee.’

Adam, this criticism doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Aside from Boldrin and Levin, hardly anyone advocates the abolition of copyright. What a lot of people are opposed to (i haven't read the book but I suspect this describes them) is the ever-more-draconian penalties for consumers and ever-broader scope of copyright protection. There's nothing remotely inconsistent about advocating that copyright be kept within its traditional limits while take advantage of copyright to protect one's own works.

Now, it might be inconsistent if the authors encouraged their publishers to start suing people who shared copies of their books on BitTorrent. But as far as I know they haven't done that.

By: Rationalitate

Rationalitate — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:44:37 +0000

Though I'm a big believer in freeing IP from the shackles of IP law, I do recognize the value in trade secrets, DRM, and passive protection (i.e., just not putting your book free online). Creators of their works should have the right to make it more difficult to get their works through means other than the ones they'd want, but then again they also shouldn't have the courts backing them in that right. If a company can pull of DRM, or if a book's author can get away with not having their book scanned in and put online, then great, more power to them – that's perfectly within their rights.

That having been said, I'm not convinced that this is what would happen. While books (especially monographs) may take a bit longer to come online, eventually the authors will have to start competing with pirates.