Pirates of the Digital Millennium

Book excerpt: Digital piracy. It's a global war. It touches you every day, even if you've never downloaded an MP3. And it's just begun. It's a war between media conglomerates and teenagers. A battle to the death between billion-dollar tech companies and billion-dollar content providers. It's artists battling artists, nations battling nations. This book covers it all. Every side. All the implications. The economics. The law. The ethics. The players. And above all, the realities, including the extraordinary findings of a new 57-country digital piracy research project and fresh survey and focus group research conducted specifically for this book. The media universe is shaking to its very foundations. One book helps you make sense of what's happened and what's next: Pirates of the Digital Millennium. The war over digital piracy and intellectual property is being fought everywhere on earth. It's the world's #1 technology story. It just might be today's #1 culture and entertainment story, too. Now, best-selling authors John Gantz and Jack Rochester take on the subject from every side: culture, ethics, law, business, even geopolitics. They start with facts, not uninformed opinion: facts drawn from IDC's unprecedented 57-country survey of digital piracy and its impact, as well as fresh focus group and survey research conducted specifically for this book. You'll travel from the streets of Bangkok to the halls of Congress, secret duplicating factories in Paraguay to America's suburban bedrooms. You'll discover what "fair use" really means, then sort through the morality of digital copying. You'll read every side of the debate. You'll also read something unprecedented in debates about piracy: some real, fair solutions. Will big media survive? Can you sue your customers into submission? The cultural impact of strict copyright law Does strict copyright law protect creativity or shackle it? Are we killing our #1 export market? If we can't export creative content, what can we export? DMCA: The secret history Making political sausage: How the Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it through Congress Eliot Ness or the Keystone Kops? Law enforcement versus piracy: shoveling against the tide Through the fog: The future of intellectual property Sensible "grand compromises" that just might work. Publisher.