The Anarchist in the Library
Subtitle: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: May 4, 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780465089840
First sentence: Parisians living in the turbulent eighteenth century found out about their world and their politics by sharing "public noises" (bruits publics) in a handful of social nodes around the city.
Description: "The recording industry has sued the music downloaders into submission, but as a model of communication, their effects still echo around the world. The proliferation of such peer-to-peer networks may appear to threaten many established institutions, and the backlash against them could be even worse than the problems they create. Their effects - good and bad - resonate far beyond markets for music. They are altering our sense of the possible, extending our cultural and political imaginations." "Unregulated networks of communication have existed as long as gossip has. But with the rise of electronic communication, they are exponentially more important. And they are drawing the contours of a struggle over information that will determine much of the culture and politics of our century, from unauthorized fan edits of Star Wars to terrorist organizations' reliance on "leaderless resistance." The Anarchist in the Library is the first guide to one of the most important cultural and economic developments of our time."--BOOK JACKET.