Techdirt Reading List: The Piracy Crusade

from the read-it-now dept

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also help support Techdirt. This week we're talking about a book from a couple of years ago but which still deserves plenty of attention. It's Aram Sinnreich's The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry's War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties. That subhead gives you a good sense of what the book is about, obviously, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It's thorough and tremendously thought-provoking, even if you already follow these issues closely.

For nearly two decades we've been discussing this space and trying to get people to understand that the fight over copyright isn't about how artists should get paid -- that tends to just be a smokescreen by the giant gatekeepers who have done an awful lot to screw over actual content creators for years. It's a fight about freedom of speech and civil liberties -- and yet, by turning it into a debate around "piracy" a small conglomerate of gatekeepers have been successful in clamping down on civil liberties, freedoms and free speech. Sinnreich's book does a great job dismantling the mythical arguments from the gatekeepers while highlighting the important civil liberties issues at stake in the copyright fights.

The book is a tremendous contribution to this discussion and a worthwhile read if you want to really understand some of the core issues that underlie the fight over copyright.

Oh, and of course, you can also download the book for free, if you'd like. Vuze is offering it as a bundle that comes with not just the books, but some video lectures by Sinnreich as well. Of course, if you buy it from the Amazon link above, it also helps Techdirt by giving us a cut, but in case you were looking for other options, Vuze has you covered.

Filed Under: aram sinnreich, civil liberties, copyright, free speech, piracy crusade, reading list