
Pirates of the digital millennium
how the intellectual property wars damage our personal freedoms, our jobs, and the world economy
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.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Fiction · Nonfiction
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Catalog signals suggest warfare and conflict, violence, death, or criminal harm. These notes may not be complete; consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.
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Dark tone · Measured pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-1314-6315-8
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL18169757M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Fiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- What does the central character want, and what do they misunderstand about that desire?
- Which detail or relationship changes how you interpret the story?
- What feeling or question does the book leave with you after the plot moves on?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.







