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The full text of the book (third printing, corrected) is available for download under a Creative Commons license (see the bottom of this page). To get the book as a single PDF file (22MB), exactly as it appears in print, click here. For each chapter, we include below links to a brief excerpt and to a PDF of the chapter.
Chapter 1: Digital Explosion: Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake?
The Explosion of Bits, and Everything Else… The Koans of Bits … Good and Ill, Promise and Peril
You can find a PDF of the Chapter 1 here.
Chapter 2: Naked in the Sunlight: Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned
1984 Is Here, and We Like It … Footprints and Fingerprints … Why We Lost Our Privacy, or Gave It Away … Little Brother Is Watching … Big Brother, Abroad and in the U.S. … Technology Change and Lifestyle Change … Beyond Privacy
You can find a PDF of the Chapter here.
Chapter 3: Ghosts in the Machine: Secrets and Surprises of Electronic Documents
What You See Is Not What the Computer Knows … Representation, Reality, and Illusion … Hiding Information in Images … The Scary Secrets of Old Disks
You can find a PDF of the Chapter here.
Chapter 4: Needles in the Haystack: Google and Other Brokers in the Bits Bazaar
Found After Seventy Years … The Library and the Bazaar … The Fall of Hierarchy … It Matters How It Works … Who Pays, and for What? … Search Is Power … You Searched for WHAT? Tracking Searches … Regulating or Replacing the Brokers
You can find a PDF of the Chapter here.
Chapter 5: Secret Bits: How Codes Became Unbreakable
Encryption in the Hands of Terrorists, and Everyone Else … Historical Cryptography… Lessons for the Internet Age … Secrecy Changes Forever … Cryptography for Everyone … Cryptography Unsettled
You can find a PDF of the Chapter here.
Chapter 6: Balance Toppled: Who Owns the Bits?
Automated Crimes, Automated Justice … NET Act Makes Sharing a Crime … The Peer-to-Peer Upheaval … Sharing Goes Decentralized … Authorized Use Only … Forbidden Technology… Copyright Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance … The Limits of Property
You can find a PDF of the Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7: You Can’t Say That on the Internet: Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression
Do You Know Where Your Child Is on the Web Tonight? … Metaphors for Something Unlike Anything Else … Publisher or Distributor? … Neither Liberty nor Security … The Nastiest Place on Earth … The Most Participatory Form of Mass Speech … Protecting Good Samaritans‚ and a Few Bad Ones … Laws of Unintended Consequences … Can the Internet Be Like a Magazine Store? … Let Your Fingers Do the Stalking … Like an Annoying Telephone Call? … Digital Protection, Digital Censorship‚ and Self-Censorship
You can find a PDF of the Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8: Bits in the Air: Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech
Censoring the President … How Broadcasting Became Regulated … The Path to Spectrum Deregulation … What Does the Future Hold for Radio?
You can find a PDF of the Chapter 8 here.
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.