With a journalist's eye for detail, an activist's commitment to the issues beneath, and a scholar's insight into their implications, Hector Postigo carefully documents the importance of hacktivism. He makes a convincing case that the DRM circumvention battles of the last decade drew together the people, the ideas, and the tactics now so vital to today's global controversies about digital citizenship and creative freedoms online.
Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell University; author of Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture
With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the giants of the content industry attempted to impose an order on the Internet, but they ignored the opposing views of some of the Internet's most savvy users. Hector Postigo shows that unlike other social movements that use the Internet to achieve rapid scale shifts, the digital rights movement is both viral and retroviral. In other words, hacktivists use the Internet to organize protests and build support in legal battles, but they also unlock the code of copyright-protected products. Both strategies are part of a broader political goal of maximizing the Internet's public domain.
David J. Hess, Vanderbilt University
Hector Postigo traverses a wide intellectual landscape—from the intricacies of copyright law in the digital age to grand visions for what online participatory culture could become—in this riveting account of the development of the digital rights movement. Postigo is among the first to provide a comprehensive discussion of the development of the digital rights movements, its key actors, and its major arguments. If you are interested in online social movements, digital rights, or participatory culture, this book is for you!
Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona; co-author of Digitally Enabled Social Change
Overall, The Digital Rights Movement is an important text that continues a public criticism of the commodification of culture. Postigo writes well and whilst some of his case studies necessitate a level of technical detail, they are clearly explained and remain accessible to the less tech-savvy reader.
Information, Communication & Society
