Cyber rights : defending free speech in the digital age / Mike Godwin.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-317) and index.

Introduction: Two Mornings in Cyberspace -- 1. A New Frontier for Free Speech and Society -- 2. Where the "Virtual" Meets the "Real": Free Speech, Community, and Ethics on the Net -- 3. The Net Backlash: Fear of Freedom -- 4. Libel on the Net -- 5. When Words Hurt: Two Hard Cases About Online Speech -- 6. Privacy Versus Society -- 7. The Battle over Copyright on the Net (and Other Intellectual Property Encounters) -- 8. A Bad Spin and a Cyberporn Primer -- 9. Fighting a Cyberporn Panic -- 10. Courting the Future: The Communications Decency Act of 1996 -- 11. Lawyer Precognition, Free Speech, and Communities.

Mike Godwin is a twenty-first-century crusader for free speech. As online counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Godwin is often the one who gets the first panicked calls from Internet bulletin board operators or private citizens when their apartments are searched and computers seized.

Deeply involved in civil liberties on the Net, Godwin shares his personal experience as a lawyer in the fight against the controversial Communications Decency Act of 1996. He provides expert analysis of the disturbing case of Jake Baker, whose short stories about rape-torture, published in an internet newsgroup, resulted in the seizure of his dorm-room computer.

Godwin also brings new insight to the Church of Scientology's claims of intellectual property and copyright infringement, popular Web writers Brock Meeks's and Matt Drudge's encounters with libel law, and Phillip Zimmerman's important fight for the freedom to use encryption software.

Godwin offers practical guidelines on how to participate in life on the Net with rules for making virtual communities work, the good citizen's guide to copyright on the Web, and how to hack the media to defend freedoms online.