Hector Postigo published two books this month.  The first is based on his work on digital technologies, cultural production and user resistance to copyright management systems.   Below is the description:

“The movement against restrictive digital copyright protection arose largely in response to the excesses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. In The Digital Rights Movement, Hector Postigo shows that what began as an assertion of consumer rights to digital content has become something broader: a movement concerned not just with consumers and gadgets but with cultural ownership. Increasingly stringent laws and technological measures are more than inconveniences; they lock up access to our “cultural commons.” Postigo describes the legislative history of the DMCA and how policy “blind spots” produced a law at odds with existing and emerging consumer practices. Yet the DMCA established a political and legal rationale brought to bear on digital media, the Internet, and other new technologies. Drawing on social movement theory and science and technology studies, Postigo presents case studies of resistance to increased control over digital media, describing a host of tactics that range from hacking to lobbying. Postigo discusses the movement’s new, user-centered conception of “fair use” that seeks to legitimize noncommercial personal and creative uses such as copying legitimately purchased content and remixing music and video tracks. He introduces the concept of technological resistance–when hackers and users design and deploy technologies that allows access to digital content despite technological protection mechanisms–as the flip side to the technological enforcement represented by digital copy protection and a crucial tactic for the movement.”

This title is available from MIT Press.

The second book is a co-edited volume on surveillance technologies and data management.  Below is the description:

“Surveillance technologies form an increasingly ubiquitous presence in many EU member states. CCTV cameras, traffic regulation systems, ID cards, biometric developments, airport security checks and on-line forms of dataveillance are just some of the many ways in which the public are subject to forms of scrutiny, data collection, data storage and data sharing. These surveillance systems are often welcomed as a means of protection and for easing public fears, but also raise profound questions for democratic states of the nature of the relationship between state and citizenry. Currently, regulation of surveillance systems differs across EU member states, including legal prohibitions, forms of licensing, self-certification, data protection and information or data protection commissioners. Forms of accountability have emerged as one means by which the potential consequences of surveillance systems might be recognized and assessed and formally incorporated into public sector policy or into the ways in which companies do business. Managing Privacy through Accountability draws together contributions from leading figures in the field of surveillance to engage in discussion of the emergence of accountability as a central motif in debates around privacy invasion and privacy protection. It is the first book to engage in this debate.”

This title is available from Palgrave Macmillan Press