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EFF Booklist

Books by and about EFF (plus a few favorites)

Purchase any of these books using the links on this page, and part of the proceeds will go to EFF.

EFF-related books | Other books we like

EFF-Related Books

Lawrence (Larry) Lessig
 EFF boardmember and Stanford professor

  • Free Culture
    "Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies..."
     
  • The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
    "The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect..."
     
  • CODE and Other Laws of Cyberspace
    "An exciting examination of the core values of cyberspace-intellectual property, free speech, and privacy - from one of America's most brilliant young legal theorists..."
     

Pamela Samuelson
EFF boardmember and UC-Berkeley professor

  • Software and Internet Law
    "The authors of this law school textbook, recognizing the rapidly changing nature of their topic, attempt to provide a base of the fundamental principles and issues on which subsequent developments in software and Internet law will build..."
     

John Gilmore
EFF boardmember/co-founder and entrepreneur/technologist

Brad Templeton
EFF boardmember and entrepreneur/technologist

  • The Internet Joke Book
    "Do you wonder how jokes spread around the world? How a simple joke can zoom across the entire country in just a few days? This book contains some of the best jokes of recent years..."

Esther Dyson
EFF boardmember (ret. 1999) and analyst/entrepreneur

  • Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age
    "Release 2.0 launched a worldwide discussion about the impact of the Internet on our lives. Now, in the "upgraded", paperback edition, high-tech industry leader Esther Dyson expands on her remarkable exploration of our digital society, integrating commentary generated by the hardcover's publication and discussions on the Release 2.0 Web site..."
     
  • Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age
    "Welcome to Esther Dyson's provocative and visionary new book, Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age. In this eagerly anticipated book, Dyson--an entrepreneur, high-tech industry analyst, government adviser, and the "most powerful woman in the Net-erati," according to the New York Times Magazine--presents a fascinating exploration of our new digital society..."

Stewart Brand
EFF boardmember (ret. 1996) and writer/entrepreneur

  • The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World's Slowest Computer
    "An important figure in the U.S. counterculture, Brand sees the inability to imagine the future in the new millennium as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for it. In this work, he tackles the question of how to make long-term thinking an integral part of our fast-paced lives..."
     
  • How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
    "Like people, buildings change with age, forced to adapt to the needs of current occupations. This provocative examination of buildings that have adapted well, and some that haven't, calls for a dramatic rethinking in the way new buildings are designed, one that allows structures to grow and change easily with the environment..."
     
  • The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT
    "Personalized newspapers, life-sized holograms, telephones that chat with callers, these are all projects that are being developed at MIT's Media Lab. Brand explores the exciting programs, and gives readers a look at the future of communications..."
     

Cory Doctorow
EFF Outreach Coordinator

  • Eastern Standard Tribe
    "John W. Campbell Award-winner Doctorow lives up to the promise of his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), with this near-future, far-out blast against human duplicity and smothering bureaucracy. Even though it takes a while for the reader to grasp post-cyberpunk Art Berry's dizzying leaps between his "now," a scathing 2012 urban nuthouse, and his "then," the slightly earlier events that got him incarcerated there, this short novel's occasionally bitter, sometimes hilarious and always whackily appealing protagonist consistently skewers those evils of modern culture he holds most pernicious..."
     
  • Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
    "Now in softcover, the acclaimed debut novel from 2000's winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer Acclaimed by science fiction writers like Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker, and by eminent futurists and digital visionaries like Howard Rheingold, Mitch Kapor, and Jeff Bezos, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a wonderful tour de force, the alternately edgy and charming tale of young Jules's coming of age in a world that has conquered scarcity and death..."
     
  • A Place So Foreign and Eight More
    "Considered one of the most promising science fiction writers, Cory Doctorow's name is already mentioned with such SF greats as J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. He was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards..."
     
  • Essential Blogging
    "Anyone can run a blog (an online journal). From personal diaries to political commentary and technology observations, bloggers are making their voices heard around the world. Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and show how to get your blog up and running. You'll learn the ingredients of a successful blog, and then get detailed installation, configuration and operation instructions for the leading blogging software..."
     

Mike Godwin
EFF staffmember (1999) & attorney/writer

  • Cyber Rights: Privacy and Free Speech in the Digital Age
    "Lawyer and writer Mike Godwin has been at the forefront of the struggle to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet. In Cyber Rights he recounts the major cases and issues in which he was involved and offers his views on free speech and other constitutional rights in the digital age..."

Stanton McCandlish
EFF staffmember & technologist/activist (2002)

Adam Gaffin
EFF consultant & journalist/writer (1994)

  • Everybody's Guide to the Internet
    "If you have access to a personal computer and want to explore the Internet, Everybody's Guide is the place to begin. Everybody's Guide is designed to make you comfortable in the virtual world of the Internet with its insider language and peculiar local culture..."

Other books we like

  • The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
    Bruce Sterling
    "A searing probe into computer hacking--a cutting-edge nonfiction book by the bestselling co-author of The Difference Engine. Sterling looks at the issue of computer freedom vs. computer security from all sides: the telephone companies, who are the primary victims; the computer hackers; law enforcement officials; and the civil libertarians, who try to protect First Amendment rights..."
     
  • Quicksilver: Volume One of The Baroque Cycle
    Neal Stephenson
    "Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is here. A monumental literary feat that follows the author's critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Cryptonomicon, it is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps across continents and decades with the power of a roaring tornado, upending kings, armies, religious beliefs, and all expectations..."
     
  • The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)
    Neal Stephenson
    "In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves — including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox — devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger — a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver... nay, gold... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe..."
     
  • Cryptonomicon
    Neal Stephenson
    "With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century..."
     
  • In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
    Neal Stephenson
    "This is "the Word" -- one man's word, certainly -- about the art (and artifice) of the state of our computer-centric existence. And considering that the "one man" is Neal Stephenson, "the hacker Hemingway" (Newsweek) -- acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd-friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc.) -- the word is well worth hearing..."
     
  • Practical Unix & Internet Security 3RD Edition
    Simson Garfinkel
    "When "Practical Unix Security was first published more than a decade ago, it became an instant classic. Crammed with information about host security, it saved many a Unix system administrator from disaster. The second edition added much-needed Internet security coverage and doubled the size of the original volume..."
     
  • Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World
    Bruce Schneier
    "Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front-page every day. How well, though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves?"
     
  • Applied Cryptography 2ND Edition
    Bruce Schneier
    "This new edition of the cryptography classic provides you with a comprehensive survey of modern cryptography. The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography-the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages-to maintain the privacy of computer data. It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them into cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems..."
     
  • Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
    Bruce Schneier
    "Welcome to thebusinessworld.com. It's digital: Information is more readily accessible than ever. It's inescapably connected: Businesses are increasingly more – if not totally – dependent on digital communications. But our passion for technology has a price: increased exposure to security threats. Companies around the world need to understand the risks associated with doing business electronically. The answer starts here..."
     
  • Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
    Steven Levy
    "Crypto is about privacy in the information age and about the nerds and visionaries who, nearly twenty years ago, predicted that the Internet's greatest virtue – free access to information – was also its most perilous drawback: a possible end to privacy. Levy explores what turned out to be a decisive development in the crypto wars: the unlikely alliance between the computer geeks and big business as they fought the government's stranglehold on the keys to information in a networked world..."
     
  • Hackers
    Steven Levy
    "A mere fifteen years ago, computer nerds were seen as marginal weirdos, outsiders whose world would never resonate with the mainstream. That was before one pioneering work documented the underground computer revolution that was about to change our world forever. With groundbreaking profiles of Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club, and more, Steven Levy's Hackers brilliantly captured a seminal moment when the risk-takers and explorers were poised to conquer twentieth-century America's last great frontier..."
     
  • Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet
    Jessica Litman
    "In 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media, such as major record labels and motion picture studios, and new upstarts, such as MP3.com and Napster..."
     
  • Public Domain 2ND Edition How To Find Copyright
    Stephen Fishman
    "Even though grade-school teachers have told us otherwise for years, writers and artists can copy other people's work and get away with it. How? By dipping into the public domain, where everything is free for the taking. The first book of its kind, "The Public Domain is the definitive guide to the creative works that are not protected by copyright and can be copied freely or otherwise used without paying permission fees. The book explains step-by-step how to recognize when a work is in the public domain..."
     
  • Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity
    Siva Vaidhyanathan
    "Copyright reflects far more than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and infringement are cultural values about race, class, access, ownership, free speech, and democracy which influence how rights are determined and enforced..."
     
  • The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Leaving Cyberspace and Entering the Real World
    Siva Vaidhyanathan
    "From a fast-rising academic star comes a radically new take on how peer-to-peer networks are affecting the coming battle over information...."
     
  • Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
    Howard Rheingold
    "From Tokyo to Helsinki, Manhattan to Manila, Howard Rheingold takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno-cultural shift—a shift he predicts will be as dramatic as the widespread adoption of the PC in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s..."
     
  • Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering
    Andrew Huang
    "Hacking the Xbox begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teach basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. It progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, emphasizing the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering..."
     
  • The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
    Rosemary J. Coombe
    "Coombe employs an ethnographic approach to analyze authorship and the role of law in shaping commercial culture. Drawing on themes from cultural studies, anthropology, postcolonial theory, and political theory, she analyzes the practices of interpretation and appropriation in an increasingly privatized sphere..."
     
  • The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
    Martha Woodmansee, Peter Jaszi
    "An interdisciplinary investigation into western culture's ways of conceptualizing creative production, consisting of 21 essays presented at a meeting sponsored by the Society for Critical Exchange (date and location not noted) and published in Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal vol. 10, no 2 (no year noted). Among the wide range of topics are Helen Keller, unauthorized genders, authors' rights in England of the 16th and 17th centuries, international copyright, Spanish cinema, and teaching writing..."
     
  • Technomanifestos: Visions of the Information Revolutionaries
    Adam Brate
    "The Information Revolution is changing the world in myriad ways. But is it a change for the better? Will advances in computer technology strengthen democratic values or destroy them? Enhance personal freedom or enslave us? Contribute to the world's problems or help solve them? Technomanifestos sets out to answer these questions by investigating the primary sources--the seminal but seldom-read texts that form the philosophical foundation of the Digital Age..."
     
  • Open Sources
    Chris Dibona
    "Freely available source code, with contributions from thousands of programmers around the world: this is the spirit of the software revolution known as Open Source. Open Source has grabbed the computer industry's attention. Netscape has opened the source code to Mozilla; IBM supports Apache; major database vendors haved ported their products to Linux..."
     
  • Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age
    Adam D Thierer
    "Property rights are the foundation of civilization. But as information becomes the basis of our economy, difficult questions arise over the scope of, or even the necessity for, intellectual property rights for intangible creations. Contributors to this book will debate the theory of intellectual property, the evolution of copyright and patent law, and the use of technology to protect intellectual property..."
     
  • Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
    Peter Drahos
    "Uncovering the story of how a small coterie of multinational corporations came to write the charter for a new global information order, Information Feudalism demonstrates why the world of intellectual property rights, patent regimes, and anti-trust laws is an urgent concern for ordinary citizens. As an ever wider range of everyday activities—from swinging in a swing to traditional farming techniques—are identified and commodified as intellectual property, struggles over the control of information are destined to become crucial battlegrounds in the twenty-first century..."
     
  • Copyright's Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox
    Paul Goldstein
    "From eighteenth-century copyright law, to current copyright issues on the Internet, to tomorrow's "celestial jukebox"--a digital repository of books, movies, and music available on demand--Paul Goldstein presents a thorough examination of the challenges facing copyright owners and users. One of the nation's leading authorities on intellectual property law, Goldstein offers an engaging, readable, and intelligent analysis of the effect of copyright on American politics, economy, and culture..."
     
  • Peer-to-Peer
    Andrew Oram
    "The term "peer-to-peer" has come to be applied to networks that expect end users to contribute their own files, computing time, or other resources to some shared project. Even more interesting than the technology's technical underpinnings is its socially disruptive potential: in various ways these systems return content, choice, and control to ordinary users. This book presents the goals that drive the developers of the best-known peer-to-peer systems, the problems they've faced, and the technical solutions they've found..."