Assurances about how you treat their information and is essentially making sure that you would not try to identify who they really were in real life are you those that do believe tend to be incredibly open. One of the things that i found is that once you get these people to Start Talking they will not shut up because anyone that has an ax to grind or feels like they are treated unfairly or their culture is not being given a fair hearing in the mainstream media, as soon as they think that they have found someone in my actually talk to them, they will not leave you alone. So it was sort of surprisingly easy once i got to that point. A light just went off in my head. So it was surprisingly easy to get these incredibly personal detail of information about them, including going in someones bedroom and sitting next to them as they performed an orgy in front of 5000 people that are watching a home on television. And i didnt expect that to happen. But it was incredible with hal was able to see what happened. You kind of explore a number of different worlds and you talked to a. [inaudible] you talked to some people who are basically rallying for their cause. What was it that join all of these things because the dark knight is also a technical term that some people think of when they think of specific technology and i think that you kind of went wrong with that. Honestly the most important thing that joined us together is the fact that they are in my book. Its almost an infinite number of subcultures on the net. The bizarre and the strange and one of the most incredible things is the way in which it allows impossibly small subcultures to come together to create something of a community. What i was most interested in was trying to understand, broadly speaking the effects of anonymity on peoples behavior. And its a thing running through it. It doesnt need to be protected by multiple layers of complicated encryption systems, such as unencrypted network of sorts, it can be using a fake name on facebook. Its not the real me and the digital avatar that i am acting out. So the reason i didnt want to focus on the technical encryption stuff that doesnt really matter. What matters is when you think your behavior is somehow separated from the real version of you and freedom of action and behavior can take that. One of the case studies that they use is silk road which has been in the news a lot and has been kind of like a folk tale about anonymity and one individual was just sentenced to life in prison. I have a personal attachment to that because i was the first one to report on that and actually from the beginning saw that this is how it was going to end in this spectacular implosion but i was curious what you think about the end result because when you read about it, it was very interesting. I read about it as well. And there were several other markets to follow the same path with silk road. And its absolutely astonishing, astonishingly draconian. And this is because of the threat that Something Like the silk road actually poses. The idea is that this is possible with modern encryptions using this for the location and bitcoin to obscure transactions between people and using textbased encryption to send your address to somebody. And it is utterly beyond the reaches of the lord. In many respects, had it been a different industry other than illegal narcotic it would be considered as a business genius. Having created a marketplace for two years that was able in the most hostile conditions possible to create a functioning and effective market that was characterized by competition and choice. And almost reinvigorated my faith in forces as a way of allowing consumers to determine this and the thing about this to everybody is slightly wrong is that they imagine that its all about clever encryption and bitcoin and things like that. And this includes thousands of vendors totaling well over a billion dollars. And the secret of that and the reason there is so much of it was because it was such an incredibly good work in place. It was just like characterized by incredibly Good Customer Service and we are talking about very responsive vendors who are desperate to keep customers happy because they have 900 or thousand other vendors. Not only that but because every product was given written feedback. How good was the product . Did it arrive on time . Was the vendor responsive to when you asked the question . And because of that they just force them to start acting in the interest of the consumer. So you would have buy one get one free, you had those that were offering loyalty systems, those that were offering moneyback if you are not satisfied with your product does like you were in any other market and there was a result of that. What happened was that the quality was much higher and more predictable and the price was much more competitive. And i think that there was a harsh sentence for this and they were operating outside of the norm. But it creates something of a more the llama for the people who are interested in the way that the war on drugs is going. The others made more products available to more people more easily. But if you are going to buy them i think that they are safer because they are less likely to be cut with mixing agents, including the purity of drugs and it removes a lot of the streetbased crime over corners for the drugs market. So how do you make a judgment about whether this could be a good or a bad thing . And i think that it would offer something of a glimpse of an alternative and it wouldnt be an unregulated market in my view, but it shows how a marketbased system could actually work. There is one thing that i wanted to ask. Do you know who the creator is, the creator of bitcoin . I have no idea. Absolutely no idea. Did you look into that at all and that, does he look at that . There was a libertarian hope that we can create a digital cash that was not controlled by central banks. These libertarians cannot stand not as they tried to create a perfectly functioning digital cash that was deflationary with a set number of units. I cant remember in total, that will ever be produced so when be controlled by governments. And they also hope that it would mean governments could not tax you. And if they cannot taxi they cannot control you. So many people hope that bitcoin and is that the nsa doing that . [laughter] many of the people behind the original currency do see it as a political vision that can lead to the collapse of government to be replaced by some kind of utopia, which i think is misguided. So there is a political ideal behind the currency. There was also a political ideal behind the silk road, this idea of the market outside of any state and i would not have been able to write this chapter without your help. And the reason is because when he first wrote about the silk road, not many people had done so. And it was really amazing. And of course the next day it just exploded and everyone wanted to take a look. And i think a lot of people at first went there out of curiosity and they say that i came for the drugs would stay for the philosophy and there was an underlying part of this where we are not to be controlled by government. We are not to be told what we can and cannot do. We must run free in the silk road was a political project that is very convenient and. And the money came first and the political philosophy came second. And im sure you remember that people and they are trying to help each other, including one doctor that i wrote about today. One doctor who was a trained doctor who went there and spend two hours per day trying to give people advice about how to manage their addiction. And he said get them in an online forum. And it is another power of the moral ambiguity that characterizes not only the silk road but also different bits as well. Yes, i think the idea of anonymity providing the safe space for people to talk about it there and habits and other suppliers we have the case of people getting these drugs and they never were never been able to access and there wouldve would have been a process to work their way up and whereas now its kind of your straight to this really intense pain. And that includes creating communities online but also detach it from a more meaningful situation and community. Cement dust, absolutely. That sort of theme is something that we have talked about in every subculture that we have tried to visit. And probably more than any other it was part of this, which i found easily the most difficult to write about. And to have thousands of these, they are not on the total network, these are normal websites that anyone can find, and they are dedicated to helping young girls between 13 and maybe 18, with extreme and dangerous weight loss. Extreme dieting. Anorexia is one of the most serious of all Mental Health conditions and the highest mortality rate, its an unbelievably serious condition. What happens is almost the opposite of what i expected. And that includes encouraging them away from disruptive behaviors and it was almost the opposite in some places. These were places run by anorexics themselves were offering support, we are here to listen to you and help you, we are a community of people, we are your friends. And when you are 13 or 14 years old with a sort of progression, find one of these websites and say oh, my gosh, theres people like me who are also worried about their way of and theyre really friendly and supportive. And so its a natural place. And what happens is these roles become sucked into a social group where they are all looking out for each other and are always there for you late at night and i thought, my god, what am i doing. And its very easy to do. And they are sort of all encouraging each other than they prevent being skinny is the most admirable goal, they put glamorous looking photos of glamorous supermodels there and they give tips and advice as to how you get to that. And that is not her stomach rumbling, its applauding. The very quickly even when i was on their, you become very immune to it. Because everyone is saying the same thing. And so you get kind of sucked up into this and then they begin to define themselves as a person. They buy bracelets, they buy tshirts and it becomes a onedimensional version of yourself with in this one Little Community and all of your other friends and do things you enjoy doing are all gone and they are replaced by these dangerous single dimensions as her character. Do you think that Something Like this, which seems like a reoccurring issue on every single social network as soon as something new comes out that you can expect the report that they are using snap chat or instagram or whatever, having met with these people and talk to them, did you meet them . You know, i think that sometimes it might be that that one aspect becomes more visible and it is something that you are kind of engaged in, posting this content about, when it comes to it this is just what you do at night, as your hobby or something. Do you think that this is an accurate representation of who these people are . Well, the number of people in the uk and the u. S. Suffering from anorexia has not actually increased dramatically in the last 20 years. What has happened is a changing way that it has expressed, including an Online Community of people that are talking about a weather than those suffering without anyone to talk to about this. But they get to the younger girls as well. Them . What these people need our medical help. Its. Its difficult to break into these communities. Until Health Professional start going in there to try to offer Something Else and something better, the problem is just going to remain and not go anywhere. I think that kinda gets at what the role of these communities have in the lives of people who are doing things and are engaged in them. The question that that hangs over every single one of these cases is, is the darknet causing this phenomenon and what answer have you come to . Its a strange thing you would expect me to have an answer for that because that is the question i was trying to answer. To what what extent is the internet changing our behavior . Or is it simply a reflection of the behavior that was are ready taken place offline and it simply in a new environment. I still dont know. I think certainly it depends on the individual. Certainly for some people, take the case of viewing illegal pornography. There are certainly some people that with out the internet and without barriers, they felt they could watch illegal pornography without being caught, they did it and they would not have done it had it not been so readily available. Then. Then you might say the internet hasnt caused it but it has facilitated it or enabled it and maybe even encouraged it but didnt cause it to happen, in my my opinion. There are other times when i think its just the different expression of very similar behavior. Take internet trolling. Another technical definition. I go into detail about who is and who isnt an internet troll. Its very technical. Its a misused term misused term and people want to argue about it. Me included. For many people who are selfdescribed trolls, along culture, its arctic artistic, creative. Its a way of upsetting and insulting people to make a point about hypocrisy and free speech and it is funny as well. I love internet trolls and i think theyre quite funny. They did see a very interesting way of making a point. I think there are a lot of people that are assaultive and abusive to people online. What they wouldve done ten years ago is shout at the television. You stupid this and the other, but now instead of showering on the television, they just just go online and write it. It still more visible. Its still the same amount of bile but now its visible and everybody can record it and see it and measure it and talk about it. It seems like its grown so much but i think actually its just been identified and it is now measurable in a way that wasnt before. Every single time the question is posed to what extent the internet has changed xy or z, i think it really depends on the individual. I think for some people it is just merely an expression of what they were doing before on a new platform and for the majority of people, it hasnt changed anything at all. One thing we were talking about before is this idea of an increase in this kind of anonymity. Post Edward Snowden there has been a big push among some people to encrypt everything to make sure everybody can be anonymous on the internet essentially from the government. Im just curious what you think about this idea. On the one hand you have activists thing we need to encrypt things and increase privacy. On on the other hand you have government and Law Enforcement who say this is making it harder to catch terrorists and child pornographers and im curious where you fall on that debate. Theyre both right because exactly the same encryption system and technology to increase privacy online is used by the good guys and the bad guys. Its used in a very similar way and you cant undermined the system. For example, the browser browser or textbased encryption without undermining the ability of the good guys to stay hidden as well. Now i think post Edward Snowden there have been a dramatic increase, not only in the number of people increasing their privacy setting on facebook, just Little Things like that. Little changes. A growing number of people using a secure browser, not necessarily to get on the darknet but because they dont like the idea that they are being watched or could be being collected. I think the biggest changes a classic low back problem. It happened in the 90s as well well when they thought the government was overreaching and trying to monitor it too much. You have an explosion of privacy activists, civil activists building software, making it open source that would allow people to stay hidden online. They can remain anonymous and count the censorship. I think youre seeing the same thing again. More and more easily available tools to keep your privacy intact. That will be a very good thing for freedom and democracy around the world, i hope, although sometimes im too optimistic about what can happen there. Its also going to be a very good thing if you are a child pornographers are or a terrace or an organized criminal because its going to get harder for your activity, not impossible, but harder but harder for your activity to me monitored to be traced. Im afraid that i think we are just gonna to get used to that. I think we should open it up to some questions now. Does anybody have any questions . Mark. High hello, i dont wish to switch the attention away from the interviewee to the interviewer but i want to pick up on adrians piece in the New York Times yesterday. I want to ask, given the weaponization of anonymity that is covered in russia and it was also put out a call on twitter yesterday or today to ask whether anybody knew of the same thing happening in the United States or in any other country. Im wondering whether, during your research into the darknet, did you ever have a similar situation in which you found yourself questioning the truth facts or whether the people you are speaking to really were the people they were especially because of the anonymity in the way they operated. I think you are quite qualified as i am and it really is an excellent piece of journalism. Yes, of course i did. One of the most of cook difficult things, whenever you are doing internet based journalism and you are interviewing people you have not met and you cannot verify the story, is the extent to what you they say at face value. There are ways to get around that to interview other people and see if their stories add up. Sometimes you sort of make a best guess judgment on that and you try to caveat it. Sometimes youre using a story to to illustrate a wider point. For example in the chapter i wrote about illegal photography, that individual who told me the story about how we got into it and why he did, basically his argument was he had incrementally watched worse and worse pornography over a two or three year. Because every step didnt seem like a big jump. He almost felt like each time it wasnt getting that worse. I thought of course, youre just saying that because thats a very convenient defense here. I had to interview a lot of professionals who work with sex offenders and go through all the studies on it and found that actually that is the very, very common way that it happens. So i tried to verify the general story by referencing all the studies about this phenomenon. More generally, the subject. Theres something called net pornography. They are trying to do studies and understand why people behave the way they do in online communities. Its quite a new a new one. The source of journalistic approaches that you use in online journalism dont always readily apply. I think there are journalists in here, researchers, academics, its, its a really important area for people to start trying to understand how we understand it better because i think its only going to grow as an area. There are are some really good digital journalism course starting up at universities around the world and hopefully from those we can actually start getting some decent practice about how we do this better and im sure there are many ways i could have done it better as well. I dont know what you think about that. I think youre basically asking how to uncover who are anonymous on the internet and i think that has become a genre of journalism itself where somebody does something bad, somebody becomes a notorious figure online and people unmask them which is called doc thing in internet slang. I have always found that the points it starts becoming me trying to figure out who somebody is when they dont want me to, that becomes the story. So if you are trying to just find somebody for a case study for somebody who uses the drug market, if you have to start verifying what they are saying its usually a hopeless task because it just becomes this whole drama onto itself. I think there is also a lot of interesting work being done in people trying to use data to connect the dots between people who have logged in to a drug forum and signed up for a newsletter in a neighborhood and i think that is almost like a data mining techniques that will become more popular among journalists in the future. As far as it matters to this book, i have never tried to uncover anybody. In almost every almost every case i promise them i wouldnt try to uncover them or identify them because that wasnt what i was in the business of doing i still had to make sure the story was accurate and they werent lying to me, but i didnt need to concern myself with who they really were. I promised that i wouldnt it was also helpful in getting them to tell me their story. Is there any role in trying to identify and control the dark net in terms of terrorist use of the internet question mark. Absolutely. How do you suggest the government go about doing that. Im not somebody who believes in the absolute right of privacy or anonymity by any means there is a very broad distinction, i think, on the subject of the right to privacy. There are civil activists who believe that the right to privacy is so important that you need to build encryption systems that are more or less unbreakable has government cant be trusted. They can never be trusted. The only way you guarantee that right to privacy is by having the systems in place. Then there are others, and i tend to this idea that you might think of more of a social democrat who believes that government should be able to have access to more or less everything but i want that power to be very strictly controlled and used in a limited number of circumstances. The counter argument is its always going to be missed used and it always has been misused. There is some justification to that. I think there there is just a very broad view about this and it will become very important as the patriot act is renewed or not renewed and the question of internet surveillances revisited in the unanimous u. S. Can the data be mitigated through law that you actually need a technological solution with all this encryption. I dont know who is going to win that argument. The the truth of the matter is, i am very worried , im worried and excited by this encryption system that people are using because its going to be wonderful if you are a democrat and in russia and it will be wonderful if you are a child pornography. In the end, how will we manage that . That has to be a question that we collectively as a society determine. Thats why i think there is a very, very Important Role for whistleblowers because then we get to some of the standards and what the parameters of that debate actually are. If i may just add one tiny thing. I believe believe the last ten or 15 years of intelligent work has been done with mass Data Collection and pattern spotting. Lets get everything and try to work out whats going on. Then we can hone in on our target and subject them to more intrusive surveillance through warrants. I think that will become less and less effective. I think more and encryption means that type of surveillance work will not work in the way it has worked in the last ten years or so. I think as a result the Intelligent Agency will have to go back to an old fashion type of policing or intelligent work infiltrating groups and forums. The way the silk road was taken down was really good oldfashioned police work of infiltrating the site, working their leads, getting a hold on key positions, flipping certain users with threats and thats the way they managed to get in and pull the plug. Not through a technical solution but through good oldfashioned policing which is more targeted and focus. I think that will have to be more of that and rather less of the mass Data Collection. In the book you identified individuals, you identified the people but didnt put names on them. If you did identify specific names of specific people who obviously did criminal acts like child predators, what do do you think your obligation is to bring them to the law . In writing the book, i suppose i broke the law as well because i purchased marijuana from silk road. It cause me concern. Concern. It was a very small amount and there is a Public Defense i can make on that which i cannot make for other things. I could not have made that defense had i been browsing around illegal pornography. I had to be careful first and foremost for myself that i wasnt doing anything that would get me into much trouble. Most the people i interviewed would talk with the proviso that was do not tell me anything that is serious criminal activity or imminent violent criminal activity because i will be under an obligation to report utility authority. In a way i dont want to know about that. My job is not to try to investigate you. The police can do that better than i can do it. There i can do it. There was one case where got very, very close and i was very worried. I had been spending a lot of time with and activists who was a notorious online neonazi who ive met in person and spent a lot of time with him in person trying to understand how we got to this. After about three months of talking to him, offline and online, he suddenly disappeared. I couldnt get in touch with him. He vanished. All the social media accounts fell silent. I started started getting very worried because thats exactly what happened with the norwegian terrace who killed 77 people in 2011. Very vocal online and then suddenly went quiet. Anyone suddenly went quiet. Anyone who works in counterterrorism will tell you when you worry when suddenly an account goes quiet because what are they planning, where have they gone . I started thinking started thinking to myself, what is he planning . His language online was very suggestive of that type of behavior. In offline scenario he was very different. Very friendly and very nice. I thought what am i gonna do. I spoke to friends with mine, should i go to the police . I have to worry about the integrity of my promises to him in my career, as a journalist i would be finished if Nothing Happened and i reported him. I would be finished if i didnt report him and something did happen. He didnt give me any specific piece of information to suggest a violent activity. If he did i would go to the police. Until that point, i wouldnt and i would protect his identity. Im glad i did because he didnt do anything. In do anything. In fact after about six weeks of worrying, he turned up again and said he had been getting so angry, so frustrated in his digital universe that he no longer trusted himself. He was on the verge of doing something and he perhaps removed himself from the Digital World and he reemerged. This time time he reemerged as a woman online. He was going to his free page and posting rightwing comments after all the leftwing articles by this new female poster. A little bit like the russian troll that you investigated. There were certainly moments, and of course over rising my obligation is to keep people safe. But yes i would start with that proviso. One more question. When you were talking about the silk road as this kind of utopian market system, im presuming you are characterizing it based on your the creators. I was taken back by a book and his depiction and exploration of them is that they are sort of a vignette on to capitalism. This is what it is and everything is market sized. Everything is business, strictly. It was a pretty utopian picture, obviously. So i was kind of struggling with that in your description and it seems to me that when those systems are uncovered it gives way to something. Im wondering in contrast with your characterization of the participants are creators with that vision, how that turned out for you. If i go back to 1994 and a libertarian called tim may who really, before any of this stuff, all of these encryption systems had sought in encryption a way to create as he saw it encryption paradise. He said i think 99 of the World Population is doomed. I is doomed. I dont care about them. We need to burn off the oxygen and create an area where that genius 1 of people are going to thrive. We need things like that Encryption Software in the silk road are the ways were going to get to that. That was his vision. That vision sort of translated into silk road as far as where it could lead to. This is where the libertarian paradise that they hoped for, a wonderful flourishing of this type of community. Who knows. Youre right, in a way there was a strong strong sense of Community Among these libertarians. They would look out for each other and i think that was because they were a fringe group. Sort of like they are fighting together against the common enemy which was big central government. They were all loving each other and looking out for each other and they all have a very close relationship with each other which is formed in opposition against the government, and big corporations. The minute that collapses, they all start hating each other. But that doesnt matter at the moment because it never happened. Very generally speaking, i found a very useful and enlightening personally to look at, we worried greatly about privacy and encryption and all these questions, but contained within it is a radical philosophy about the future which is derived, in the end, from a harsh return view of the world and how it might wind up. People who subscribe to that view are not lovely friendly social democrats who want wonderful social collective wealth where four people. They just arent. I think its always interesting when you think about these questions, whats the philosophy behind it and where might it take us. I think a lot of people dont think about it. They just think, understandably so, im worried about privacy and i care about that. That could lead us somewhere else. Okay, i think we are finished. [applause]. Thank you very much. Jimmy carter announced last week he has cancer. Tomorrow morning the 90yearold former president holds a News Conference to talk about his diagnosis. We have live coverage from the Carter Center in atlanta on 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. After that republican Rick Santorum at the National Press club. He is live at 11 eastern. Next, stephen witt recounts the creation of mp3 files in the history of pirating digital music. His book is how music got free. This event was held in Nashville North carolina. Asheville North Carolina. Welcome everybody. Thanks thanks for coming. We really appreciate you coming out on a wednesday night in asheville. First thing i will ask you to do is turn off any noisemaking device that you have with you. A phone, small animal, child, because you dont want to be that person whose phone goes off during this fabulous presentation, and beside theres nothing anymore interesting going on out there than we are about to find out in here. I think you can agree. I want to thank them for donating this fabulous cheese. If you havent had any you should get some because its free. You should also have some wine because thats free too. I also want to think thanked the cspan team for filming this tonight. If you wait a few days you will be fortunate to go to our website and hear a podcast of the talk and all your interesting and fascinating questions that you will ask in just a little bit. We are beyond expect excited to have stephen here with his new book, how how music got free. This is something i had no idea. I just knew it is where it is. Its on my phone and on my ipod. I didnt know how that happened. Stephen traces the secret history of digital menu music piracy from germany to North Carolina. Yes right here in North Carolina to the highrises of midtown manhattan and finally into the darkest recesses of the internet. Stephen has written up thrilling account, depicting the the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online. When suddenly all the music ever recorded was available for free. He gave an irresistible, never told story of greed and deceit. It isnt just a story of the music industry, its a must read history of the internet itself. Please help me welcome stephen witt [applause]. Thank you so much for all showing up today and i want to thank you for hope is hosting this event. It is very, very nice. This is my first time in asheville. As you said my name is stephen witt and the book is called how music got free. Its the history of music piracy. I myself was a music pirate. I showed up to college in 1997 with a two with a two gigabyte hard drive and by the end of the first semester i filled my hard drive with pirated songs. This was the first time in history this was possible. If i showed up to college in 1995 or 1994i wouldnt of been 94 i wouldnt of been able to do it. There was a tectonic shift in the way Media Distribution was happening. It was a lot of teenagers and college kids figuring out. It was a exciting time to be a rough life. I had about 15000 albums worth of pirated music. If you listen listen to the whole thing it would take a year and a half to listen to it all. I became became a hoarder of digital music. One day in the 2000i was looking at this library and i asked myself, how did all this music get here in the first place . How is this actually possible . I began to investigate this and found the most astonishing thing, almost all the files i had could be traced back to three people. One of the guys was a guy named carl brandenberg. He was a german inventor and spent his life investigating the properties of the human ear and how to actually delete frequencies that were invisible or in audible to it. In this way he came up with something we now call the mp3 and quarter. That allows us to shrink music without losing audio quality. He was unable to monetize this invention. He was locked out of the marketplace as early as it was. In desperation he posted it for free public download to his website. Within a couple years the pirates got a hold of it and he ended up making hundreds of millions of dollars from intellectual property licensing. The the irony of that is that whole fortune was built on the greatest wave of Copyright Infringement that the world had ever seen. The second guy was a guy named doug morris. He was a powerful Music Executive in the mid90s at time warner. He realized. He realized the future of music was