Reviews

Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet Edited by Fay Sudweeks, Margaret McLaughlin, and Sheizaf Rafaeli published by AAAI Press/MIT Pres, 320pp, Pounds 29.50, ISBN 0 262 69206 6 The unique characteristic of the Internet as a medium is its many-to-many interactivity. The Web supports this only crudely, but out in the wilds of the older, text-based Internet - Usenet, Internet Relay Chat, and the role-playing games known as multi-user dungeons or MUDS - public discussion is the stuff of virtual life. This book collates a group of studies on this type of computer-mediated communication; long-time netheads will be gratified by finally having academic support for the daily observations they have made all along.

Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age By Mike Godwin, published by Times Books, 333pp, US$.50 ISBN 0 8129 2834 2 In-house counsel to the cyber rights organisation Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mike Godwin is one of the staunchest defenders of the extension of the United States First Amendment to the Net. Here Godwin examines the legal battles concerning free speech on the Net, from the case of the Michigan student who used a classmate's name in a violent sexual fantasy posted to Usenet, to the nasty, ill-researched 1995 Time magazine cyberporn story and the court challenge to the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The laws Godwin examines are US-based; the issues are global.

Music on the Internet (and where to find it) By Ian Waugh published by PC Publishing, 240pp, Pounds 15.95 ISBN 1870775 58 9 About half of Music on the Internet is concerned with the standard stuff of getting online: service providers, modem speeds, search engines, and how it all works. The other half puts together Web addresses and brief descriptions of sites and other resources that have anything to do with music: listening, playing, or composing. Sadly, the book caters primarily to popular and digital music. There is no mention even of the Digital Tradition, the impressive folk song lyrics archive, though Robert Moog's revival of the Theremin, an early analogue instrument, is mentioned.

The Future of the Electronic Marketplace Edited by Derek Leebaert published by MIT Press, 392pp, Pounds 19.95 ISBN 0 262 12209 X We all keep hearing that electronic commerce is due to change the world any year now. Derek Leebaert prefers to call it the "electronic marketplace": commerce, he says, sounds centralised and bureaucratic whereas a marketplace has freedom, debates, bargaining, and efficiency. The book's authors, a bunch with impressive (mostly American) corporate credentials, look at issues like the problems of building the necessary technical framework, privacy, changing work and job patterns, the death of cash, and the challenges of achieving universal service.