Recently, two prominent Web developers have initiated a conversation that could replace that zero-sum game mentality with the complementary ideas of "Darknets" and the "Lightnet."

Both concepts were created like pieces of open-source code, accepting ideas and modifications from the Internet community. A Darknet is a hidden Web nook where a small group shares digital files. Lightnet refers to a theoretical push towards an Internet where sharing and remixing files is encouraged.

In May, J.D. Lasica initiated the dialogue with his book, "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation." The Web consultant riffed on a 2002 research paper that studied how micro-networks illegally shared music, movies and other digital media—the biggest threat to creators' digital rights after the fall of Napster.

"A Darknet describes a space or environment for private file sharing," Lasica said in an interview with Publish.com. "The Darknet can be a force for good (at least in my book), when people act in a secure space to exchange files or information for legitimate purposes."

Multimedia-sharing company Grouper Networks launches a set of video tools. Click here to read more.

Ultimately, Lasica began to see consumers' desire to play with digital media in new ways: using MP3s as marketing tools, remixing digital music or sharing video clips. He concluded that these Darknets marked an irreversible shift in media relations.

"Customers are redefining DRM so that the 'rights' in DRM flow both ways, not just in the direction dictated by the media giants," he said. As these guerrilla networks evolved, something fundamental was changing—users were pushing for a more interactive relationship with media.

Let There Be Light…

At the Open Media Conference last October, Web developer Lucas Gonze imagined replacing covert Darknets with a file-sharing-friendly vision of a Lightnet. A variety of Webloggers and developers have since helped develop and circulate the idea.

"In a Lightnet world, New York Times audio and video will be about as accessible as text," Gonze said. "Anybody will be able to e-mail the link to a friend, incorporate the item in a playlist, comment on the item on their own home page, and perhaps make a derived work in the form of a remix, Podcast, or videoblog."

In Gonze's best possible scenario, every kind of media, from Hollywood movies to Wall Street Journal articles, would have an accessible URL so bloggers and Web users could play with the content.

Corporations may want to take their cue from The Washington Post, which recently began celebrating bloggers who circulate and link to Post articles, instead of burying articles behind an unlinkable subscription pay-wall.

The trick is convincing content producers to adopt these new modes of consumer interaction. Gonze said he appreciated the two-way nature of MySpace Music, a Web site that combines the small-community sharing aspect of Darknets while allowing musicians to sell music straight off the site.

...But Not Too Much Light

Some corporate analysts caution against utopian fever.

"A young musician still needs to put food on his table," said Andy Moss, Senior Director of Technical Policy at Microsoft Corp. "People who create things that can be digitized are wrestling with what to do with it. It's creating possibility before people can decide what to do with it."

While acknowledging that file sharing has already revolutionized content distribution, Moss predicted that a viable P2P network—the kind that corporations and users can use to cooperate—is still a few years away. But Gonze believes once this paradigm shift occurs, the growth of Lightnets will outpace Darknets.

"Lightnet content will tend to be more popular than Darknet content," Gonze said. "Publishers will give away some content in order to be able to sell other content, and they will find new revenue sources when they become remixers themselves."

Many musicians are undecided on the issue of DRM (digital rights management). Read more here.

Web consultant Clay Shirky said he agrees with Gonze's market shift, and he took the message to his prominent clients, including Nokia, the BBC and the Library of Congress.

"What the corporations have to realize is that real revolutions don't involve an orderly transition from one business model to another," he told Publish.com. "Ironically, the thing that changed Internet advertising was the recession!"

Shirky tempered his advice with some grim realities: Bloggers are undermining journalists' integrity, musicians can't sell enough records and book sales are lagging. Media corporations must adapt to this new environment, or fade away.

To illustrate, Shirky explained how the New York Times Select feature could hurt the august news organization. "David Brooks is now locked behind a Times Select wall. There's a conservative audience that would read David Brooks, but they won't read the Times overall."

According to Shirky, Lightnet technologies could help the Times sell bite-sized pieces of content to micro-audiences, instead of selling the newspaper as a traditional, complete content entity.

The future, it seems, belongs to companies that can compromise between file sharing and content control. The Lightnet could signal a possible truce in the war between the Napster generation and old media distributors.

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