"this is not a law book, although it is about law. ''Digital Copyright'' is instead a social history of copyright law. It is not about the law per se but about how the technology developments of the 20th century changed how copyright law is crafted in the United States and who reaps the benefits."〔Karen Coyle, ("Book Review: ''Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet''" ), ''Information Technology & Libraries'', Dec. 2001, pp.220-222.〕

"In 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over the private uses of their works by individuals. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media, including major record labels and motion picture studios, and upstart Internet companies such as MP3.com and Napster. The general public is used to thinking of copyright (if it thinks of it at all) as magical and arcane, and it hasn't paid much attention as legislation to expand copyright moved through Congress. But copyright law is central to our society's information policy, and affects what we can read, view, hear, use, or learn. In this enlightening and well-argued book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be governed by laws drafted without ordinary consumers in mind? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or to expect consumers to obey them? Most important, what are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society? Litman's critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as incoherent. She argues for commonsense reforms that reflect the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions."〔Prometheus Books blurb, ''Digital Copyright'', 2001 hardback edition.〕

"Litman's chapter on twentieth-century copyright law is wonderful. She criticizes negotiated copyright statutes as being unworkable. Congress, she recounts, relied upon private 'experts' to write copyright bills because the issues seemed to be the province of a very narrow slice of citizenry and thus not worthy of much of an elected official's time."〔Joseph S. Fogel, (Review of ''Digital Copyright'' ), ''Los Angeles Lawyer'', v.24, n.9 (Dec. 2001), pp. 44-46.〕

"By engaging in a scorched-earth campaign, the recording industry squandered some truly awesome assets. ... () ... was unwilling to commit itself to an insecure digital standard that might become entrenched. Instead, it fought about whose patented security algorithm would become the new standard, and it focused on herding all MP3 music off the Internet."〔Litman, Chapter 10, p.156.〕