Resources for Students Wishing to Specialize in "Darknet" Digital Text Research
Another Article Summarizing the History of and Differences Between the Deepnet and the Darknet with Strategies for Protecting Yourself There--

“What is the Deep and Dark Web,” Kaspersky, “Resource Center.”  Available at: https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/deep-web


Some Darknet Portals:
        If you are specifically interested in issues of textual legitimacy, political power, and resistance, and if you are not easily disturbed by potentiall violent, disturbing, or dangerous content, visit some "darknet" portals by clicking on these links.  Note--some pornography and other content you might object to may be found on these sites, together with the expected political activism and high-end hacking tools.  Caveat lector.  Also consider what kind of libertarian media mélange this type of "library" might represent.  

They have existed before, for instance in 1600s London at "Paul's Walk," the street before St. Paul's Cathedral, where the "Paul's Walkers" recited dangerous political satires and exchanged useful political and economic secrets.   Popup bookstores at Paul's took the form of people walking the street with stacks of printed broadsheets and pamphlets, sometimes attached to the insides and outsides of their clothes.  These documents would have been dangerous for licensed booksellers to carry because they revealed government or business secrets, or satirized the powerful.)

After the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, ISIS websites on the visible "surface" Web were taken down by police and hackers associated with the group "Anonymous."  In response, ISIS immediately migrated to the Darknet, informing its adherants how to follow and support them using Telegram and TrueCrypt.  For a summary of the history and issues, see

Weimann, Gabriel. “Terrorist Migration to the Dark Web.” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 10, no. 3, 2016, pp. 40–44. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26297596  If this hyperlink does not work, please just copy the link into a new browser tab. 

In addition to the Darknet's function as a marketplace for socially taboo/illegal products (drugs, weapons, slaves, child pornography), it also enables illegal hackers to exchange tools, sell the products of hacks (e.g., data), and boast about their "exploits."  The following articles are now rather dated but will serve as an introduction to the vocabulary and recent history of hacking:

Zuley Clarke, Hames Clawson, Maria Cordell.  "A Brief History of Hacking . . . "  LCC6316: Historical Approaches to Digital Media.  2003.  Available online:  http://steel.lcc.gatech.edu/~mcordell/lcc6316/Hacker%20Group%20Project%20FINAL.pdf

David M. Hafele, "Three Shades of Ethical Hacking: Black, White and Gray."  GSEC Practical Assignment, Version 1.4b, Option 1.  SANS Institute.  February 23, 2004.

Larisa April Long, "Profiling Hackers."  GIAC GEC Gold Certification.  SANS Institute.  January 26, 2012.

Elizabeth Rowe's law review article, below, is an example of a recent increase in attention being paid by the legal community to the ways hackers affect business practices in the legitimate economy.   She discusses ways to combat "Remote Access Tools" (RATS) by employing active online countermeasures in ways that do not invoke the notion of "cyber war."  (For more on cyberwar, see Richard A. Clarke's 2010 book of that title or his more recent interviews and articles on the topic.)

Elizabeth A. Rowe, "RATS, TRAPS, and Trade Secrets."  Boston College Law Review, 2016.  

The Jargon File Ver. 4.7.7: A compendium of hacking slang, hacker culture and anecdotes from the first century of programming.