Cory reading tomorrow night at Borderlands Books

Grok Headline matches for Cory reading tomorrow night at Borderlands Books

Cory reading tonight at Borderlands
Books

Cory reading tonight at Borderlands
Books 02/19/2004 11:34 AM
One final reminder: I'm giving a signing and a reading at San Francisco's Borderlands Books (19th and Valencia) tonight at 7PM, in honor of Eastern Standard Tribe. Hope to see you there! Link

Cory giving a talk/reading/signing in
Seattle, June 16

Cory giving a talk/reading/signing in
Seattle, June 16 06/03/2004 12:07 PM
I'm doing an internal talk at Microsoft Research in Redmond on June 17, and they've been good enough to set up a public event on June 16 in Seattle. I'm going to talk a little about copyright and read some new fiction -- there'll be books on sale, and I'll be happy to sign your stuff for ya. Here are the details:

When: June 16, 7PM

Where: Walker-Ames Room, Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus

More info: Contact Kim Ricketts, 206-523-3458, kimr@kimricketts.com

Link

Live from ETech: Cory Doctorow and
e-books...

Live from ETech: Cory Doctorow and
e-books... 02/12/2004 04:46 PM

Warning: What follows makes increasingly little sense. Day Three Proper of ETech has resulted in a certain lack of mental flexibility and a weird warm grinding feeling at the temples as my over-saturated lobes rub together...

So in a few weeks I'm presenting a piece on e-publishing and weblogs at the London Book Fair. To be honest, I've never understood the compound, "e-publishing". It seems to mean different things to different people at different times. For most people it seems to bear little or no relationship to what I consider publishing online - ie. those content-rich sites like BBC News Online and TimeOut.com or weblog-style stuff or in fact anything browser-readable, but instead just that highly narrow field of e-book publishing (generally considered as some kind of proprietary text-based format glued into a PDA or piece of dedicated e-book-reading hardware / software). In a nutshell, then, I didn't really consider it terribly interesting.

I was surprised, then, to see Cory Doctorow talking on the subject at Emerging Tech. I mean, obviously I knew that he'd released his books online under a Creative Commons license and obviously I'd known that had been quite a successful and publicity-garnering thing to have done, but - to be honest - I'd somehow never really made the connection between that and "e-books". In my mind an e-book was little more than a species of niche electronic emphemera designed to sit within a tiny ecosystem of highly-tech-friendly but not particularly tech-savvy over-monied poseurs. So, why would that have any connection with Cory? I mean - he basically slapped the plain-text of the book onto the web. Which is - you know - useful. Where's the connection?

Forty-five minutes later, of course, and my views are different. It's not that Cory said that much which was alien to my sensibility or world-view - in a sense he's preaching to the converted - but I've now got slightly more of an understanding of the publishing of books 'electronically' as a spectrum rather than as a set of rather problematic models in competition with each other. Which demonstrates, I guess, what a dumbass I was fifty minutes ago. Still... I guess it's good that I can face up to that, right?

Anyway - I've stuck up my personal transcript and understanding of his piece and I recommend everyone read it.

More importantly, Cory did a really cool thing just before getting off-stage - he's releasing even more of the rights to "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" under a Creative Commons license. Originally it was just free to distribute, but not to change or undertake any derivative works. But now - as long as it's uncommercial - he's freed up derivative works as well. This is more important than it might sound - it means that individuals can make t-shirts or badges on the one hand (as long as it's non-commercial), but more significantly, they can now make and distribute reader translations of the book without trouble and they can even write fan-fiction and slash without any trouble - just as long as these translations and derivative works are distributed under the same terms. Very interesting and worthy of considerable celebration and approval. More later...

• Eastern Standard Tribe site
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom site
• Buy Eastern Standard Tribe

Read the comments

“Night of the Panther” Kicks Off at 8:00
p.m. Tomorrow

“Night of the Panther” Kicks Off at 8:00
p.m. Tomorrow 10/29/2003 12:12 AM

Three books worth reading

Three books worth reading 08/02/2004 09:58 AM
All are by friends, but I've turned my heart to stone and have taken a cold-blooded, objective eye to them, and recommend each: Dan Gillmor's We the Media has just hit the stores. Joe Trippi's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Micah Sifry and Nancy Watzman's Is that a Politician in Your Pocket?...

Reading Books On Cell Phones

Reading Books On Cell Phones 03/24/2005 08:26 AM
CBS Now Mar 24 2005 12:24PM GMT

His books are required reading for the
rest of your life

His books are required reading for the
rest of your life 09/15/2004 11:55 AM
The Greatest War Protestor of All Time --Wise, hilarious, and kind words from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you don't know who he is, fake it.

Creative Commons UK launch tomorrow
night -- now with extra Barlow!

Creative Commons UK launch tomorrow
night -- now with extra Barlow! 03/17/2005 03:56 AM
Cory Doctorow: If you're in London tomorrow night, you should go to the Creative Commons UK launch! Any party with Barlow in attendance is bound to be fun.

Let us raise a glass to the arrival of the UK creative commons licences, and start to ask the question - What does the Creative Commons mean for artists in the UK?

* We are happy to announce that John Perry Barlow, digerati and friend of CC, will be with us to celebrate this event.

* We will be meeting at the wonderful October Gallery in Bloomsbury to mark the day with some poignant speeches and good wine.

* The event will take place on Wednesday the 16th, from 6pm until 9:30pm.

The event is jointly organized by William Heath and Christian Ahlert (pls RSVP to Christian)

Link

Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary
Reading in America

Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary
Reading in America 07/09/2004 01:22 PM
download a .pdf of the actual study on reading .. report

nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf
track this site | 5 links

The New York Times > Books > Will
Eisner, a Pioneer of Comic Books, Dies
at 87

The New York Times > Books > Will
Eisner, a Pioneer of Comic Books, Dies
at 87 01/05/2005 04:28 PM
this one by Sarah Boxer

nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/05eisner.html
track this site | 4 links

The New York Times > Books >
Books of The Times: The Pastiche of a
Presidency,Imitating a Life, in 957
Pages

The New York Times > Books >
Books of The Times: The Pastiche of a
Presidency,Imitating a Life, in 957
Pages 06/20/2004 03:35 AM
NYT BRUTAL BOOK REVIEW FOR BUBBA .. As you can see here .. review

nytimes.com/2004/06/20/books/20CLIN.html?ei=5006&en=b1de08dbc 243a997&ex=1088308800&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=
track this site | 4 links

Cory off for the weekend

Cory off for the weekend 07/16/2004 05:16 AM
I'm off for my birthday weekend now. No email, no Web access, no blogging: just idyllic relaxation in an undisclosed location. See you all on Monday, at which point I will have turned 33, entering Club 33 the hard way.

Congrats to Cory

Congrats to Cory 03/20/2003 04:23 PM

How nuts is it that Cory' s book was reviewed by Jeff Bezos and Harriet Klausner, Amazon's #1 reviewer? And speaking of, how on earth does someone review 4605 products (almost all books) in just a few years? I'm seeing 4-5 lengthy book reviews per day in some of her history, how on earth does someone do such a thing?

I've seen the future, and they are Cory
and Joi

I've seen the future, and they are Cory
and Joi 03/13/2003 10:22 AM

Joi and Cory live in the future and have the cameras to prove it. Joi also had an amazing japanese cell phone that featured two cameras hidden inside it. He could switch between shooting from the back of it, to the front of it (taking a photo of yourself using it).

I wish I recorded some audio during lunch as there was an almost magical symphony of forks hitting plates that created a strange cacophony the speakers had to outdo.

cory on drm @ msft

cory on drm @ msft 06/19/2004 04:28 AM
Cory's speech at Microsoft on the mistake of DRM.

Wise Cory

Wise Cory 12/23/2003 06:50 PM
I'm fond of these words of wisdom from Cory: The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy... I have a special request to the toolmakers of 2004: stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations An important note for 2004: stop trying to build an Internet without malefactors, parasites, freeriders and inefficiency. See you next year, Cory. Or, more accurately: If you're Cory and you're reading this, then it is net year....

Cory omigod

Cory omigod 09/23/2004 08:29 AM
Cory's presentation to Microsoft on why DRM is bad for us and bad for them is other-worldly in its brilliance. Damn funny, too. in It is a must-read. In fact, it's a must-be-chiseled-into-lintels. (It's in pdf and it's presented by ChangeThis.)...

Help Cory pirate his own story!

Help Cory pirate his own story! 09/01/2004 01:43 PM
Cory Doctorow: Science Fiction World, a Chinese magazine, recently published an issue with a translation of my story "Nimby and the D-Hoppers" (originally published in June 2003). They didn't ask first, so technically this is a "pirate" edition, but hell, I'm not all that worked up about it -- I'm pretty pumped to know that there are people in China reading my stuff (and for what it's worth, foreign publishers usually pay teeny little pittances for translation rights to short stories).

My only peeve here is that they never sent me a copy, and never put their translation on the Web. I sent 'em some email but they never answered.

So here's my challenge to the lazyweb: track down a copy of the September issue of Science Fiction World and re-type the story that starts on page 12 ("Technological Opposition and the Dimension-Hopper") and send it to me. I'll post it on the Internet and make it available under a Creative Commons license for free reproduction. Link (Thanks, Joel!)

Cory speaking on Jan 28 in Novato

Cory speaking on Jan 28 in Novato 01/22/2004 02:46 AM
I'm giving a talk ("Copyright, the Web, and Innovation") for the North Bay Multimedia Association on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004 from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM at the Marin Community Foundation in Novato, CA.

There's nothing new about a copyright crisis: the ability to automatically reproduce work has been contentious since the Gutenberg Bible -- and as recently as the mid-Eighties, when the Hollywood studios tried to outlaw the VCR, calling it "the Boston Strangler of the American film-industry."

Is it any wonder that the web, with its ability to move, organize and reproduce information without control or oversight, has precipitated another crisis? Course not.

What is a wonder is that any number of otherwise bright and well-meaning lawmakers, geeks and businesspeople are behaving as though the proper response to a collision between copyright and technology is limits on technology -- imagine if recorded music had been "limited" to ensure that it didn't disrupt the sheet-music business! (It almost was -- and recorded music was only rescued through a Hail Mary act of Congress that legitimized piano rolls in 1908)

Today, the notion that technology should "compromise" with rights-holders is a tremendous threat to the open Web. The recording industry is indiscriminately abusing copyright law to sue 70,000 American file-sharers into submission. The Hollywood companies are getting the FCC to regulate the basic components of the PC.

Link

Cory on holiday for the weekend

Cory on holiday for the weekend 07/01/2004 03:34 AM
Cory's off for the rest of the weekend -- I won't be answering email or the phone again until Monday morning. See you then!

Cory Doctorow responds

Cory Doctorow responds 04/01/2005 06:26 AM

I got an email from Cory Doctorow saying that my theoretical republishing of his book -- giving myself authorship credit, offering it for sale, and seeking distribution -- would be "fraudulent." So we know that Cory has a line. We're making progress. (Note I'm not going to publish his email, he can do that if he likes, and I'd like it if he would.)

Now, as I've said so many times (one more time won't hurt), I don't like it when a big heartless company takes my work and modifies it in a way that makes it hard to tell what they wrote and what I wrote. I'm concerned that if I let this company do it, then another company is going to, and another and pretty soon they're going to be competing on the basis of how "useful" they make my work, again without my permission, and with no compensation to me. I'm concerned that they may make changes I don't agree with, or even worse, change the meaning of what I wrote so as to confuse people about what I think. I quit working for a big publication because they were doing this, I went independent so my writing could have integrity, so it could truly represent what I think, to the best of my ability. Cory, Google crossed my line. To use your terminology, they're doing something fraudulent by passing off their derivative work as mine.

BTW, I say "I think," when stating an opinion. Cory and his colleagues (who mostly are not lawyers) state their legal opinion as fact. He also says "As you know" before saying something that I don't even agree with. That's just plain disrespectful, and makes discourse more difficult.

Cory on Asimov's I, Robot

Cory on Asimov's I, Robot 06/22/2004 01:44 PM
I wrote the cover story for this month's Wired Magazine, about Asimov's robot stories and the new I, Robot movie.

Yet Asimov's reductionist approach to human interaction may be his most lasting influence. His thinking is alive and well and likely filling your inbox at this moment with come-ons asking you to identify your friends and rate their "sexiness" on a scale of one to three. Today's social networking services like Friendster and Orkut collapse the subtle continuum of friendship and trust into a blunt equation that says, "So-and-so is indeed my friend," and "I trust so-and-so to see all my other 'friends.'" These systems demand that users configure their relationships in a way that's easily modeled in software. It reflects a mechanistic view of human interaction: "If Ann likes Bob and Bob hates Cindy, then Ann hates Cindy." The idea that we can take our social interactions and code them with an Asimovian algorithm ("allow no harm, obey all orders, protect yourself") is at odds with the messy, unpredictable world. The Internet succeeds because it is nondeterministic and unpredictable: The Net's underlying TCP/IP protocol makes no quality of service guarantees and promises nothing about the route a message will take or whether it will arrive.

This need for people to behave in a predictable, rational, measurable way recalls Mr. Spock's autistic inability to understand human emotion without counting dimples to discern happiness or frown lines to identify sorrow. It's likewise reminiscent of scientology, which uses quantitative charts of personality traits, such as "lack of accord" and "certainty," to help people become 100 percent happy, composed, and so on.

Link< /a>

Cory in Ottawa Citizen

Cory in Ottawa Citizen 06/08/2004 07:14 AM
On May 30, the Ottawa Citizen ran a great profile on me and my books, with a sidebar on other authors who ppost their work online. The Citizen has a weird policy where they only let subscribers see their online archives, but Brent Kirwan, a generous reader, has sent me a high-resolution photo of the newspaper spread where you can read it yourself. 148k JPEG Link

Earlier this month, Cory

Earlier this month, Cory 04/26/2004 04:11 PM
Earlier this month, Cory blogged one man's amazingly detailed reproduction of a Tron costume< /a>. Now, our pal Gabe ups the ante with a pointer to Jay Maynard's masterwork. Link

Cory looses yet more control

Cory looses yet more control 02/13/2004 03:48 PM
Cory has altered the Creative Commons license on Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom so that almost any non-commercial adaptation of it does not require his permission. If you want to turn it into a movie or republish it via skywriting, please go ahead. BTW, you can read the text of Cory's talk at Emerging Tech here....

Hey, Your Library's Books Are in My
Google. No, Your Google Is in My Library
Books.

Hey, Your Library's Books Are in My
Google. No, Your Google Is in My Library
Books. 12/19/2004 03:36 PM

So the big< /a> news is about Google and libraries. I don't feel the need to comment on this right now, as you can find plenty of other places for that. However, here are a few angles I haven't seen discussed elsewhere in the library blogosphere.

• Librari es and the Internet
  
  "More broadly, the Internet can profoundly improve the relationship between libraries and society. For example, there are two major libraries in my town -- a college library, and a public library. My library card works in both places. I used to favor the college library, because there was open WiFi access there -- which meant, among other things, that I could use LibraryLookup from my laptop to find books in the stacks. Recently, though, the college shut down its open access point. And from an IT administrator's point of view, I can understand why. Not long after, the public library installed an open access point. So now it's my favorite spot, and lately I notice other mobile professionals congregating there too." [Jon Udell's Weblog
  (Click over to read Jon's story about getting locked in the library, too!)


• "A quick calculation using the figures above suggests an average scan rate of 3200 volumes per day (assuming 365 days/year for 6 years) at the University of Michigan site alone." [Tito Sierra on the WEB4 LIB mailing list]


• "An even quicker calculation shows that they will need to digitize 2.25 books _a_minute_, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year to digitize 7 million volumes in six years." [Roy Tennant on the WEB4 LIB mailing list]

It's times like this when I wish Karen Coyle had< /a> a blog.

The world adapts to Cory Doctorow...

The world adapts to Cory Doctorow... 10/29/2003 07:09 PM

My theory regarding the awesome O'Reilly-sponsored wifi at Foyles café on Charing Cross Road goes a little like this:

Tim O'Reilly: "Hey Cory, how you doing?"
Cory Doctorow: "You know what sucks? Wifi in London."
Tim O'Reilly: "Hmm..." {thinks}

Cory pitched to Microsoft that DRM is
bad for their business.

Cory pitched to Microsoft that DRM is
bad for their business. 06/18/2004 08:36 PM
Cory pitched to Microsoft that DRM is bad for their business. I'm surprised he didn't use the recent example of HD-DVD. Apparently the DVD Forum was considering the Jon Johansen Problem and came up with a simple solution: computers will never ever be able to play HD-DVD movies under any circumstances. After all, this solution worked for SACD. (This doesn't address the Bunnie Huang Problem, but let's leave that for later.) Microsoft immediately protested that this would lock them out of their plan to converge PCs and home theaters. (I have no clue what Steve Jobs is thinking when he calls for strong DRM in HD-DVD; by definition if HD-DVDs are playable in OS X then the DRM is weak. Maybe he's willing to concede that market since he hates TV anyway.)

Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM

Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM 12/29/2004 06:33 PM
Cory Doctorow: Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, has responded to my blog-post in which I take issue with Wired's latest product-review magazine, which breathes hardly a mention of DRM even as it reviews devices that are all crapped up with studio-paranoia-generated restriction technology.

Chris takes a "middle ground" position that I've heard described as "radical centrism" -- his position is that the EFF's opposition to DRM is "idealistic" and that there is therefore a practical "reality" that is better suited to the world. I think it's a false dichotomy, and I'd like to have a little go at Chris's post here and see if I can show why:

Consumers want more content, easier-to-use technology, and cheaper prices. If some form of DRM encourages publishers, consumer electronics makers and retailers to release more, better and cheaper digital media and devices, that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is just being realistic: much as we might want it to be otherwise, content owners still call most of the shots. If a little protection allows them to throw their weight behind a lot of progress towards realizing the potential of digital media, consumers will see a net benefit.

This is the crux of the argument. It starts out by saying that DRM is protection. And protection makes Hollywood comfortable. And a comfortable Hollywood will release more material. And the more material there is, the cheaper it will get.

But all of those propositions are materially untrue. Start with "DRM is protection." DRM is not protection. There has never been a DRM-covered file that was kept off the Internet. Ever. DRM has never once in the history of the field kept a file from appearing online, or from being booted by organized crime pirates. Despite its rhetoric on this, Hollywood is perfectly aware of how bogus the DRM-is-protection claim is; any entertainment exec you put on this spot on this will retreat to a badly-thought-out mantra to the effect that "DRM is a speedbump, it's not meant to keep files off the Internet, it's meant to 'keep honest users honest.'" As Ed Felten has pointed out, keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall. DRM may keep a naive user from buying a cheap DVD abroad and bringing it home, and it may make it possible to charge you for things that you used to get for free, like format-shifting, but it won't ever keep an honest user honest.

DRM isn't protection from piracy. DRM is protection from competition. If you believe that "much as we might want it to be otherwise, content owners still call most of the shots," then you believe that the guy who makes the record should get a veto over the design of the record player. That the film studios should be able to ban the VCR. That the recording industry should have been able to shove SDMI down all our throats and make MP3 disappear.

This is a profoundly ahistorical proposition. Never in the history of media from the dawn of the printing press right up to the invention of the DVD have we afforded this kind of privilege to incumbent rightsholders. Quite the contrary: at every turn, brave entrepreneurs have engaged in "piracy" of copyrighted works (through devices like the record player, radio, cable television and VCR) and kept at it until the law caught up with the technology.

It's different with the DVD. With the DVD, the electronics companies completely wimped out. They traded their customers to the studios for two packs of cigarettes, and the result has been a decade of stagnation in DVD players. There's no indication that movies are being released sooner or more cheaply on DVD than they were on VHS; and in fact, the release of movies on VHS was preceded by incredible, absurd hyperbole about the video-cassette's inevitable destruction of the film industry and the compelte impossibility of a movie ever being released by a studio for viewing on your VCR.

If you believe that "content owners still call most of the shots" then you believe that the studios will make movies and just not release them, they will amass a great pile of unreleased material in their Hollywood vaults and sit before the doors, arms folded, glaring at the world until it arranges itself into a more accomodating configuration. It is ridiculous. DRM hasn't convinced the studios to put new material online -- the offerings that the studios have put online are a pathetic shadow of the material one can download from the P2P networks. The studios have all the DRM in the universe at their disposal, but they're not using it to bring new material to market.

Nope, they're using it to sell you the same crap for more money. Chris loves his Microsoft Media Center PC, "essentially a DVR on steroids" -- at least, he loves it so far. That's because he hasn't been bitten on the ass by it yet, like this guy, who bought a Media Center PC so that he could catch the Sopranos and burn them to DVD. When he bought the PC, it was capable of doing that. Halfway through the season, the studios reached into his living room and broke his PC, disabling the feature that allowed him to burn his Sopranos episodes to DVD. And if you got suckered into letting your cable company give you a "free" PVR, you've got a nasty shock coming this season: your episodes of Six Feet Under will delete themselves from your hard drive after two weeks, whether you've gotten around to watching them or not.

If you want to watch all the Sopranos or Six Feet Unders in a row at the end of the season, you'll have to do it on Pay Per View. You'll have to buy what you used to get for free: the right to record a show and watch it for as long as you'd like. You get less, you pay more. And the studios can change the rules of the game after you've bought the box and brought it home: the only way you can protect your investment is if you can somehow ensure that no studio executive decides to revoke one of the features you paid for back when the box was on the show-room floor. Remember, these are the same studio execs who are duking it out for the right to limit how long a pause button can work for.

Chris likes the iTunes Music Store, calling it a success, but it's got the same problems as the Media Center and all the other DRM devices. The record labels can demand that Apple selectively break your music player, removing features based on secret negotiations, long after you've made your purchases. Apple will even force "updates" on you that removes features that you've chosen to add to your device, shutting you out of listening to your own music on the player you shelled out good money for.

The problem is that once your device vendor sells you out to the studios, they're 0wned. The studios' protection racket lets them demand practically anything from a device vendor -- check out "selectable output control" for some truly heinous world-domination horseshit.

So, Chris, that's why I disagree with your "realistic" notion:

• There's no reason to believe that DRM makes more content available
• There's no reason to let the studios "call the shots" -- we haven't before this
• There's no reason to believe that DRM makes media cheaper, quite the contrary
• The features that make your "reasonable" DRM palatable to the market today can and are rescinded tomorrow

If I were in Chris's seat, I would be sure that every single review of a DRM device carried the following notice: WARNING: THIS DEVICE'S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD'S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE -- BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY'RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT'LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS. Link

Cory to be Guest of Honor at Penguincon

Cory to be Guest of Honor at Penguincon 09/08/2004 07:14 AM
Cory Doctorow: I'm the Guest of Honor at PenguinCon 3.0, a science fiction and Linux conference held near Detroit April 22-24, 2005. This is my first Guest of Honor-ship -- it's pretty cool news! Also on the bill is Wil Wheaton -- it'll be great to see him again. Link

Cory teaching Clarion in 2005

Cory teaching Clarion in 2005 07/28/2004 05:48 AM
In 1992, I graduated from the Clarion Writers' Workshop at Michigan State University, the famed six-week "boot-camp for science-fiction writers." It was an amazing experience: my instruction from the likes of Damon Knight, James Patrick Kelly, Lisa Goldstein, Nancy Kress and Kate Wilhelm forever changed me as a writer and a person.

Therefore, it is a stupendous honour to be able to announce that I will be returning to Clarion next year, as part of the 2005 roster of instructors. My co-instructors will be Joan Vinge, Charles Coleman Finlay, Gwyneth Jones, Walter John Williams and Leslie What.

Clarion is in transition this year, as funding cuts at MSU will require a change of venue. Here are some details:

Among the options being considered are moving the workshop to another university or becoming an independent non-profit organization, along the lines of Clarion West. In either event, Clarion is likely to leave its long-time home in East Lansing and is actively soliciting suggestions for new location(s) and offers from organizations or groups willing to host the workshop. “I think it’s past time for Clarion to make a transition to a new venue and a new structure,” said Board Member James Patrick Kelly. The Clarion Board is calling on alumni and friends of the workshop to volunteer to help with the transition. “We need to work on fundraising, communications, and administration,” said Kelly. “We’re encouraging people who believe in Clarion to get involved with everything from putting together our newsletter to helping choose the instructors and lots in between.” To that end, the Clarion Board of Directors, which currently consists of Matheson, Kelly, Kate Wilhelm, Maureen McHugh, Karen Joy Fowler, Tim Powers, and former Clarion director Tess Tavormina will be looking to reconstitute itself and expand its membership.

Link

Cory coming to Seattle next week

Cory coming to Seattle next week 04/07/2005 07:44 AM
Cory Doctorow: I'm coming to Seattle next week for the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. Here's where you can catch me:

• a panel called "Cyberliberties and the World of Tomorrow - Science Fiction Authors on the Future of Computers, Freedom, and Privacy" with David Brin and Eileen Gunn, Thursday April 14 at 4:15PM
• emceeing EFF's Pioneer Awards at the Sci Fi Museum, 7:00PM on Wednesday, April 13th.
• reading/speech/signing with David Brin on Tuesday April 12th, 7-9PM, JBL Theater, located adjacent to Sci Fi Museum in EMP, 325 5th Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 (free)

Cory at PenguiCon near Detroit next
weekend

Cory at PenguiCon near Detroit next
weekend 04/16/2005 09:52 AM
Cory Doctorow: Just a reminder that I'll be appearing as the Guest of Honor at PenguiCon, a Linux and Science Fiction convention being held in Detroit next weekend, from April 22-24. I'll be giving talks on I, Robot, copyleft, folk art, open source licensing and open spectrum, and I'll be doing a reading and conducting the charity auction. Other guests include the founders of Slashdot, Eric Raymond, Nat Torkington, Joan Vinge, Kathe Koja, and Joey DeVilla. Link

Cory sets DRM strawmen ablaze

Cory sets DRM strawmen ablaze 01/02/2005 06:57 AM
Cory Doctorow: On the heels of the long post I made the other day in response to Wired's Editor-in-Chief own blog-post on DRM, lots of people have commented on the debate. Generally the comments are very good, but there's this pack of straw-man arguments that keeps popping up: "The companies are just trying to do what's best for their shareholders by making as much money as possible. If the DRM isn't too restrictive, then the market will accept it. Just wait and see how successful a DRM is in the market, that will tell you how good it is."

They're straw-men, and I decided after reading them re-stated in this post, that it was worth setting them ablaze. Here goes:

For starters, any market-correction for DRM will surely involve informed customers making good purchase decisions about the DRM in their devices. That's what this debate is all about. The implicit, "Stop complaining and let the market sort it out" in these comments ignores the fact that complaints about DRM are vital to the market sorting it out.

"I noticed last month that Chris A (as befits an ex-Economist writer) is keen to encourage commercial companies to sueeze every last penny of value out of their intellectual property"

This is a straw-man. Neither Chris nor I question Disney, Fox, et al's desire to suck the consumer electronics companies' customers dry with DRM. The argument we're having is over whether it's in the CE companies' best interests to be accomplices to this.

To have a functional market, you need companies and individuals who act in their own best interests. Traditionally, the entertainment companies have wanted fewer devices of less capability in the market -- which is why they strongly opposed the phonogram, radio, jukebox, cable TV, VCR and Internet.

Traditionally, the CE companies have perceived a market opportunity to give their customers more devices and more capable devices, because customers want to get more for less.

This has resulted in a tension that yielded a balance to everyone's benefit. The CE companies built devices that were capable, customers got more freedom, and entertainment companies discovered new opportunities to expand their revenue.

Today, the CE companies are agreeing to participate in secret consortia where a maximum threshold for functionality is being set out by the studios. The CE companies are promised that if they play within the cartel's rules -- i.e., if they don't ship the products their customers want -- then the cartel will sue into oblivion any competitor who enters the market with a more-capable device.

This has nothing to do with "bits-want-to-be-free," an even bigger strawman than the idea that this is about whether companies should be trying to make as much money as possible.

Bits may or may not want to be free. The point is that customers of the CE companies certainly want to know how free their bits will be before making a purchase: if we are to have a functional market for devices with educated purchase decisions, then reviews should make note of the salient fact that these devices, unlike every device that a reader has ever owned up until this point, has features that can be revoked at the whim of the studios.

If you are thinking about buying a stereo with a key feature and the choice is between two models, wouldn't it be useful to know that in one model, the feature is guaranteed to last forever, while in the other, the feature can be revoked at any time due to factors that are beyond your control and shrouded in secrecy?

Take the example of the Media Center PC. There is one show -- the Sopranos -- that is currently being cablecast with a flag switched on that prevents you from burning a DVD of the shows you record.

If you're not a Sopranos fan, that's not a big deal -- maybe you're a classic movie buff building a collection of Cagney films off of TNT. $2,000 for a Media Center PC seems like a good buy for you right now.

But how are you to know whether TNT will switch on that same flag? Are you a party to those negotiations? Is there anyone who considers your interests who's in the room where that's being decided? Is there even anyone in that that room who can tell you how it's going, so that before you buy the box, you can read up on the current negotiations and make an informed decision?

Do you even know which flags exist? Now that HBO has switched on the no-DVD flag on The Sopranos, people who are paying attention know that they have no reason to believe that they will be able to burn anything to DVD -- if the DVD burner works today, don't count on it tomorrow!

But what if you've bought the box in order to fast-forward past commercials? Is there a "no-fast-forward" flag lurking in XrML, the "rights expression language" used by the media center? (There is). Under what circumstances can it be activated? Can it be used to stop you fast-forwarding through an objectionable scene in a movie while your kids are in the room? The Directors Guild of America is suing a company that makes it easy to do this with DVDs; will they ever convince the studios to turn it on in your Media Center PC?

The final straw-man here is about whether DRM is "too restrictive" -- whether it impinges on "reasonable expectations." But that's not what anyone in this fight actually is arguing about. It's about the ability of the studios to change the rules of the game: whether the factors that influence your purchase today are subject to change later. Not whether the device is too restrictive today, but how restrictive it might someday become. What are the anti-features of the device, the technologies that can be used to remove features you enjoy today?

That is the question, not "how restrictive is the DRM today?" If you believe in markets, in making money, in providing shareholder value, in all the cant of capitalism, then this is the question you should want to see uppermost in the minds of "consumers" when they make a purchase decision, because that is the only way that the market can "correct" DRM that overreaches.

Cory Doctorow: Still one step ahead

Cory Doctorow: Still one step ahead 02/15/2004 10:44 AM
Cory Doctorow has relicensed his book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Last year he released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs -- license. In so doing, he proved conventional wisdom about "free distribution" wrong -- the book did exceptionally well. Now, without even waiting for the rest of the publishing world to catch up, he's taken the next great leap: the book is now available under one of the least restrictive licenses -- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Already, cool versions are emerging. Here's a Speed Reading tool for both new books by Trevor Smith.

Cory wins the Sunburst Award!

Cory wins the Sunburst Award! 09/01/2004 01:43 PM
Cory Doctorow: My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, has won the 2004 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, winning out over such worthy competitors as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake. I am bursting with pride.

The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a prized and juried award. Based on excellence of writing, it will be presented annually to a Canadian writer who has had published a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction any time during the previous calendar year. Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the award consists of: a cash award of $1000 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The winner will receive his or her award in fall 2004.

Link

Update: Help Cory pirate his own story

Update: Help Cory pirate his own story 09/07/2004 08:39 AM
Cory Doctorow: I ran into the editors of Science Fiction World, the Chinese magazine that translated and printed my story "Nimby and the D-Hoppers" without asking (or even letting me know!), at the WorldCon. They gave me a copy of the issue, which has super-cool anime-style illos, and have promised to send me the text electronically to post under a Creative Commons license when they get back to China.

They say that they have a deal with the Chinese copyright office where if they give a royalty to the office, they get permission to translate and publish the story -- this sounds to me like a weird, and somewhat wishful reading of the appendix to the Berne agreement on the compulsory translation right.

In any event, I'm not all that out-of-sorts about this (I wasn't to begin with, and less so now that I've made some peace with them). I'll let you know if they come through with the electronic text and post it once they do -- thanks so much for all the support on this, it was really cool to see everyone spring into action (and I had no idea that Boing Boing/I had so many Chinese-speaking/residing readers!). Link

Cory and Charlie Stross in Popular
Science

Cory and Charlie Stross in Popular
Science 07/23/2004 04:46 AM
The current ish of Popular Science (August 2004) is on stands now, with a great piece on Charlie Stross and me as science fiction writers who are doing good work on the Singularity (alas, the piece isn't online yet, but it's easy to find in shops). I'm really happy with how it came out, but wanted to give out one tiny bit of errata for the record: the article identifies me as a co-founder of boingboing.net -- although I'm a proud co-editor of BB, the founding was done by my pal Mark Frauenfelder and his wife Carla Sinclair. Link

Cory Doctorow: Microsoft Research DRM
Talk

Cory Doctorow: Microsoft Research DRM
Talk 06/19/2004 06:11 AM
Disinformation Jun 19 2004 10:12AM GMT
Grok Description matches for Cory reading tomorrow night at Borderlands Books
GrokA matches for Cory reading tomorrow night at Borderlands Books

Cory reading tomorrow night at Borderlands Books

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