Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 55

How free software stayed free

I did an interview with the Changelog podcast (MP3) about my upcoming talk at the O’Reilly Open Source conference in London, explaining how it is that the free and open web became so closed and unfree, but free and open software stayed so very free, and came to dominate the software landscape.

“Desperate” is often the opposite of “open”: it’s when we’re in trouble that we’re most likely to compromise on our principles. How, then, did open become the default for so many tools and applicat...

If DRM is so great, why won’t anyone warn you when you’re buying it?

Last month, I filed comments with the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of Electronic Frontier Foundation, 22 of EFF’s supporters, and a diverse coalition of rightsholders, public interest groups, and retailers, documenting the ways that ordinary Americans come to harm when they buy products without realizing that these goods have been encumbered with DRM, and asking the FTC to investigate fair labeling for products that come with sneaky technological shackles.

In my latest Guardian colu...

The privacy wars have been a disaster and they’re about to get a LOT worse

[image error]

In my latest Locus column, The Privacy Wars Are About to Get A Whole Lot Worse, I describe the history of the privacy wars to date, and the way that the fiction of “notice and consent” has provided cover for a reckless, deadly form of viral surveillance capitalism.

As bad as things have been, they’re about to get much, much worse: the burgeoning realm of the “Internet of Things” is filled with surveillance devices that you can’t even pretend to give your consent to.

It’s possible that w...

See you at Burning Man!

I’m about to switch off my email until September 5 and drive to Black Rock City for 10 days of incinerating the dude.

If you’re going this year, drop by Liminal Labs — with whom I am immensely privileged to camp — and have some cold brew and say hi! We’re at 5&F this year (look for the giant steel gate, the flaming chandelier, and the flying car).

I’m also giving my annual talk at Palenque Norte/Soft Landing which is at 8:00 & Botticelli this year. It’s called “When the better web we’re...

Talking about the pro-security, anti-DRM business model on the O’Reilly Radar Podcast

On this just-released episode of the O’Reilly Radar podcast (MP3), I talk about EFF’s lawsuit against the US government to invalidate Section 1201 of the DMCA, which will make it legal to break DRM in order to fix security vulnerabilities in the Internet of Things devices that, today, are almost invariable insecure, and are also designed to be as privacy-invading as possible (to create “monetizable” data-streams) — a brutal combo.

Auditing IoT products is a liability for security researc...

Podcast: Live from HOPE on Radio Statler

[image error]

While I was in NYC to keynote the 11th Hackers on Planet Earth convention, I sat down with the Radio Statler folks and explained what I was going to talk about, as well as bantering with the hosts about the relative merits of DEFCON and HOPE and the secret to managing cons and marriages (MP3).

Podcast: How we’ll kill all the DRM in the world, forever

I’m keynoting the O’Reilly Security Conference in New York in Oct/Nov, so I stopped by the O’Reilly Security Podcast (MP3) to explain EFF’s Apollo 1201 project, which aims to kill all the DRM in the world within a decade.

A couple things changed in the last decade. The first is that the kinds of technologies that have access controls for copyrighted works have gone from these narrow slices (consoles and DVD players) to everything (the car in your driveway). If it has an operating system...

My Kansas City World Science Fiction Convention schedule

[image error]

I’m flying into Kansas City for part of Midamericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, and while there, I’ll be on panels, give a reading, and sit down with fans for a kaffeeklatsch.

Here’s my schedule:

Thursday:

Is Cyberpunk Still a Thing?
Thursday 12:00 – 13:00, 3501H (Kansas City Convention Center)
Cyberpunk hit with a big splash, but as personal computers became more prevalent, smaller, and portable, the genre seems to have faded. Or has it? Our panelists take a renewed...

EFF is suing the US government to invalidate the DMCA’s DRM provisions

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit that challenges the Constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, the “Digital Rights Management” provision of the law, a notoriously overbroad law that bans activities that bypass or weaken copyright access-control systems, including reconfiguring software-enabled devices (making sure your IoT light-socket will accept third-party lightbulbs; tapping into diagnostic info in your car or tractor to allow an independent party to repai...

My interview on Utah Public Radio’s “Access Utah”

Science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist Cory Doctorow joins us for Tuesday’s AU. In a recent column, Doctorow says that “all the data collected in giant databases today will breach someday, and when it does, it will ruin peoples’ lives. They will have their houses stolen from under them by identity thieves who forge their deeds (this is already happening); they will end up with criminal records because identity thieves will use their personal information to commit crimes (th...