Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 63
March 12, 2015
A conversation about privacy and trust in open education
For Open Education Week, Jonathan Worth convened a conversation about privacy and trust in open education called Speaking Openly in which educators and scholars recorded a series of videos responding to one another’s thoughts on the subject.
The takes are extremely varied, and come from Audrey Waters, Nishant Shah, Ulrich Boser, Dan Gillmor, and me, and went through two rounds. It’s an exciting way to conduct a dialogue between people who probably couldn’t all get together, and it’s desig...
March 3, 2015
Audiobook of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Blackstone has adapted my 2005 urban fantasy novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town for audiobook, narrated by Bronson Pinchot, who does a stunning job.
It’s available as a DRM-free audiobook at all the usual places, including the DRM-free audiobook store Downpour. However, Itunes and Audible refuse to carry this — or any of my other titles — because I won’t allow them to put DRM on them.
Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur in contemporary Toronto who has devoted himself to fixing up a...
February 27, 2015
Internet-fired elections and the politics of business as usual
I’ve got a new Guardian column, Internet-era politics means safe seats are a thing of the past, which analyzes the trajectory of Internet-fuelled election campaigning since Howard Dean, and takes hope in the launch of I’ll Vote Green If You Do.
The Obama campaigns went further. Building on the Dean campaign, two successive Obama campaigns raised millions in small-money donations, creating purpose-built Facebook-like social networks and using them to recruit highly connected supporters to work...
February 6, 2015
No future for you: cultural institutions can’t afford to play along with pointy-headed bosses
My new Guardian column, Go digital by all means, but don't bring the venture capitalists in to do it, is an open letter to the poor bastards who run public institutions, asking them to hold firm on delivering public value and not falling into the trap of running public services "like a business."
When you let regulators and politicians bully you into excluding the public from their own institutions, alienating the public that you need on your side to stave off the next round of cuts -- and th...
February 4, 2015
DRM-free audiobook of Eastern Standard Tribe
Blackstone audio has produced a professional, DRM-free audiobook of my 2003 novel EST, a novel about jet-lag, conspiracies, management consultants, crypto-contracts and P2P that William Gibson called "Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar -- a hard combination to beat (or, these days, to find)"
Warren Ellis called it "just far enough ahead of the game to give you that authentic chill of the future, and close enough to home for us to know that he’s talking about where we live as well as wher...
February 1, 2015
2014’s best science fiction and fantasy
Locus magazine has published its annual recommended
I was delighted and honored to find that my stories "Petard" (from Twelve Tomorrows) and "The Man Who Sold the Moon" (from Hieroglyph) (excerpt) made the cut (both have also been selected for several of this year's Year's Best anthos, for which I am extremely grateful!).
For me, the publication of the Locus List always marks the day when I fill in my Hugo nominations ballot, using it to jostle my memory and figure out which works I want to pu...
January 27, 2015
Overclocked is now a DRM-free audiobook
My multi-award-winning short story collection Overclocked is now a DRM-free audiobook, courtesy of Downpour.com.
And no, it’s not on Audible, because they refuse to carry my books unless I let them put DRM on them.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live through a bioweapon attack or to have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? In Cory Doctorow’s collection of novellas, he wields his formidable experience in technology and computing to give us mind-bending sci-fi tales th...
January 23, 2015
How to fix copyright in two easy steps (and one hard one)
My new Locus column, A New Deal for Copyright, summarizes the argument in my book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free, and proposes a set of policy changes we could make that would help artists make money in the Internet age while decoupling copyright from Internet surveillance and censorship.
There are two small policy interventions that would make a huge difference to the balance of commercial power in the arts, while safeguarding human rights and civil liberties.
1. Reform DRM law.
It should...
Consumerist on Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free
Consumerist's Kate Cox has turned in a long, excellent, in-depth review of my book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free, really nailing the book's thesis. Namely, that extremist copyright laws don't just mess up artists, but actually endanger all our privacy, freedom and whole digital lives.
Doctorow draws two bright lines connecting copyright law to other major issues: government surveillance, as shared by Edward Snowden; censorship by private companies; and the necessity of free expression to...
January 16, 2015
My talk on the Internet of Things, wealth disparity, surveillance, evidence-based policy and the future of the world
Here's the audio from last night's talk on the Internet of Things at Central European University in Budapest! It was recorded by the Mindenki Joga Radio Show.
