I’m headed to Seattle this weekend to be one of the guests of honor at Norwescon, along with (among others), Vernor Vinge. If you’re in Seattle and you can make it, I’d love to say hi! Here’s my programming schedule for the event:

Thursday, 7:00 p.m., Opening Ceremonies
William Sadorus (M), Dr. John G. Cramer, Cory Doctorow, David Hartwell, John Jude Palencar, Vernor Vinge

Thursday, 8:00– 10:00 p.m., Artist/Pro Guest Reception
Dr. John G. Cramer, Cory Doctorow, David Hartwell, John Jude Palencar, Vernor Vinge

Friday, 11:00 a.m., Computer Misconceptions in Science Fiction Literature and Film
Ted Butler (M), Cory Doctorow, Brian David Johnson, David Shoemaker

Friday, 2:00 p.m., Intellectual Property and Creative Commons
Eileen Gunn (M), Ben Dobyns, Cory Doctorow, Elton Elliott

Friday, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m., Autograph Session #1

Friday, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m., Lifetime Dinner
Dr. John G. Cramer, Cory Doctorow, David Hartwell, John Jude Palencar, Vernor Vinge

Friday, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m., PK Dick Awards
William Sadorus (M), Carlos Cortes, Dr. John G. Cramer, Cory Doctorow, Daryl Gregory, David Hartwell, Ian McDonald, John Jude Palencar, Vernor Vinge

Saturday, 10:00 a.m., Writing For Young Adults
Steven Barnes (M), Alma Alexander, Cory Doctorow, Lisa Mantchev

Saturday, 1:30 p.m., Autograph Session #2

Saturday, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m., Keysigning Reception

Saturday, 6:00 p.m., Surveillance in the 21st Century – is it Good or Bad?
Cat Rambo (M), Cory Doctorow, Eileen Gunn, Ian McDonald

Sunday, Noon, Law and the Virtual World
Cory Doctorow, Andrea Howe, Burt Webb

Sunday, 5:00 p.m., Closing Ceremonies
William Sadorus (M), Dr. John G. Cramer, Cory Doctorow, David Hartwell, Tracy Knoedler, John Jude Palencar, Vernor Vinge

My latest Guardian column, “Does the BPI want MPs to debate the digital economy bill properly?” addresses the British Phonographic Institute’s weird, vehement silence on Parliament’s debate on its pet legislation, the dread Digital Economy Bill. Vehement silence? Oh yes.

Last week, the BPI sent me a vehement denial after I published a report that its spokesman had said that there was no need for further debate over the 24,000+ word bill, claiming he’d said no such thing (Parliament hasn’t debated the bill at all, and at present it seems like it’ll be rammed through with a mere afternoon’s debate). But when I asked whether the BPI believed the debate to date had been sufficient, they just ignored the question.

One long-serving MP told me that under normal circumstances, “a bill of this size would probably have a one-day second reading debate and then about 60 to 80 hours in committee, where it would be scrutinised line by line, clause by clause”. However, under the current accelerated schedule, “it will receive one day for second reading and at the very most, two hours in a committee of the whole house. The government will programme the debate so huge chunks of the bill might not receive any scrutiny at all…”

The BPI’s member companies stand to gain enormous power and wealth from this Bill – including the power to decide which British families are allowed to participate in digital society. They’ve written sections of it. They produce a weekly, in-depth status report on the bill’s progress (albeit these reports are somewhat loony: the leaked one suggested that the MI5 were behind the opposition!).

Are we to believe that they have no opinion on whether this bill has seen enough parliamentary debate?

Does the BPI want MPs to debate the digital economy bill properly?

Earlier this month, the UK publisher Bloomsbury (best known for having struck gold with the Harry Potter books, though also a real leader on the use of Creative Commons in publishing) invited me to give a talk to its staff over the lunch hour at its London office. I gave a talk about the theory and practice of book pricing in the age of the Internet, talking about the way that strategies that are focused on maximizing revenue from existing customers can cost you access to new markets. I got into the economics of distribution channels, DRM, lock-in, and talked about what I see as the top priorities for publishers looking to continue with their success in the Internet age. Bloomsbury video’ed the proceedings and have put it up on Vimeo. It’s licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, so go nuts!

One erratum: I was dead wrong about the German book market: prices there aren’t fixed by the state (I was confusing the German and Norwegian book markets), and Holtzbrinck made most of its fortune from news services, not trade book publishing.

Here’s me at yesterday’s Digital Economy Bill protest outside of Parliament in London, bellowing at the top of my lungs!

I’m absolutely tickled to announce that my novel Makers is up for the 2010 Prometheus Award, given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society. My last novel, Little Brother won in 2009, and it was an incredible honor. Once again, I’m sharing the ballot with some tremendous books and authors, including Liberating Atlantis by Harry Turtledove and The Unincorporated Man by Dani and Eytan Kollin.

The Open Rights Group is looking for British individuals and organisations to sign onto its comments to the UK TV regulator, who is on the verge of giving into blackmail from the BBC and an offshore DRM cartel, crippling TV in Britain forever.

The BBC has asked Ofcom, the UK telcoms regulator, to give it permission to put DRM on digital TV signals. Anyone who wants to make a receiver that can unscramble the DRM will have to sign up with an offshore consortium called DTLA, agreeing to a whole raft of DRM requirements, including a ban on making TV receivers and recorders that users can modify (which amounts to a ban on free/open TV equipment like MythTV, as well as free/open drivers for laptop TV cards).

This is a bad idea for lots of reasons: it’s our TV, paid for with the license fee. The BBC claims that some unspecified rightsholders will withhold some unspecified programming from TV if they don’t get this, but so far, no one’s come forward to specifically say, “I won’t release the following programmes,” so we’re just left with this kind of vague, nonspecific threat.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the BBC hasn’t identified anyone who has promised to make programmes available if the DRM is added — so we’re being asked to turn regulatory control over the public service broadcaster to a corporate cartel without even being promised anything in return!

Worst of all: the BBC’s DRM scrambles a block of data that includes the assistive information used by visually impaired and hearing impaired people to watch TV, meaning that it will be harder than ever to deliver low-cost, robust technologies for these audiences. Fancy using blind and deaf people as human shields in the copyright wars! Now that’s public service!

The rightsholder companies made the same threats in 2003 when the USA was considering adding DRM to its digital TV, and none of them followed through. The idea that broadcasters will simply stop airing programmes, or that new suppliers won’t show up to sell shows if old ones boycott the system, is just ludicrous. These businesses have shareholders who want to see a return on their investment, not a public tantrum.

ORG has written a thorough response to the Ofcom consultation on BBC DRM, and now we’re looking for individuals and organisations to sign on to it. We’ve already got sign-on from the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Somethin’ Else, and many other consumer rights groups, tech groups, and entertainment companies are considering signing up.

We’re open to signons from any license payer or UK resident, but we’re especially interested in:

• Programmers, especially those who work on digital TV technologies
• Video creators, especially BBC suppliers
• MythTV users and users of tuner cards with open/free drivers
• People with visual and hearing disabilities
• Teachers and tinkerers who play with receiver technology
• People who travel within the EU and would have to buy a second TV or card specifically to receive DRM broadcasts from the BBC
• Anyone else who feels an especially strong connection to the public service value of open platforms

Stop BBC “Digital Rights Management” from disabling your HD TV