News

New column: Why is Ofcom ready to allow BBC DRM?

In my latest Guardian column, "Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?" I look at how lamentably credulous both the BBC and its UK regulator, Ofcom, have been in accepting US media' giants threats to boycott the Beeb if it doesn't add digital rights management to its broadcasts. The BBC is publicly funded, and it is supposed to be acting in the public interest: but crippling British TV sets in response for demands from offshore media barons is no way to do this -- and the threats the studios have made are wildly improbable. When the content companies lost their bid to add DRM to American TV, they made exactly the same threats, and then promptly caved and went on allowing their material to be broadcast without any technical restrictions.

How they rattled their sabers and promised a boycott of HD that would destroy America's chances for an analogue switchoff. For example, the MPAA's CTO, Fritz Attaway, said that "high-value content will migrate away" from telly without DRM.

Viacom added: "[i]f a broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by Summer 2003, Viacom's CBS Television Network will not provide any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season."

One by one, the big entertainment companies – and sporting giants like the baseball and American football leagues – promised that without the Broadcast Flag, they would take their balls and go home.

So what happened? Did they make good on their threats? Did they go to their shareholders and explain that the reason they weren't broadcasting anything this year is because the government wouldn't let them control TVs?

No. They broadcast. They continue to broadcast today, with no DRM.

They were full of it. They did not make good on their threats. They didn't boycott.

They caved.

Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?

New Podcast, “Sensored,” a short-short story about ubicomp

"Sensored" is a short-short story commissioned by the UK Open University's computer science department for use in My digital life (TU100), its ubiquitous computing course. It's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. I'm pleased with how it worked out, and I'm honoured to be a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the OU's comp sci department.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.

MP3 Link

I’m a Forbes Web Celeb!

Hey, this is cool! I made Forbes's 25 Web Celebs list again -- I'm in the top 10!

Sane copyright doesn’t treat all copying as the same

My latest Guardian column, "Copyright, companies, individuals and news: the rules of the road," is a start on a coherent framework for a copyright system that recognizes the difference between commercial use and non-commercial use, incidental copying and unfair copying, and many of the other exceptions that copyright needs to keep from devolving into a stupid caricature of itself:

We're trying to retrofit the rules that governed multi-stage rocket ships (huge publishing conglomerates) to cover the activity of pedestrians (people who post quotes from books on their personal blogs). And the pedestrians aren't buying it: they hear that they need a law degree to safely quote from their favourite TV show and they assume that the system is irredeemably broken and not worth attending to at all.

It's an impossible situation. As an author, I depend on there being some rules of the road when I negotiate with my publishers, and it's in every commercial creator's interest to try to find a moderate, coherent copyright rule that avoid dumb absolutes in favour of nuance and fairness. I don't pretend that I have all the answers, but here's some of the principles that I think a good copyright system must embrace if is to succeed. Many of these principles are already in various nations' copyright rules as part of "fair dealing" or "fair use," but these user-rights in copyright are complex and difficult to navigate and vary from country to country.

Copyright, companies, individuals and news: the rules of the road

(Image: Breach of Copyright - The Independent, from PeteZab's photostream)

Copper Robot podcast interview about Makers

Mitch Wagner from the Second Life interview show Copper Robot has written up my interview there a couple weeks ago, in a Tor.com post called "A cheery conversation with Cory Doctorow about the upside of economic collapse." He's also included the audio, which I'm folding into my podcast feed.

A cheery conversation with Cory Doctorow about the upside of economic collapse

MP3 link

3D-printed version of the cover illo from Makers

Joris Peels from Shapeways liked the cover on the HarperCollins UK edition of my novel Makers, which features a variety of objects depicted in the novel as plastic model-parts attached to a sprue. Shapeways being a custom 3D printing shop, Joris whipped up an incredibly detailed 3D version of the cover illustration, which arrived in today's post. Color me grateful, delighted and gobsmacked. Thanks, Joris!

Update: Joris adds, "The design was modeled by Shapeways Community member Dmitry Kobzar; He spent 13 hours and 7 minutes making it. He will be thrilled that you're happy with it. The reason I asked Dmitry to model it was so we could make Makers come to life just like the people in your book do."

We're going to release the model files under a Creative Commons license. Watch this space!

Shapeways 3D printed version of the UK Makers cover

Makers tile game: the final, 9×9 edition

Tor.com's just posted the final iteration of the little rotating tile-game based on the Creative Commons-licensed illustrations that accompanied the serialization of my novel Makers. The 9x9 grid is truly a thing of awesome beauty.

Makers Tile Game, final 9x9 iteration now live

Coming to Iowa in Nov, Seattle in Apr

I'm to be the guest of honor at ICON 35: A Steam Powered Convention of the Future, to be held November 5-7, 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Marriott. This is a great, venerable regional con and I'm really looking forward to seeing some of Iowa! Hope to run into you there. And for those of you on the west coast, a reminder that I'll be a special guest at Norwescon in Seattle, April 1-4, along with Vernor Vinge and many fine other writers, artists, and fans.

My essay collection Content, free in Italian

The Italian publisher Apogeo commissioned a professional Italian translation of my Creative Commons-licensed essay collection Content and released their edition as a free, noncommercial download!

Content:
Selezione di saggi sulla tecnologia, la creatività, il copyright

(Grazie, Fabio!)

Close enough for rock ‘n’ roll: how the Internet makes the cheap, dirty and experimental possible

My latest Locus column, "Close Enough for Rock 'n' Roll," discusses the way that the net makes it possible to do something almost as good as its offline equivalent for a fraction of the cost, and how that changes everything:

In other words, rock 'n' roll is cheap, experimental and fluid, and devotes most of its energy into the production of music. Orchestral music is expensive, formal and majestic, but tithes a large portion of its effort to coordination and overheads and maintenance.

If the Internet has a motif, it is rock 'n' roll's Protestant Reformation thrashing against the orchestral One Church. Rock 'n' roll gets lots of wee kirks built in every hill and dale in which parishioners can find religion in their own ways; choral music erects majestic cathedrals that humble and amaze, but take three generations of laborers to build.

The interesting bit isn't what it costs to replicate some big, pre-Internet business or project.

The interesting bit is what it costs to do something half as well as some big, pre-Internet business or project.

Cory Doctorow: Close Enough for Rock 'n' Roll

(Image: Rock-n-Roll Adventure Kids, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Invisible Hour's photostream)

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