For my Guardian column today, I took the LibDem Lords to task for introducing legislation that would ban web-lockers because these services allow for copyright infringement. I won't argue that copyright infringement takes place on services like Google Docs and YouSendIt, but the reason that these services are great for piracy is that they're great for privacy: the same feature that lets me use YouSendIt to send a family member a private video of my kid in the bath is the feature that lets a copyright violator to share a pirated movie. And you can't get rid of the copyright violations without eliminating our ability to privately share large files for legitimate reasons.
And separate from that, there's the infrastructural cost of establishing a Great Firewall of Britain in order to block access to web lockers. Developing a system whereby parts of the net can be shut off for all of Britain creates the possibility that someone will use the system to shut off the wrong part of the net. I'm not just talking about the danger of a hijacker breaking into the system to shut down or redirect traffic to legitimate sites (say, Microsoft Security Centre or the BBC), but the attractive nuisance presented by such a system. Once you create the facility to shut off parts of the internet that are implicated in civil disputes, how long will it be before people who've alleged a libel or are worried about a trade secret being not so secret are lobbying to have this turned to their aid?
Which isn't to say that this will actually stop infringement. File sharers have already demonstrated their ability to use the perfectly legal, widespread proxy services abroad to circumvent network blocks - ask any 14-year-old whose school network is censored by blocking software and I guarantee you'll get an education in how to evade this kind of thing. Which is great news if you're a pirate, but why should sound engineers, doting grandparents, and solicitors have to learn how to evade the Great Firewall in order to conduct their legitimate business?
My latest Locus magazine column, "Making Smarter Dumb Mistakes About the Future," is about the ways that corporate futurism goes astray, imagining futures that make the boss happy which never come to pass. It's based on the magnificent and wondrously wrong "Carousel of Progress" that Walt Disney creates for GE's pavilion at the 1964 NYC World's Fair, an updated version of which lives at Walt Disney World. I love that thing to bits. I wish it would fit on my desk, I'd put it there like the old poets used to keep a skull by their elbows, to remind them of their hubris and frailty.
Also, if I had one on my desk, I could stop dragging my family onto it. My wife has written a new chorous to the themesong (which goes, "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day"): "There's a great big hairy Cory Doctorow, sitting in the front row every day."
When confronted with a new technology and asked to predict its application, it's tempting to look for existing, unsolved problems to which the technology might apply. For example, in a notorious early ad for personal computing, Honeywell depicted a satisfied, modish hausfrau cheerfully setting the dip-switches on her kitchen's PC in order to recall recipes. It's easy to follow their thinking: Computers are used by giant companies to store and manipulate files in the workplace. What files do housewives have to store and manipulate? Recipes! This is the "horseless carriage" fallacy: tomorrow's world will be like today, but moreso. Faster transport will get us to the same places, but faster. Faster communications will let us talk to the same people, but better.
So it's natural to think that HD television will be twice as unifying as old, standard-def sets (in fact, one of the big selling points for HD is that it will allow a small percentage of the household, usually Dad, to watch sports matches with his friends, while the rest of the family waits it out somewhere else).
I'm speaking at the next Ignite London, on Mar 2. It's a free event; other speakers include Russell Davies, talking about Newspaper Club, and 16 others presenting on topics as varied as the Hacker/Maker Revolution, The History of Colour and The Journey of a Metal Jew. Lots of other Ignites in the UK: Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool; and all over the world as part of Global Ignite Week.
My latest Guardian column, "Ducks, Nazis and Disney: well, that's one way to get a TV transition," tells the unlikely story of how a duck based on a rehabilitated Nazi rocket-scientist helped create the American color TV transition in the sixties:
There was one source of ready-made colour material that could have gone out over the airwaves: Hollywood had been shooting feature films and accompanying short subjects in colour for decades and had amassed a prodigious back-catalogue of material that might have jumpstarted the colour TV transition.
There was another problem, though: the studios hated TV, feared it, and would like to have seen it dead and dusted. It was the competition.
Until Walt Disney decided to build Disneyland, that is. The Walt Disney Company came through the second world war as a publicly listed firm, and Walt spent the next decade chafing against shareholder control and squabbling about spending with his brother Roy, the adult in their partnership. When Roy refused to open the company coffers to him for the $17m he needed to embark on a mad scheme called Disneyland, the company instead raised millions by opening their vaults to ABC, a broadcaster.
On Feb 27, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony is giving a concert based on sf/f films, video-games, and books, which sounds awesome. And I'l honored that the prof who organized it, Kevin Collins, cited my last couple of novels as inspiration for the theme.
“I think that it’s fair to say that this program was especially inspired by (Doctorow’s) “Makers” and “Little Brother,” Collins said. “I find myself fascinated by his descriptions of the contemporary popular sub-cultures, and the creative culture of modification and personalization that has developed around new technologies.”
The concert will begin with the Symphonic Band performing excerpts from “Symphony No. 1, Lord of the Rings,” by Johan Demeij. The work is based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, not the more recent Peter Jackson film trilogy. Those selections will be followed by “New Moon,” Alexandre Desplat’s score from the popular movie Twilight New Moon.
The combined Wind Symphony/Symphonic Band will turn next to a suite from the Batman film, The Dark Knight, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.
Following an intermission will be “Howl’s Moving Castle,” a symphonic fantasy by Joe Hisaishi created for the popular children’s anime classic.
The evening will close with “Video Games Live Suite,” an arrangement by Ralph Ford of six musical selections from video games: “One Winged Angel” from Final Fantasy VII; “Myst III Main Theme” from Exile; “Bounty Hunter Theme” from Advent Rising; “Halo Theme” from Halo; “Coronation and Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV; and “Kingdom Hearts.”
