Make Magazine’s just reprinted my column, “Moral Suasion,” in its online edition. It’s a discussion of the politics of cloud computing, including denial-of-service attacks against cloud providers who cave to government pressure:

I grew up in the antiwar movement and participated in my first sit-in when I was 12. Sit-ins are a sort of denial of service, but that’s not why they work. What they do is convey the message: “I am willing to put myself in harm’s way for my beliefs. I am willing to risk arrest and jail. This matters.” This may not be convincing for people who strongly disagree with you, but it makes an impression on people who haven’t been paying attention. Discovering that your neighbors are willing to be harmed, arrested, imprisoned, or even killed for their beliefs is a striking thing.

And that’s a crucial difference between a DDoS and a sit-in: participants in a sit-in expect to get arrested. Participants in a DDoS do everything they can to avoid getting caught. If you want to draw a metaphor, DDoSers are like the animal rights activists who fill a lab’s locks with super glue. This is effective at shutting down your opponent for a good while, but it’s a lot less likely to draw sympathy from the public, who can dismiss it as vandalism.

Moral Suasion

(Image: Sit-in “Giornata degli studenti”, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from retestudentimassa’s photostream)

Anastasia Salter gave a presentation on my novel For the Win at the Children’s Literature 2011 conference; I haven’t seen the presentation, but her notes (embedded above) are fascinating!

Last week, New York’s McNally-Jackson Books started printing and carrying my DIY short story collection, With a Little Help using their on-site print-on-demand machine. Now, the most excellent Harvard Bookstore has begun to do the same, retailing the book in its Cambridge, Mass store.

My latest Guardian column, “Networks are not always revolutionary,” argues that networks are necessary, but not sufficient, for many disruptive commercial, cultural and social phenomena, and that this character has led many people to either overstate or dismiss the role and potential of networked technology in current events:

“For most artists,” as the famous Tim O’Reilly aphorism has it “the problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.” To me, this is inarguably true and self-evident – the staying power of this nugget has more to do with its admirable brevity and clarity than its novelty.

And yet, there are many who believe that O’Reilly is mistaken: they point to artists who are well-known, but who still have problems. There are YouTube video-creators who’ve racked up millions of views; bloggers with millions of readers, visual artists whose work has been appropriated and spread all around the world, such as the photographer Noam Galai, whose screaming self-portrait has found its way into everything from stencil graffiti to corporate logos, all without permission or payment. These artists, say the sceptics, have overcome obscurity, and yet they have yet to find a way to convert their fame to income.

But O’Reilly doesn’t say, “Attain fame and you will attain fortune” – he merely says that for most artists, fame itself is out of their grasp.

Networks are not always revolutionary

I’m coming through Pittsburgh tomorrow for a private event and I’m going to drop in to the CMU bookstore from 2-5 for a signing. This is all very last minute and there hasn’t been much public notice, so please let your friends know!

I’ve teamed up with McNally-Jackson, a most excellent indie bookstore in Soho, NYC, to print and sell my DIY short story collection With a Little Help right in the store, using an Espresso book-machine. You can order them here, or buy them in-store. It’s similar to the deal I’ve struck with The University of Melbourne’s Custom Book Centre for sales and distribution in Australia in New Zealand. I’m really excited to see how this works out, as there are plenty of amazing stores in the USA with Espresso machines with whom I’d be delighted to make similar arrangements.