I sat down with BookBaby‘s Brian Felsen last month at the London Book Fair for a long interview about business, publishing, authorship and copyright. Brian’s just posted the first installment of several that comprise the whole discussion.
Here’s part six of my reading of my story-in-progress, Knights of the Rainbow Table, a story commissioned by Intel’s Chief Futurist, Brian David Johnson. Brian oversees Intel’s Tomorrow project, which uses science fiction to spark conversations about product design and use among Intel’s engineers, and he was kind enough to invite me to write a story of my choosing for the project. Intel gets first dibs on putting it online, but that’s it — I retain full creative control and the right to re-use it as I see fit.
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.
While I’m in New York for Personal Democracy Forum, I’ll be participating in a group signing/launch for Welcome to Bordertown, the shared-world fantasy anthology of stories about Bordertown, where faerie and the human world meet and magic and technology are equally unreliable. In attendance will be Holly Black, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Annette Curtis Klause, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. If you can’t make it, you can pre-order a signed copy for delivery or pickup.
Where: Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, (212) 989-3270
When: June 9, 6-8PM
Make has posted on of my columns from the print edition online; “Walled Gardens vs. Makers” is a look at the way that modern, Internet-era making is built on knowledge sharing and collaboration, and how walled gardens get in the way:
Because, of course, today I have millions of hacks and tips and tricks and ideas at my fingertips, thanks to the internet and the tools that run on top of it. When I invent or discover something, I immediately put it on the net. And when I find myself in a corner of the world that is not to my liking, I Google up some hack that someone else has put on the net and apply it or adapt it to my needs.
Making, in short, is not about making. Making is about sharing. The reason we can make so much today is because the basic knowledge, skills, and tools to make anything and do anything are already on the ground, forming a loam in which our inspiration can germinate.
Here’s part five of my reading of my story-in-progress, Knights of the Rainbow Table, a story commissioned by Intel’s Chief Futurist, Brian David Johnson. Brian oversees Intel’s Tomorrow project, which uses science fiction to spark conversations about product design and use among Intel’s engineers, and he was kind enough to invite me to write a story of my choosing for the project. Intel gets first dibs on putting it online, but that’s it — I retain full creative control and the right to re-use it as I see fit.
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.
My latest Guardian column, “Google’s YouTube policy for Android users is copyright extremism,” examines the theory of copyright behind Google’s announcement that it would bar people who unlocked their phones from using the new YouTube video store. This is the latest example of a new kind of copyright emerging in the 21st century, “configuration-right,” in which someone who makes a creative work gets a veto over how all the devices that can play or display that work must be configured. It’s a novel — and dangerous — proposition, akin to record companies telling which furniture you were allowed to move into the same room as your stereo, and to require that you close your window when the record was playing, lest your neighbors get some tunes for free.
Which brings us back to where we started: unless you’re running a very specific version of Google’s software on your phone or tablet, you can’t “rent” movies on YouTube. Google – the vendor – and the studios – the rights holders – are using copyright to control something much more profound than mere copying. In this version of copyright, making a movie gives you the right to specify what kind of device can play the movie back, and how that device must be configured.
This is as extreme as copyright gets, really. Book publishers have never told you which rooms you could read in, or what light bulbs you were allowed to use, or whether you could rebind the book or take it abroad with you. Broadcasters have never vetoed the design of radios.
The extension of copyright to “configuration right” is a profound shift in the history of technology and culture. There are lots of reasons to want to a non-stock OS on your Android phone; some versions allow you to assert fine-grained privacy controls, others add features useful to people with disabilities; others make it simpler to use cheap/free voice-over-IP for long-distance calls. There are at least as many reasons to want to redecorate and reconfigure your phone, your computer or your tablet as there are reasons to rearrange your kitchen or redecorate your bedroom.
Google’s YouTube policy for Android users is copyright extremism
Earlier this year, I interviewed IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan at The Story conference. Matt Locke, who put on the event, has just posted an MP3 of the chat.
Here’s a short video I recorded for The Guardian called “Every Pirate Wants to Be an Admiral,” in which I lay out the case for a less-restrictive copyright as better for culture.
Cory Doctorow on copyright and piracy: ‘Every pirate wants to be an admiral’
Eleventh graders at Oakland International High School read my novel Little Brother and produced a fantastic school reading kit with chapter summaries, student discussions, student-made comic strips, and further topics for classroom discussion. It’s a tremendous piece of work, and I’m grateful to the young people in Sailaja Suresh’s class.
