Smári McCarthy, a high-school teacher in Iceland, has been teaching a course unit on civil liberties and technological literacy based around my novel Little Brother. He’s launched a new Google Group for the kids in his class (and other classes around the world) to continue the discussion — what an awesome idea!

At the end of the last class yesterday the idea came up to form a
mailing list for young people who’re interested in digital freedoms,
computer security and so on, and one of the students suggested that we
call the list “Watching Back”. The list is watchingback@googlegroups.com
and almost all the kids who took the course are on it.

It would be great if people running similar courses could get their
students involved on the list, and that teachers and other people who
know something about the subject hang around and help guide the
discussion as mentors.

There’s a lot to discuss. A running theme through the course was the
importance of the power of young people to influence the world. I read
from the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in the last class,
because it is somewhat prophetic of what is going on:

“You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a
world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you
entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are
too cowardly to confront yourselves.”

Throughout the network young people are being empowered to change the
world, they’re figuring out the beauty of the hacker culture and the
fight for freedom. In a world where big brother is watching with
increasing scrutiny it is a big relief to know that at least the
children are watching back.

Watching Back

My latest Locus column, “Why I Copyfight,” was published a couple weeks back while I was on honeymoon and made quite a stir. It’s intended as a concise answer to the question, “Why should we care about the copyright wars, anyway?”

The Internet is a system for efficiently making copies between computers. Whereas a conversation in your kitchen involves mere perturbations of air by noise, the same conversation on the net involves making thousands of copies. Every time you press a key, the keypress is copied several times on your computer, then copied into your modem, then copied onto a series of routers, thence (often) to a server, which may make hundreds of copies both ephemeral and long-term, and then to the other party(ies) to the conversation, where dozens more copies might be made.

Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you’re not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you’ve violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement.

There’s a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture.

Culture’s old. It’s older than copyright.

Why I Copyfight

My novel Little Brother has just come out in the UK, a month ahead of schedule (Waterstone’s, the book-store chain, wanted it as a featured title, but their slot was in October, not November). This is fabulous news, of course, but it does mean that I’m not around to do signings and events right away (I got married on Sunday night and am now on my honeymoon — this was written in advance and automatically posted!). Still, I wanted to make sure that there were signed copies available right away for collector/fans who didn’t want to have to choose between getting a copy now and waiting for a month to get a signed one.

So last week, before leaving for the wedding, I popped into the HarperCollins offices in London and signed a stack of 500 copies of Little Brother that are now on sale through Play.com. It’s only while supplies last, natch, so act now!

Little Brother UK edition signed

Last August, I travelled to Springfield, Mass for 3PiCon, a science fiction convention where I was co-guest of honor with Randall “XKCD” Munroe. We did some fun programming items together, but the best was the last day’s event, a panel called “My Day at Work.” In honor of Randall’s comics, I attended in red cape and goggles, natch, and we had a rollicking time. Karl Wagner caught it on video (the audio’s a little poor, but you can hear it), and it’s been a hoot to re-live it this morning.

3Pi-Con – My Day At Work – Cory Doctorow & Randall Munroe

(Thanks, Karl!)