Here’s an interview I did with the ITSM podcast, about information technology, IT policy, and corporate IT and its implications.
All About:
Podcast
My Podcast is a regular feed in which I read from one of my stories for a few minutes at least once a week, from whatever friend’s house, airport, hotel, conference, treaty negotiation or what-have-you that I’m currently at. Here’s the podcast feed.
Here’s a recording of a debate I participated in on Monday at Denmark’s Fagfestival (yes, really — Danish has weird English cognates) 2012, the largest gathering of journalists in the country. I debated Peter Schønning, a prominent Danish copyright lawyer, in an event hosted by Henrik Føhns.
I did an interview with The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, which they’ve published in both text and MP3 form. We talked about Pirate Cinema, Rapture of the Nerds, the Humble Ebook Bundle, the future of publishing, the Disney/Star Wars merger, and lots more:
Wired: Do you ever get letters from kids who have been inspired by your books to become hacker anarchists?
Doctorow: Yeah, all the time — at least to become hackers, and political activists. My first young-adult novel Little Brother had an afterword with a bibliography for kids who want to get involved in learning how security works, learning how computers work, learning how to program them, learning how to take them apart, learning how to solve their problems with technology as well as with politics. And the number of kids who have written to me and said that they became programmers after reading that, I couldn’t even count them. I’ve had similar responses to my second young-adult novel, For the Win, and I’ve also heard from kids who’ve read Pirate Cinema. In fact, we published an editorial by one of them on Boing Boing — an anonymous reader who makes her own movies out of Japanese anime, and who talked about what drives her and how the book resonated with her.
With Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow Grows His Young Hacker Army
I recently recorded an interview with the BBC’s Digital Human programme, which was recording an episode on death. It’s came out very well.
Here’s a podcast of my recent Guardian column, Automated calls, fraud and the banks: a mismatch made in hell:
The banks are now outsourcing their fraud prevention to computers that can make dozens of calls all at once, around the clock, fishing (or phishing) for someone who just happened to have made an unusual purchase and is thus willing to spill all his details down the phone to get it approved. Note that most of the categories of purchase that trigger false positives from fraud detection systems are also the sort of thing that customers are anxious to see go off without a hitch. The unusual and the urgent often travel together.
MoneyBox took up the question of robo-calls on 22 September, with a series of finance industry executives explaining their position on robo-call anti-fraud systems. As Money Box pointed out, customers don’t know what automated fraud prevention calls are supposed to sound like, or which questions are supposed to be asked. They missed that even if this were common knowledge, it would be trivial to make a homemade robo-caller that perfectly mimicked the calls, and set it loose to call around the clock, to many victims at once.
Santander’s statement was that the system allows it to “reach more customers, more quickly, all at the same time”. It didn’t mention that it’s a lot cheaper than paying humans to make those calls, of course. On the other hand, it invited its customers to opt out of the service. But a customer that doesn’t even know the service exists won’t opt out of it – and if a customer’s first experience with a robo-caller is with a fraudulent one, they won’t have had a chance to opt out until it’s too late.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes “Beer Jewelry” and “Odd Musical Furniture.” He often “meditates while reading cookbooks.”
I recently sat down with Thomas Gideon of the wonderful Command Line podcast, and talked about Rapture of the Nerds, Pirate Cinema, and the future of the Internet. It’s always a pleasure to be on Thomas’s show.
This weekend I appeared on the This Week in Tech Podcast, to talk about the tech news of the week, as well as Rapture of the Nerds, Pirate Cinema and Humble Ebook Bundle. The other guests on the show were Jason Hiner and Larry Magid, and Leo Laporte, as always, played host. It was a great time, and the audio and video is live.
Dan Patterson interviewed me for his podcast at New York Comic-Con. We talked about comics, network policy, and my new novel Pirate Cinema
Here’s a podcast of my recent Publishers Weekly column, Doubling Down on DRM:
I’ve just seen a letter sent to an author who has published books under Hachette’s imprints in some territories and with Tor Books and its sister companies in other territories (Tor is part of Macmillan). The letter, signed by Little, Brown’s U.K. CEO Ursula Mackenzie, explains to the author that Hachette has “acquired exclusive publication rights in our territories from you in good faith,” but warns that in other territories, Tor’s no-DRM policy “will make it difficult for the rights granted to us to be properly protected.” Hachette’s proposed solution: that the author insist Tor use DRM on these titles. “We look forward to hearing what action you propose taking.”
The letter also contains language that will apparently be included in future Hachette imprint contracts, language that would require authors to “ensure that any of his or her licensees of rights in territories not licensed under this agreement” will use DRM.
It’s hard to say what’s more shocking to me: the temerity of Hachette to attempt to dictate terms to its rivals on the use of anti-customer technology, or the evidence-free insistence that DRM has some nexus with improving the commercial fortunes of writers and their publishers. Let’s just say that Hachette has balls the size of Mars if it thinks it can dictate what other publishers do with titles in territories where it has no rights. take black American music’s rock-n-roll rhythms without permission, but DJ Danger Mouse can’t take the Beatles’ melodies from the White Album to make the illegal hiphop classic The Grey Album.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes “Beer Jewelry” and “Odd Musical Furniture.” He often “meditates while reading cookbooks.”
Here’s the audio from the chat Charlie Stross and I did with Mitch Wagner from Internet Evolution about our forthcoming book, Rapture of the Nerds.
