doctorow

Cory Doctorow, geek culture icon (Q&A)

"For the Win," the latest young-adult novel by science-fiction author, journalist, and copyright activist Cory Doctorow, hit the shelves Tuesday. The book is about the drama surrounding the unionization of virtual world "gold farmers," and is based on his hit short story, "Anda's Game."

Doctorow, who has held policy positions at both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons, is also an editor of the influential technology culture blog Boing Boing. Add his spot on the Wired magazine masthead and there are probably few, if any, people with more geek culture cred.

From his home in England, the Canadian-born Doctorow, a Hugo Award nominee, is one of the most prolific writers going, constantly turning out blog posts, magazine articles, novels, and everything in between. And he travels more in a year than most people will in a lifetime.

His Boing Boing posts can cover issues from the fact that there are now at least 13 open-source hardware companies making $1 million or more annually, to anything related to Net neutrality, to the current battle over the U.S. Federal Communications Committee's decision to give Hollywood permission to activate the so-called "Selective Output Control" technologies in consumers' set-top boxes.

Doctorow recently sat down for a "45 Minutes on IM" interview and discussed a range of topics such as a new-style approach to print-on-demand to gold farming, NAFTA, and quite a bit more.

Q: Welcome to the third installment of "45 Minutes on IM." I wanted to start by saying I love how your official bio has a one-sentence version, a one-paragraph version, and a much longer one. How did you decide to break it out like that? Doctorow: It was based on the requests I got from press and such--my publicist, magazines, Web sites, etc.--they'd all request one of the three. I found myself trimming the long bio to fit the other two lengths over and over again, so I just made a template that included all three. I try to make a template out of any text I type more than once. Though sometimes it takes me three or four reps before I go, 'Duh, make a template stupid!' I have a grand plan to put together a wiki-editable FAQ of all the questions I get asked in e-mail someday.

In the long version of your bio, you talk about the "audacious experiment in print-on-demand publishing" for your next book. What does that mean?… Read more

Boing Boing launches game blog Offworld

Boing Boing, famous for its sassy, culture-centric approach to tech blogging, has launched a game site called Offworld.

For years, Boing Boing was one of the most popular blogs around, and with the rare exception of a guest writer or two, it was written entirely by a group of four accomplished co-editors.

If you were interested in the culture of technology, there was a pretty good chance that Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, David Pescovitz, and Mark Frauenfelder were your heroes. Even as other blog networks, such as Gawker Media and Weblogs, sprouted up, Boing Boing stuck to its original, successful … Read more

Music industry's "suicide note"

Cory Doctorow writes far better op-ed pieces than fiction, and this one in The Guardian is a beautiful eulogy for the music industry. The music industry has struck a Faustian pact with ISPs to monitor copyright infringements, violating privacy and probably doing itself no favors with the public or its shareholders.

What it needs to do is simply work out an all-you-can-eat license for the ISPs that they could pass on to their customers. I'd happily have $10 or more added to my monthly cable Internet bill so that I can freely download songs. I currently buy them "by the drink" on iTunes, but a blanket license would be easier.

It would also return control to the music labels, control that they've ceded to Apple.

Cory writes:

Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 704: Monster in Blue Jeans

I have never had so much fun reading a legal response than I did the note from the head of Blue Jeans Cables to Monster Cable. See the episode for the full story. We also determine that politicians across the world are nuts, and I'm not good math. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 704

Comcast to spearhead creation of P2P Bill of Rights http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080415-comcast-to-spearhead-creation-of-p2p-bill-of-rights.html

Defiant Psystar back selling Leopard computers http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9919432-37.html

So exactly who or what is Psystar? We dig a little http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/15/ so_exactly_who_or_what_is_psystar_we_dig_a_little.html… Read more

SFWA's Spider-Man steps down

Last Friday, not long after I posted my comments about the controversy associated with the appointment of Dr. Andrew Burt as chairman of the Copyright Committee at SFWA (the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America), Dr. Burt stepped down. He was replaced by Russell Davis, a member of SFWA's board and a former chairman of SFWA's Electronic Piracy Committee.

The statement by SFWA president Michael Capobianco announcing the change, as well as a statement from Davis explaining his plans for the committee, has been posted on LiveJournal.

It sounds like Davis will be effective in this position, … Read more

The Spider-Man of the sci-fi writing world

I was a big Spider-Man fan when I was a kid. I could never understand why poor Spidey was persecuted by J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle. I was especially mystified by how easily Jameson could get the police to pursue Spider-Man despite all the obvious good he was doing.

I'd like to think that anyone familiar with the Spider-Man stories--and who isn't, considering that the three recent movies brought in $2.5 billion at the box office plus untold additional revenue from the DVD releases--would appreciate the irony of Peter Parker's position. He does … Read more

Boing Boing gets a semi-extreme makeover

When I saw Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow speak at a publishing conference in January, he made an offhand remark about how the "directory of wonderful things," one of the most popular blogs on the Web, occasionally came under fire for not being a "true blog" because it didn't allow readers to comment on entries. Comments on Boing Boing, which started as a zine and then went online in 1995, had been turned off several years ago in the wake of trolling problems.

Well, Boing Boing critics can consider themselves moot on that point--the blog … Read more