Content, Cory Doctorow [free romance novels .TXT] 📗

CONTENT: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future

By Cory Doctorow, doctorow@craphound.com

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A word about this downloadable file:

I’ve been releasing my books online for free since my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, came out in 2003, and with every one of those books, I’ve included a little essay explaining why I do this sort of thing.

I was tempted to write another one of these essays for this collection, but then it hit me: this is a collection of essays that are largely concerned with exactly this subject.

You see, I don’t just write essays about copyright to serve as forewards to my books: I write them for magazine’s, newspapers, and websites — I write speeches on the subject for audiences of every description and in every nation. And finally, here, I’ve collected my favorites, the closest I’ve ever come to a Comprehensive Doctorow Manifesto.

So I’m going to skip the foreword this time around: the whole book is my explanation for why I’m giving it away for free online.

If you like this book and you want to thank me, here’s what I’d ask you to do, in order of preference:

* Buy a copy: http://craphound.com/content/buy

* Donate a copy to a school or library: http://craphound.com/content/donate

* Send the ebook to five friends and tell them why you liked it

* Convert the ebook to a new file-format (see the download page for more)

Now, on to the book!

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Copyright notice:

This entire work (with the exception of the introduction by John Perry Barlow) is copyright 2008 by Cory Doctorow and released under the terms of a Creative Commons US Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). Some Rights Reserved.

The introduction is copyright 2008 by John Perry Barlow and released under the terms of a Creative Commons US Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). Some Rights Reserved.

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Publication history and acknowledgments:

Introduction: 2008, John Perry Barlow

Microsoft Research DRM Talk (This talk was originally given to Microsoft’s Research Group and other interested parties from within the company at their Redmond offices on June 17, 2004.)

The DRM Sausage Factory (Originally published as “A Behind-The-Scenes Look At How DRM Becomes Law,” InformationWeek, July 11, 2007)

Happy Meal Toys versus Copyright: How America chose Hollywood and Wal-Mart, and why it’s doomed us, and how we might survive anyway (Originally published as “How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy,” InformationWeek, June 11, 2007)

Why Is Hollywood Making A Sequel To The Napster Wars? (Originally published in InformationWeek, August 14, 2007)

You DO Like Reading Off a Computer Screen (Originally published in Locus Magazine, March 2007)

How Do You Protect Artists? (Originally published in The Guardian as “Online censorship hurts us all,” Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007)

It’s the Information Economy, Stupid (Originally published in The Guardian as “Free data sharing is here to stay,” September 18, 2007)

Downloads Give Amazon Jungle Fever (Originally published in The Guardian, December 11, 2007)

What’s the Most Important Right Creators Have? (Originally published as “How Big Media’s Copyright Campaigns Threaten Internet Free Expression,” InformationWeek, November 5, 2007)

Giving it Away (Originally published on Forbes.com, December 2006)

Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet (Originally published in Locus Magazine, July 2006)

How Copyright Broke (Originally published in Locus Magazine, September, 2006)

In Praise of Fanfic (Originally published in Locus Magazine, May 2007)

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia (Self-published, 26 August 2001)

Amish for QWERTY (Originally published on the O’Reilly Network, 07/09/2003, http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/07/09/amish[underscore]qwerty.html)

Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books (Paper for the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, San Diego, February 12, 2004)

Free(konomic) E-books (Originally published in Locus Magazine, September 2007)

The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights (Originally published in Locus Magazine, July 2007)

When the Singularity is More Than a Literary Device: An Interview with Futurist-Inventor Ray Kurzweil (Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 2005)

Wikipedia: a genuine Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy — minus the editors (Originally published in The Anthology at the End of the Universe, April 2005)

Warhol is Turning in His Grave (Originally published in The Guardian, November 13, 2007)

The Future of Ignoring Things (Originally published on InformationWeek’s Internet Evolution, October 3, 2007)

Facebook’s Faceplant (Originally published as “How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook,” in InformationWeek, November 26, 2007)

The Future of Internet Immune Systems (Originally published on InformationWeek’s Internet Evolution, November 19, 2007)

All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites (Paper delivered at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, California, 16 March 2005)

READ CAREFULLY (Originally published as “Shrinkwrap Licenses: An Epidemic Of Lawsuits Waiting To Happen” in InformationWeek, February 3, 2007)

World of Democracycraft (Originally published as “Why Online Games Are Dictatorships,” InformationWeek, April 16, 2007)

Snitchtown (Originally published in Forbes.com, June 2007)

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Dedication:

For the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore

For the staff — past and present — of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

For the supporters of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Table of Contents:

1 Introduction by John Perry Barlow

2 Microsoft Research DRM talk

3 The DRM Sausage Factory

4 Happy Meal Toys versus Copyright: How America chose Hollywood and

Wal-Mart, and why it’s doomed us, and how we might survive anyway

5 Why Is Hollywood Making A Sequel To The Napster Wars?

6 You DO Like Reading Off a Computer Screen

7 How Do You Protect Artists?

8 It’s the Information Economy, Stupid

9 Downloads Give Amazon Jungle Fever

10 What’s the Most Important Right Creators Have?

11 Giving it Away

12 Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet

13 How Copyright Broke

14 In Praise of Fanfic

15 Metacrap: Putting the Torch to Seven Straw-Men of the Meta-Utopia

16 Amish for QWERTY

17 Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books

18 Free(konomic) E-books

19 The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights

20 When the Singularity is More Than a Literary Device: An Interview with Futurist-Inventor Ray Kurzweil

21 Wikipedia: a genuine Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy — minus the editors

22 Warhol is Turning in His Grave

23 The Future of Ignoring Things

24 Facebook’s Faceplant

25 The Future of Internet Immune Systems

26 All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites

27 READ CAREFULLY

28 World of Democracycraft

29 Snitchtown

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Introduction by John Perry Barlow

San Francisco - Seattle - Vancouver - San Francisco

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

“Content,” huh? Ha! Where’s the container?

Perhaps these words appear to you on the pages of a book, a physical object that might be said to have “contained” the thoughts of my friend and co-conspirator Cory Doctorow as they were transported in boxes and trucks all the way from his marvelous mind into yours. If that is so, I will concede that you might be encountering “content”. (Actually, if that’s the case, I’m delighted on Cory’s behalf, since that means that you have also paid him for these thoughts. We still know how to pay creators directly for the works they embed in stuff.)

But the chances are excellent that you’re reading these liquid words as bit-states of light on a computer screen, having taken advantage of his willingness to let you have them in that form for free. In such an instance, what “contains” them? Your hard disk? His? The Internet and all the servers and routers in whose caches the ghosts of their passage might still remain? Your mind? Cory’s?

To me, it doesn’t matter. Even if you’re reading this from a book, I’m still not convinced that what you have in your hands is its container, or that, even if we agreed on that point, that a little ink in the shape of, say, the visual pattern you’re trained to interpret as meaning “a little ink” in whatever font the publisher chooses, is not, as Magritte would remind us, the same thing as a little ink, even though it is.

Meaning is the issue. If you couldn’t read English, this whole book would obviously contain nothing as far as you were concerned. Given that Cory is really cool and interesting, you might be motivated to learn English so that you could read this book, but even then it wouldn’t be a container so much as a conduit.

The real “container” would be process of thought that began when I compressed my notion of what is meant by the word “ink” - which, when it comes to the substances that can be used to make marks on paper, is rather more variable than you might think - and would kind of end when you decompressed it in your own mind as whatever you think it is.

I know this is getting a bit discursive, but I do have a point. Let me just make it so we can move on.

I believe, as I’ve stated before, that information is simultaneously a relationship, an action, and an area of shared mind. What it isn’t is a noun.

Information is not a thing. It isn’t an object. It isn’t something that, when you sell it or have it stolen, ceases to remain in your possession. It doesn’t have a market value that can be objectively determined. It is not, for example, much like a 2004 Ducati ST4S motorcycle, for which I’m presently in the market, and which seems - despite variabilities based on, I must admit, informationally-based conditions like mileage and whether it’s been dropped - to have a value that is pretty consistent among the specimens I can find for a sale on the Web.

Such economic clarity could not be established for anything “in” this book, which you either obtained for free or for whatever price the publisher eventually puts on it. If it’s a book you’re reading from, then presumably Cory will get paid some percentage of whatever you, or the person who gave it to you, paid for it.

But I won’t. I’m not getting paid to write this forward, neither in royalties nor upfront. I am, however, getting some intangible value, as one generally does whenever he does a favor for a friend. For me, the value being retrieved from going to the trouble of writing these words is not so different from the value you retrieve from reading them. We are both mining a deeply intangible “good,” which lies in interacting with The Mind of Cory Doctorow. I mention this because it demonstrates the immeasurable role of relationship as the driving force in an information economy.

But neither am I creating content at the moment nor are you “consuming” it (since, unlike a hamburger, these words will remain after you’re done with them, and, also unlike a hamburger you won’t subsequently, wellŠ never mind.) Unlike real content, like the stuff in a shipping container, these words have neither grams nor liters by which one might measure their value. Unlike gasoline, ten bucks worth of this stuff will get some people a lot further than others, depending on their interest and my eloquence, neither of which can be quantified.

It’s this simple: the new meaning of the word “content,” is plain wrong. In fact, it is intentionally wrong. It’s a usage that only arose when the institutions that had fattened on their ability to bottle and distribute the genius of human expression began to realize that their containers were melting away, along with their reason to be in business. They started calling it content at exactly the