Cory Doctorow: Wait a second, you are doing crazy things to the people in my head!

So, If I infect your head with an imaginary person from my head, You should have some right to that person okay? I deliberately put a fake person in your head, You should have the right to tell the world what that fake person is doing in your head, just as much as I have the right to tell the world what that fake person is doing in mine. In fact if like, when people are done, those fake people don’t live on? Then, you haven’t really made them care about them as people, you haven’t really done your job in getting the person from your head into theirs. And so this is where I think fanfic comes from and I think this is where people who object to fanfic are coming from because like, “Wait a second, you are doing crazy things to the people in my head!”, and I think this is where the people who are writing fanfic are coming from, they say, “Wait a second, No. Those crazy people are in MY head, those people are in my head too!”

• Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow presents Pirate Cinema.
http://doctorow.onyour.tv/webcast?refresh=1

Cory Doctorow: So what do digital rights activists want, if not “free information?”

“So what do digital rights activists want, if not “free information?”

They want open access to the data and media produced at public expense, because this makes better science, better knowledge, and better culture – and because they already paid for it with their tax and licence fees.

They want to be able to quote, cite and reference earlier works because this is fundamental to all critical discourse.

They want to be able to build on earlier creative works in order to create new, original works because this is the basis of all creativity, and every work they wish to make fragmentary or inspirational use of was, in turn, compiled from the works that went before it.

They want to be able to use the network and their computers without mandatory surveillance and spyware installed under the rubric of “stopping piracy” because censorship and surveillance are themselves corrosive to free thought, intellectual curiosity and an open and fair society.

They want their networks to be free from greedy corporate tampering by telecom giants that wish to sell access to their customers to entertainment congloms, because when you pay for a network connection, you’re paying to have the bits you want delivered to you as fast as possible, even if the providers of those bits don’t want to bribe your ISP.

They want the freedom to build and use tools that allow for the sharing of information and the creation of communities because this is the key to all collaboration and collective action — even if some minority of users of these tools use them to take pop songs without paying.”

– Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: The internet has nothing to do with artists failing to make money

“For me, the answer is simple: if I give away my ebooks under a Creative Commons licence that allows non-commercial sharing, I’ll attract readers who buy hard copies. It’s worked for me – I’ve had books on the New York Times bestseller list for the past two years.

What should other artists do? Well, I’m not really bothered. The sad truth is that almost every artist who tries to earn money will fail. This has nothing to do with the internet, of course. Consider the remarkable statement from Alanis Morissette’s attorney at the Future of Music Conference: 97% of the artists signed to a major label before Napster earned $600 or less a year from it. And these were the lucky lotto winners, the tiny fraction of 1% who made it to a record deal. Almost every artist who sets out to earn a living from art won’t get there (for me, it took 19 years before I could afford to quit my day job), whether or not they give away their work, sign to a label, or stick it through every letterbox in Zone 1.”

• Cory Doctorow

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/oct/05/free-online-content-cory-doctorow

Cory Doctorow: a successful copyright system

“A successful copyright system is one that allows the widest diversity of creators to make the widest diversity of works that’s enjoyed by the widest diversity of audience.”

• Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: The unfettered access to human knowledge improves us and makes us better.

If you could reproduce hot lunches at will with no incremental cost, no one would characterize that as a disaster, except perhaps the delicatessen industry. But today, where human knowledge can be reproduced at no incremental cost, our first response is to see to it how we can make that stop?? Human knowledge has through history been the prime factor that drives the human condition, our ability to enjoy our lives. The unfettered access to human knowledge improves us and makes us better.

• Cory Doctorow

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people-blog/2007/singularity-or-dark-age/

Cory Doctorow: We should not forget that art and culture, same as any invention, is based on all the art and inventions which have been made before

“We should not forget that art and culture, same as any invention, is based on all the art and inventions which have been made before. No one can claim to bring up something entirely new. The songs we pay for, would not have text without society who built language, would not have certain instruments without all the people who led to their construction or certain styles, harmonics or melodies without the composers in renaissance or baroque who first brought it up. In the moment something is created, it has a debt to society. Society shares all this knowledge to the artists, so they can share their music and get donations from fans.
The problem in all this is the industry who tries to block platforms which allow artists to share and distribute their work directly. Fact is: The industry is obsolete. It must die, but it uses its money to corrupt and manipulate politics, (same as how they manipulated charts for decades) in order to prevent their necessary downfall. Once the industry is gone, there is no problem anymore for the artists.”

• Cory Doctorow

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2012/07/cory-doctorow-music-the-internets-original-sin/

The more copyable a media is, the easiest it is to socially evangelise it

“Copying is an inherently social activity”
“Copying between two people is social. When I make a copy for you, it carries with it a little bit of reputation capital, a little bit of recommendation, a little bit of “you might want to try this, it meant something to me”, but it can mean something more forceful than that.
It can mean something as forceful as what happened to the Secrets of Ya-ya Sisterhood where women who had read the book and had their lives transformed grabbed their friends by the collar and said “Read this now it changed my life!””.
“This is how media sells. This is how media spreads. The more copyable a media is, the easiest it is to socially evangelise it. And that means the internet is great news for creators and authors.“

• Cory Doctorow