Information Doesn't Want to Be Free

Not a review by any means, I don't have the time today. I've just finished listening to Cory Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want to Be Free audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton.

It's the first audiobook I've ever listened all the way through - I have Homeland as well, sorry Wil. After having done so I can say with authority than reading works better for me. I better retain stuff and I can easily go back and find the passages I want to refer to to better understand a point. Also reading is less anti-social. My brother is a great fan of audiobooks and listens to Iain Banks stories regularly, but then he drives to work in his car, on his own - I would say this was the perfect environment in which to listen. I don't drive, and even on the bus, tram or train, I find I need to keep interrupting Wil's voice and Cory's words to reply to someone or to hear an announcement, making it a less than satisfactory experience.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that the content companies seem to be metaphorically running around saying "Aaaargh, we're being attacked by bees!" and cutting down all the flowers so the bees die out rather than supporting the bees and being rewarded with honey. It's not a good enough metaphor and I shall ruminate on a better one over the Christmas break.

Thanks Cory for a brilliant book that has succeeded in making me very angry, and Wil for an excellent reading. I did find myself distracted on a few occasions by the musical stings and didn't really like them in here, but since I'm an audiobook neophyte, perhaps that's an aural punctuation I don't quite get yet.

I really hope (but unfortunately doubt) that your book is read/heard by some of the execs you mention Cory, and that some common sense will come into play.

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free is available from Cory's site for $15. I strongly urge you to check it out.

Imagine a world...

Where all the world's films and TV shows were available through a single outlet. Subtitled in different languages, even dubbed if you want that. Where gargantuan servers were not needed to store every single film or show. Where you didn't get Netflix's favourite phrase "Items related to X". Where you pay a single monthly fee to gain access to all this cultural richness (and the stupid stuff). Media from the very start of cinema up to modern-day blockbusters and ratings earners.

Best of all, where this wasn't illegal?

The music industry went through a huge turmoil over the last couple of decades confronted with the pervasiveness of the net and visual media is going through the same now as bandwidth increases dramatically (in the next few days, I'm upgrading to a 1Gbps download/300 Mbps upload fibre service that is cheaper than my 2Mbps/.2Mbps ADSL service was). BitTorrent is the bête noire of all media, but its brilliance is in how it uses everyone's power together to distribute everything.

It is a commonly-held truth that people who indulge in piracy are also some of the greatest purchasers of media at the same time. You might argue that they test the waters by downloading copiously and pick and choose what they want to support with their money. I myself may have downloaded the odd album or film, usually when it's not easily available in any other form or I've been in a hurry, but it has never prevented me from buying said film, TV show, CD or book.

Imagine if these media hoarders were rewarded in some manner by opening up their presumably immense storage to others to make everyone's downloads that bit faster? Where serious collectors of German Expressionism could make their passions available to a larger audience. Let's further imagine a scenario:

You pay a monthly €/$/£ 20 fee. You can download what you like, legally, for that money and the money gets distributed in some fashion to rights owners. If €/$/£ 20 seems too expensive, restrict it with a lower cost offer, say €/$/£ 10 but no HD, or €/$/£ 5 where you can only get three items per month.

For every byte you upload, because you are effectively part of a BitTorrent network, you get paid (somehow) €/$/£ 0.00000000001 (for every GiB you upload you earn €/$/£ 0.01). Rather than spending money trying to punish people you reward them for helping. Heck, the biggest hoarders with the biggest pipes might even turn a profit on the deal, but then if they do the service to all the other users gets that much better.

Stop the vicious circle and turn it into a virtuous one. Like Cory Doctorow says "Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today" (http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/). The Internet is a wonderful thing, let's make it work for us.

Piracy encouraged

Cory Doctorow posted on Twitter about Lauren Beukes' new book (The Shining Girls) and I went to buy immediately since I really enjoyed Zoo City.

Amazon only sells a Kindle version naturally, so I wanted to find an .epub version. A South African site (Kalahari.com) sells it, but won't sell it to me because I'm not in South Africa. Piracy encouraged again! I will buy the paperback, which will sit on my shelf unread, like all of Cory's books, but I'll try and find a dodgy epub version to read. I want to shove money at this. I want to buy. I don't want Kindle format (and even the epub is DRMed).

No wonder the global economy is in a slump when people can't spend their money on things they want...

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

Can I take a moment for a vital public service announcement? I absolutely insist you all read the book in the title of this message. It is nominally what is called a "Young Adult" book, being as its hero is sixteen, but don't let that put you off. I think Doctorow writes some great fiction that has become more and more assured and skilled as time has gone by (but even his earliest stuff is well worth reading), but this latest is a bit different, touching us lot particularly.

Now, Cory usually puts his books up on his website for free download (he says that piracy is better than obscurity) and he hasn't yet done so with Pirate Cinema (actually he has). I hesitate to do what I'm about to but I believe that he intends it to happen. I'm going to pirate his book and give it to you - it's that important. I bought the book as I have done with nearly all his earlier work and will buy Pirate Cinema when it comes out in paperback as usual. In fact I will buy three copies and give them to people (my version of a hail mary?). I would buy more, but in these benighted days I worry that I won't find readers for them (especially given that I am in France).

The book is set in England, Cory's adopted home, and talks about Trent who runs away from home in Bradford to the bright lights and big city of London since he's managed to get his family's internet connection cut because of piracy. The early chapters masterfully set the scene in a near future that is only too imaginable.

This is an ebook. Most people have a device on which to read them these days and if you don't I'm sorry but you do still have a computer on which you can read it. I know it will be less comfortable, but it will be worth it I promise. I have enclosed a link to a zip file
containing the book in four different formats: ePub, PDF, RTF and TXT. They contain the complete work in descending order of faithfulness with the original ePub format.

< Useless original link removed>

Please read it. I urge you, nay implore you to do so. I'm in the middle of a very serious work schedule right now and I have put asidethe time to write this email because I consider it important. Like theUSB keys with Lady de Winter 18 distributed in the book (it will makesense if you read), I want to get this out to as many people as possible and I'm starting with you guys, but that does not mean I'm stopping with you as well...

PS. The fact that this book has exceptionally not been made available on his site doesn't mean that the others have been withdrawn. Go to http://www.craphound.com and get (among others) For the Win about global MMORPG unions; Makers about building stuff; Little Brother about Big Brother and terrorism; Eastern Standard Tribe about living
out of your timezone; Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom about repurposing Disneyland...

This was a message I posted this morning to the movie mailing list I'm on. In a fit of conscience I forwarded to Cory who graciously replied with the correct link, which I shall now post:

http://craphound.com/pc/download/

Please read this book. It is very important.