Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

The End of Trust is the first-ever nonfiction issue of McSweeney’s, co-edited by McSweeney’s editors and the staff of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; on December 11, we held a sold-out launch event in San Francisco with EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, science fiction writer and EFF alumna Annalee Newitz, and me. Lisa Rein recorded the event for Mondo 2000, producing a partial transcript, an audio recording (MP3) and a video. Cindy Cohn: “The first reason is that there’s a fundamental constitutional question at the centerpiece regarding how we are going to interact with our technology, that can make all the other questions easier. The second reason is that all of the direct actions that you might want to take in order to exercise your self-governance and have your voice heard, requires some kind of legal protection, right? And when we talk about “direct action,” the reason that you can do direct action and not end up with a very long jail sentence is because, in the United States, compared to other places around the world, is because the Constitution says you can. All the hackers who EFF represents, who tell us all the things about the security problems and the surveillance – if we don’t get the law right, they’re not going to be able to do that. So, I often say that about EFF that we’re kind of the plumbers of freedom. We’re trying to get the obstacles out of the way, so that all the other things you can do to exercise your rights in the digital world can really flow freely. And so, I think for both of those reasons, EFF was grounded in the law. But also, at this point, we build technology. We have an action center. We support a lot of people that do a lot of direct action. We support a lot of people that need to protect themselves, that do direct action, and all sorts of other things. So although we are firmly grounded in the law, and that’s my background, the organization has really trying to grown to build a lot of different tools in our toolbox to deal with these problems. Cindy Cohn & Cory Doctorow & Annalee Newitz Discuss “The End of Trust” [Lisa Rein/Mondo 2000]

An annual tradition (MP3)! Poesy is now 10 — nearly 11! — and this year, she’s decided to offer us a detailed makeup tutorial, with some bonus horseback riding advice. There’s even a musical number! MP3

Here’s my reading (MP3) of my Locus column, “What is the Internet For?” (which asks, “Is the internet a revolutionary technology?”) and my short story for the fiftieth anniversary of Reason Magazine, Sole and Despotic Dominion, which builds on my 2015 Guardian column, If Dishwashers Were iPhones. MP3

When I was in Berlin last month, I stopped into the offices of Netzpolitik (previously), the outstanding German digital rights activist group, where I recorded an interview for their podcast (MP3), talking about science fiction, utopianism, dystopianism, how we can change the world, and why my kid has so many names.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act — tech’s stupidest law — turns 20 this year; I chatted with Molly Wood on Marketplace Tech about the law’s history and how dismally little we’ve learned from it, repeating and even magnifying its mistakes today. (MP3)

It’s been two years since I last sat down with Jason Klamm for his Comedy on Vinyl podcast (we were discussing Allan Sherman’s My Son, The Nut); we were past due for a rematch. Jason asked me to come on one more time (MP3) to discuss the Disneyland Little Long Playing Record The Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion, which features the voice talents of a young Ron Howard (!!). As always, we ranged far and wide, discussing narrative and non-narrative artforms, the history of Disney and Disneyland, and my own personal relationship with the Haunted Mansion.

Here’s my reading (MP3) of Today, Europe Lost The Internet. Now, We Fight Back, written for EFF Deeplinks on the morning of the EU’s catastrophic decision to vote in the new Copyright Directive with all its worst clauses intact. MP3

At this year’s World Science Fiction, Tina Nazerian from EdSurge interviewed me (MP3) for a podcast about the future of educational technology, open access, surveillance in schools, and educational freedom.

While at the World Science Fiction Convention, I sat down with Matt Ward from the FringeFM podcast for an interview (MP3) about the future of the internet, and how Shoshanna Zuboff’s notion of surveillance capitalism connects up with mass inequality, the GDPR, the upcoming EU copyright rules, and the future of writing and science fiction.

Talking with the B&N Podcast at San Diego Comic-Con is becoming an annual tradition for me; this year’s interview (MP3) with Joel Cunningham was a fun tour through my adult backlist, starting with my debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and working our way through all six books, which Tor just reissued with amazing, matching covers.