Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

I’m in the latest episode of Imaginary Worlds, “Imagining the Internet” (MP3), talking about the future as a contestable place that we can’t predict, but that we can influence. We were promised flying cars and we got Twitter instead. That’s the common complaint against sci-fi authors. But some writers did imagine the telecommunications that changed our world for better or worse. Cory Doctorow, Ada Palmer, Jo Walton and Arizona State University professor Ed Finn look at the cyberpunks and their predecessors. And artist Paul St George talks about why he’s fascinated by a Skype-like machine from the Victorian era.

I’m a huge fan of the fantastically rude improv/current affairs/high fantasy podcast Hello From the Magic Tavern, I’ve enjoyed it ever since I binge-listened to the first season halfway through. Last month, I dropped into the Cards Against Humanity studios where the podcast is recorded while in Chicago on my book tour, where I sat in on a session (MP3) where I played Sigint, the Five-Eyed Spider, a whistleblowing ex-spy for the Dark Lord. I had an amazing time: I’m no improver, but the Magic Tavern-dwellers were so much fun, it was really a dream come true! Season 2, Ep 11 – Surveillance Spider (w/ Cory Doctorow) [Hello From the Magic Tavern]

Last week I sat down with Mike Masnick, the crusading technology journalist who coined the “Streisand Effect” and runs the fantastic site Techdirt, and we had a good, chewy discussion (MP3) about my new novel Walkaway; he’s just posted it to the Techdirt podcast. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

The National Endowment for the Arts podcast recorded a great, wide-ranging interview with me (MP3) about my novel Walkaway and a variety of subjects, from copyright reform to arts funding to the future of the arts and technology.

Here’s Wil Wheaton reading “Communist Party,” the opening chapter of “Walkaway,” my first novel for adults since 2009’s “Makers.” Wil is joined on the independently produced audiobook by Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Amanda Palmer (The Dresden Dolls), Mirron Willis, Gabrielle de Cuir, Lisa Renee Pitts and Justine Eyre. It was directed by Gabrielle de Cuir for Skyboat Media and mastered by John Taylor Williams for Wryneck Studios. You can buy the 15-hour DRM-free audiobook for $24.95 at my shop, or wherever DRM-free audiobooks are sold.

My novel Walkaway came out today and I sat down yesterday with the Author Stories Podcast to talk about writing, publishing, and, of course, the novel.

In the latest episode of Reply All, a fantastic tech podcast, the hosts and producers discuss the situation with DRM, the future of the web, and the W3C — a piece I’ve been working on them with for a year now. The issue is a complicated and eye-glazingly technical one, and they do a genuinely excellent job presenting the story. Inevitably, there’s some nuance lost in the translation, and so here’s a bit more, for people who are interested. The story talks about DRM as an anti-piracy technology. I think that’s just wrong, though DRM advocates walk a confusing line on this question. They freely admit that DRM can be broken by skilled attackers, and that dishonest people can just access versions of movies or songs or whatever that the DRM-breakers have stripped the DRM off of (the Reply All host starts off by describing how he hits all kinds of problems with DRM on movies he pays for, leading him to download easy-to-find cracked versions). So if DRM isn’t anti-piracy, what is it? DRM isn’t really a technology at all, it’s a law. Specifically, it’s section 1201 of the US DMCA (and its international equivalents). Under this law, breaking DRM is a crime with serious consequences (5 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for a first offense), even if you’re doing something that would otherwise be legal. This lets companies treat their commercial strategies as legal obligations: Netflix doesn’t have the legal right to stop you from recording a show to watch later, but they can add DRM that makes it impossible to do so without falling afoul of DMCA. This is the key: DRM makes it possible for companies to ban all unauthorized conduct, even when we’re talking about using your own property in legal ways. This intrudes on your life in three ways: 1. It lets companies sue and threaten security researchers who find defects in products 2. It lets companies sue and threaten accessibility workers who adapt technology for use by disabled people 3. It lets companies sue and threaten competitors who want to let you do more with your property — get it repaired by independent technicians, buy third-party parts and consumables, or use it in ways that the manufacturer just doesn’t like. How do we know that companies only want DRM because they want to abuse this law, and not because they want to fight piracy? Because they told us so. At the W3C, we proposed a compromise: companies who participate at W3C would be allowed to use it to make DRM, but would have to promise not to invoke the DMCA in these ways that have nothing to do with piracy. So far, nearly 50 W3C members — everyone from Ethereum to Brave to the Royal National Institute for Bind People to Lawrence Berkeley National Labs — have endorsed this, and all the DRM-supporting members have rejected it. In effect, these members are saying, “We understand that DRM isn’t very useful for stopping piracy, but that law that lets us sue people who aren’t breaking copyright law? Don’t take that away!” The Director of the W3C, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, wrote recently about why he supports DRM standardization, an odd step that it hard to understand, really: the leaders of the DRM standardization committee at the W3C have asked Berners-Lee to consult with his members to ask whether they want to see this DRM standard published. Instead, he appears to be telling us what decision he plans on coming to, regardless of how that consultation goes. #90 Matt Lieber Goes To Dinner [Reply All/Gimlet]

Last month, Melbourne’s Deakin University published Car Wars, a short story I wrote to inspire thinking and discussion about the engineering ethics questions in self-driving car design, moving beyond the trite and largely irrelevant trolley problem. Shortly after, I went into Skyboat Media’s studio and recorded an audio edition of the story, which the Deakin folks mastered with visuals and SFX to produce a smashing video. I’ve extracted just the audio as an MP3 for your mobile listening/podcast pleasure, as well.

Kirby Ferguson, who created the remarkable Everything is a Remix series, has a new podcast hosted by the Recreate Coalition called Copy This and he hosted me on the debut episode (MP3) where we talked about copying, creativity, artists, and the future of the internet (as you might expect!). Are you one of the many Star Wars fans eagerly awaiting the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story later this month? As you watch – and rewatch – the trailer, take a break to tune into Re:Create’s new Copy This podcast to learn about copyright and the role it’s played in the success of the fan-favorite series. As part of our ongoing work to elevate the discussion around copyright issues, the role copyright plays in our lives, and the need for balanced laws, Re:Create today launched Copy This hosted by writer, director and remixer Kirby Ferguson. The monthly podcast will bring to listeners conversations with some of the leading authors, policy minds, legal experts, and members of the creative community to take on the important questions and topics driving the copyright debate today. New Re:Create Podcast Shows What Star Wars Can Teach Us About Copyright [Recreate]

I was interviewed for the IEEE-USA Insight Podcast last summer in New Orleans, during their Future Leaders Summit, where I was privileged to give the keynote (MP3)