My review of Cory Doctorow's Melbourne talk

Cory Doctorow spoke to a packed house at ACMI in Melbourne tonight on the evils of DRM. He was erudite, eloquent and sardonic and didn't let us down. I went out for drinks with a few fellow geeks afterwards and could tell that Cory's talk made a mark, especially on the folks who hadn't heard, before tonight, of the evils of Sony's root kit or DVD Bluray. 

The talk seemed to be entitled "Technology Giveth and Technology Taketh Away". I took copious notes on my Pocket PC, which I would share with you here, except about two-thirds of the way through the talk my trusty Pocket PC decided, once again, to hard reset itself, and I of course lost everything. Good to see that Apple aren't the only company that make consumer electronic devices which suck.

Fortunately, I noticed a guy sitting in front of me was recording the talk on his PDA (something I didn't even think to do... how long have I been podcasting?) and I flipped him by business card and asked him to please flip me a copy of the recording.

Here's some key points from Cory's talk that I can recall off the top of my head...

• when Marconi et al invented radio and the crazy "free" radio business model (which he compared to the craziest kind of dot com snake oil model ever) started to take hold, all of the vaudeville performers who made their living out of performing music to live audiences said "how dare you mess with my business model?" and cried foul. The radio folks said "tough titties" (I'm paraphrasing here) and lots of vaudevillians went broke. Fast forward to 2006 - technology is eradicating the business models of the companies that arose during that period and they are now saying "how dare you mess with my business model?" - technology giveth and technology taketh away
• Cory's novels, which he provides for free on the net under Creative Commons on the day they hit the stores, have been downloaded over 650,000 times. But he made the point that an author's biggest enemy isn't piracy - it is obscurity. He says that when most people don't buy a copy his book in a store it isn't because someone had given them a free copy. It's because they have never heard of him.
• Talking about China and copyright, he made the point that the USA, in the early days after kicking out the British, didn't observe British copyrights either. He said they didn't care that Charles Dickens' work was being given away in New York until Mark Twain's work was being given away in London. The point being that the USA only started to care about copyright from other countries when they became a net exporter of copyright. He believes the same thing will hold true with China.
• He had a bunch of points about how to tell if your business model is ready for the internet era. If your model requires criminalizing all of your customers - then your model isn't ready (eg the RIAA). If your model requires stopping science (eg laws preventing people from distributing DRM hacks), then your model isn't ready. Did you know that if you broke up all of the lawsuits that the RIAA has brought against "pirates" in the US into individual cases (instead of class actions against indiscriminate groups of people), then they would account for 1 in 50 lawsuits last year???
• And the basic point, of course, is that DRM is stupid, expensive, and wrong.

Here's a point to think about - sharing stories and songs from person to person isn't called theft or piracy - it's called 'culture'. 

Comments

[Phillip Molly Malone]

On the Lawsuits stat, is that the figure when ALL Class action lawsuits are expanded?
Molly

[Rob Irwin]

"Here's a point to think about - sharing stories and songs from person to person isn't called theft or piracy - it's called 'culture'."

That's just pure hippy drivel. Yes, you can rewind to a time when stories and songs were shared as part of a common culture. But, you know what? In each of those retellings, it was being performed again. So I can come over there, Cam, and sing you a Radiohead song and teach you the words and all that stuff -- and the fabric of the time/space continuum won't change a bit. But if I copy the copywritten song for you, it's theft, as far as the law's concerned. Trying to wrap piracy in a culture flag, of all things, to try and legitimise it is just lame. Is this the kind of stuff Cory was spouting off? What a waste of time.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

I agree with Rob. And if your happy to Share your stuff, why waste your time with CC? Just make it open slather for everything! Or is it a case that you want Copyright and protection to the point that suites you? To me the owner of the copyright should be able to decide the level that best suites them and we should respect that.

Molly

[william dutton]

if we want to make it simple for everyone, why not send them $1 straight to the person who made it, not a corperation that will not give it to the person unless said person owns the corperation and using it as their mutual fund and also to limit sueing of that person by having cash tied up in a corperation legal defence.

[Delicate Genius]

Molly,

"if your happy to Share your stuff, why waste your time with CC?" - That's what Creative Commons is all about dude. Can I suggest you learn a bit about it before you criticise it? http://creativecommons.org for a little enlightenment.

Copyright is implied and CC is a way for copyright owners to give permissions up front without the need to seek it later.

Rob,

I think you miss both Cameron and Cory’s point (unless of course I've missed the point :-)). Culture is being retarded by technology. Not the other way around. Cameron's not saying that piracy is culture. He's saying culture is paying the price because the things that develop culture are increasingly being considered piracy.

Lawrence Lesing articulates it better than I could in this video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6122403781064290619

-dg

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Dg, I understand CC. It is saying that you can do certain things with the work but not others. i.e. Believe (with out looking) that TPN uses mainly Share Alike No comerical. A basic understanding/discription is that I could use it as loing as I am not making money and I give credit. What if I don't feel like giving credit or I want to make money off it? Should I just use it and say screw you (the same way people do with the big label music companys and TV and movies, etc)?

I am sure if I got Cory's books and sold it off as my he would sue me! Maybe I am wrong. Perhaps I should try it.

Molly

[Rob Irwin]

But, dg, that's not technology -- that's the law we're talking about.

So is culture being retarded by technology? I don't think so. Is culture retarded by laws? Sure, I think you could argue that instead.

See, I didn't say I agree with the law as it stands, or the way in which music is sold/profits distributed to artists, etc, but I do rally against a POV that tries to pull this hippy shit thing about how we should pirate stuff and not feel bad because we are somehow maintaining a cultural tradition.

[Cameron Reilly]

Rob gets it DG, he just likes to argue the case for the negative. He thinks he's still back in debate class. Of couse MY point (I cannot speak for Cory) is that copyright laws are designed to stop us doing what we've done for thousands of years and what underlies human culture - freely sharing stories and singing songs.

Just because laws exist doesn't mean they are RIGHT. Prohibition was a law once. Keeping slaves was enshrined in law once. Gandhi fought the salt tax through satyagraha, the resistance of tyranny through mass civil non-violent disobedience.

This is our satyagraha.

[Rob Irwin]

"Just because laws exist doesn't mean they are RIGHT."

Er... and I think the comment I made previously was jiving pretty close to that. As I said, "I (don't) agree with the law as it stands, or the way in which music is sold/profits distributed to artists, etc..."

It just seems silly to start pulling out the old, "When my family sat around in caves, we drew on the walls, so whaddaya mean I can't graffiti my neigbours new fence..." line of thought when it comes to music.

Debate class my foot. The debating team was for pussies who didn't like sport.

[Renai LeMay]

Sounds like he talked about the same stuff in Melbourne as he did in Sydney.

I caught the Sydney session last night … the buzz in the room was fantastic. I really enjoyed the talk, but felt that perhaps Cory was a little too idealistic for my taste. He still blew my mind on a few issues though.

Cheers,

Renai LeMay
News Journalist
ZDNet Australia

[Cameron Reilly]

Are you writing a column on the talk / DRM, Renai? In what aspects did you think he was too idealistic?

[Rob Irwin]

Hehehehehe, I'm sitting back and quietly saying nothing... for a change... :)