Eastern Standard Tribe

Boing Boing contributor, EFF outreach director, and San Francisco-based science fiction writer Cory Doctorow's second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, is out, for sale as a paper book as well as available for free download in various formats under a Creative Commons license. The book's blog also contains a massive comment thread debate about file sharing, this free download marketing strategy, and the history of intellectual property law. Early on in the debate, Cory observes that, historically, new technologies have repeatedly infringed on then-understood copyright law, and that it is our concept of copyright that has always changed to accomodate the technology and its widespread use, rather than vice versa:

First of all, to call file-sharers looters is, IMO, a non-starter. There are 70 million Americans engaged in file-sharing today, violating a copyright law that hasn't kept pace with technology (which is the norm -- people had to pirate sheet music to make piano rolls, phonographs to make radio broadcasts, braodcasts to make cable TV, and cable TV to make VHS recording -- each an activity that was eventually legalized by changing copyright instead of outlawing a popular new technology). No author is going to turn those downloaders into customers by calling them thieves. By contrast, the author who figures out how to capitalize on that activity will find himself sitting pretty: some Vaudeville artists sued Marconi for inventing the infringing radio, they ended up flipping burgers; other performers embraced radio and ended up rich and famous.

I couldn't agree more.

I greatly enjoyed Cory's first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and am looking forward to reading his new one.

Comments

[Tvindy]

Copyright law is just out of control. The latest example I have come across is that libraries are very sensitive about people duplicating or photographing pages in medieval manuscripts, because it infringes on their copyright.

[mg]

Bwahahahaa! Thanks, that made my day.