Cory Doctorow speaks in Oslo
Cory Doctorow visited Oslo today to talk at the Norwegian Polytechnic Society. About 100 (?) people attended the speech, including Jon Lech Johansen, often called “DVD-Jon”.
As you may know, Cory is science fiction author, a Boingboing blogger, and European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He talked about the case which started up EFF, the Steve Jackson Games case.
Here are some of my “impressions”, the things that I found interesting and thoughtful.
During that case, police stated that e-mail was like conversation in a bar, while EFF stated that e-mail maybe is one of our most private ways of communicating.
Cory was happy (and got applause) with the fact that the Broadcast flag was struck down by US Court of Appeals.
The speech was about “The politics of openness”, so Cory talked briefly about how he lives what he preaches (not his words!), by putting all his books on the net for free the day they are published, in all kinds of formats, and with rights for people to translate them to other languages.
“Copyright is a policy for regulating technology”
Cory recommended “Copyright communications policy” by Tim Wu. A must read.
In the old days, the composers were the “music industry”. The performers were basically trained monkeys, just playing exactly what composers had written. Having a famous performer were as unthinkable as having a famous piano. Then “technology” made it possible to save music the way it was performed, and performers became famous. Which made composers like John Philip Sousa freak out, claiming our vocal cords would fall off, like tails fell off when we stopped being monkeys.
Same thing happened again when radio came: Performers were afraid they would lose everything, as people could hear radio for free. They wanted a radio that charged people for listening.
Luckily, a way to compensate all parts were made. I think Cory said composers were paid 2 cents a composition for being played on radio? Anyway, radio generated 1000 times more money for 1000 times more people, and generated 1000 times more creativity and art.
In the years from 1976 to 1984 the VCR was the hot thing to discuss. Jack Vilanti, former chairman of the MPAA, told a Congressional panel in 1982, “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Laughter.
NOK 10000
If you bought CDs for 10 000 Norwegian kroner 10 years ago, you can listen to them, make mp3s of them, back them up, make ring-tones from them, put them on your mobile/iPod/alarmclock etc (Cory said this much more elegant than I managed to write down!)
If you buy DVDs for the same amount, what can you do? Watch them. That’s it.
When Disney copied Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Will jr.” in 1928, to make Mickey Mouse “Steamboat Willie”, it was legal.
When Disney copied old folk fairytales collected by the Grimm brothers, to make “Snowwhite”, it was legal.
When Huckleberry Finn was published, a theatre play was up immediately, because all books at the time could be adapted to theatre – legally.
But you can’t take a photo of the Eiffel Tower and sell it anymore. It’s illegal. Apparently because then there will not be built any more Eiffel towers.
And DJ Danger Mouse couldn’t mix the Beatles “White album with Jay-Z’s “Black album”, making the highly acclaimed “Grey album”. That was illegal.
He also talked about Creative commons, geese with red ribbons (and then no ribbons), Charles Dickens being pirated until Mark Twain was, Canadians stealing US broadcasts – legally, harmonized copyright laws, WIPO (“a trade association pretending being a UN agency”), DRM (and how it’s NOT selling music), and the funny story about how the Russian state department warned Russian scientists going to USA, because in the US, scientists are put in jail for talking about the wrong type of maths.
The best way to keep a lock safe: Tell everybody how it works. Then, when someone finds out how to break it, patch it up again, and inform all the users what happened. Not telling how it works just leaves users in the dark.
The fact that ISP take down sites, when someone supposedly puts up copyrighted material, is a big problem. Why is it this way? Are car makers arrested for making cars used by bank robbers? Are restaurants owners arrested for having people talking about crime there?
Boingboing.net has about 150 000 unique readers every month. And close to 1 TB in traffic. Many ISPs can get you that kind of traffic for US$ 150 a month. Boingboing’s ISP has enough lawyers to not give after when someone wants to take down the site. Price tag: US$ 1 500.
Cory recommends “Collective licensing”. I think that means that one tries to figure out what percentage of the income each artist should get according to what percentage that artist is played on radio, tv etc. So if lots of people downloaded a track from the net, that artist would get better paid than artist not being downloaded.
Correct me if I misunderstood this!
Why remove Bit-torrent sites??? The only thing that happens, is that they go underground, where they are much more difficult to find. It’s like making an anti-resistant bacteria on purpose.
One person in the audience asked about Cory’s thoughts on the fact that copyright seem to expand every time the first Disney movies are about to loose their copyright. Cory answered that you can’t base your business on a 90 year business plan. That’s not a good way at all to run a business.
There were of course other things talked about, and Cory’s English language skills obviously are better than mine. I enjoyed his speech, and hope to see him back in Norway soon.
UPDATE: Lots of Norwegian bloggers have posts from the speech: Alf Kåre Lefdal, Jorunn Danielsen Newth, Børge, Håkon Styri and Erik Newth.
Gisle Hannemyr has an English post, with lots of pictures on Flickr too. Erik Newth also has uploaded pictures to Flickr.
And finally; Herman Robak recorded the whole thing, and has put up a mpeg file of it. It didn’t respond when I tried tonight.
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Nice entry. I really wanted to be there today. Lucky you!