News
Registration is now open for my next course at USC, an undergrad class about DRM, EULAs, copyright, technology and control in the 21st century, called "Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?"
It's an undergrad course offered as a COMM499 class, but it's open to any student on campus. I'll be podcasting it if I can figure out a good recording setup, too. The main class assignment is to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.
The class runs Tuesday afternoons from 3:30-6:20PM. Lots of USC undergrads asked me about attending the grad seminar I'm teaching this semester -- here's your chance. Roll up, roll up!
Every garden has a snake: computers aren't just tools for empowering their owners. They're also tools for stripping users of agency, for controlling us individually and en masse.
It starts with "Digital Rights Management" -- the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM gets special protection under the law, a blanket prohibition on breaking DRM or helping others to do so, even if you have the right to access the work the DRM is walling off.
But DRM's just the tip of the iceberg. Every digital act includes an act of copying, and that means that copyright governs every relationship in the digital realm. Take a conversation to email and it's not just culture, it's copyright -- every volley is bound by the rules set out to govern the interactions between large publishing entities.
Playing a song for a buddy with your stereo is lawful. Stream that song to your buddy's PC and you could be facing expulsion and criminal prosecution.
Every interaction on the Web is now larded over with "agreements" -- terms of service, acceptable use policies, licenses -- that no one reads or negotiates. These non-negotiable terms strip you of your rights the minute you click your mouse. Transactions that would be a traditional purchase in meatspace are complex "license agreements" in cyberspace. As mere licensors, we are as feudal serfs to a lord -- ownership is conferred only on those who are lucky enough to be setting the terms. Our real property interests are secondary to their "intellectual property" claims.
When the computer, the network, publishing platforms, and property can all be magicked away with the Intellectual Property wand, we're all of us pwned, 0wnz0red, punkd. Our tools are turned against us, the law is tipped away from our favor.
Link to course catalog, Link to draft syllabus
Next Tuesday, November 7, EFF senior IP attorney Fred von Lohmann will give a free public talk at USC as part of my ongoing speaker series on digital liberties. Fred is an amazing speaker and a world-famous copyright lawyer. His oral argument in the Ninth Circuit hearing on Grokster inspired a techno remix. Fred previously clerked for a judge and a US senator, and worked under Condi Rice at Stanford. His seminal paper on the DMCA, Unintended Consequences, is one of the most widely cited analyses of the controversial copyright law. Fred is also an ardent music fan, and a tireless proponent of the preservation of fan culture and artist/fan engagement.
His free talk runs from 7-9 PM at the USC Annenberg School on the main campus in room 207. We'll have the podcast up a day or two later.
Link
Note: THERE IS NO SPEAKER ON OCT 31. Jamie Love was previously erroneously listed as speaking on Hallowe'en, but he won't be here.
Last week I recorded an interview with Mur Lafferty, of the I Should Be Writing podcast. Mur wrote the book on Podcasting (literally) and I was privileged to have her as one of my students at the Viable Paradise workshop in Martha's Vineyard.
MP3
I'm delighted to announce that I'll be the guest of honor at the science fiction convention Orycon, in Portland, Oregon, November 17-19. I've never attended an OryCon before, but its reputation as an excellent event precedes it, and I'm excited to be there with other guests including Vincent DiFate, Ellen Datlow and Michael DeMerritt. The room block is filling up quick, so register ASAP if you want to get the convention rate at the hotel.
While in Portland, I'm also giving a talk on copyright at Portland State University on November 16 at 5PM -- it's free and open to the public.
Link to OryCon, Link to PSU talk
Last year, I spoke at the Roboexotica cocktail robotics conference in Vienna and a bunch of the speakers did a little TV interview for an Austrian indie TV producer. The video's online now, featuring me, Jake Appelbaum, Francesca Birks, Kal Spelletich and Johannes Grenzfurthner.
Link
(Thanks, Magnus!)
I'm one of the guests of honor at Utopiales, the international science fiction convention being held in Nantes, France on November 2-5. Other guests include Kim Stanley Robinson, Martha Wells, Lucius Sheppard and Norman Spinrad.
Du rouge au vert des petits hommes, Mars en aura vu de toutes les couleurs et demeure à ce jour le sanctuaire de tous les fantasmes en science-fiction. Dernier correspondant, K. S. Robinson aura poussé plus que nul autre avant lui l’identification à la planète rouge. Invité d’honneur du festival, il emmène avec lui cette année une cohorte d’écrivains pour des tables rondes passionnantes. Adeptes des magies noires de l’ère technologique, tels C. Priest, M. Wells ou K. J. Bishop ou rebelles, à l’image de R.C. Wagner ou N. Spinrad, ils rêvent tous de Marx depuis leur enfance. Les Libraires Complices proposent une nouvelle fois, dans le cadre du salon du Livre et de la Bande Dessinée, plus de 25000 ouvrages représentant toutes les maisons d’édition.
Link
The talented folks at DaveFilms have produced a full-cast audiobook adaptation of my award-winning novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. They're transmitting it in ten parts, as a podcast -- part 1 just went live.
This is the second audio adaptation of Down and Out -- the podcaster Mark Forman read the book aloud on his podcast in August 2005.
I love the different adaptations of the book -- it's amazing to hear my words read by so many different people, with so many different choices about how to dramatize it. Often, the reading isn't how I heard it in my own head when I wrote it, which is cool -- it's wild to hear how your own words sound to someone else.
Link to part 1 as MP3, Link to part 1 as streaming Quicktime, Podcast feed
The video of my keynote at ToorCon 8, the annual hacker's convention in San Diego, is online. I talked about how the future of computing is endangered by new trends in our approach to computers and the Internet, treating them as systems to be locked down in a return to the dark ages of mainframes.
Last night, I did an interview on The Linux Link Tech Show, a venerable free software radio show/podcast. We talked DRM, mostly, and the audio is here (MP3 -- also available as OGG).
My Creative Commons-licensed, Hugo/BSFA-nominated story "I, Robot" has been translated into Hebrew by the Israeli sf magazine Bli Panika. They've posted the story, translated by Haggay Averbuch, and the translation is under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license.
ארטוּרוֹ איקאזה דה אראנה-גולדברג, בלש דרג ג’, תחום מסחר אמריקה הצפונית, מחוז שלישי, רשות רביעית, מחלקה שניה (פרקדייל) חווה שלל הרפתקאות במהלך הקריירה המכובדת שלו. כשלכד נוכלים עשה זאת באמצעות שילוב מנצח של חריפות חושים ומסירות בלתי מתפשרת לחובתו.
בשלושה אירועים שונים זיכו אותו מפקדו והמנהל המחוזי של המחלקה להרמוניה חברתית בעיטורי כבוד, ואמו טיפחה מקדש של גזירי עיתונים וציונים לשבח, שתפס את מרבית חדר האורחים הצפוף שבדירתה הסמוכה לשדרות סטילס.
See also:
I, Robot on The Infinite Matrix
I, Robot, the podcast
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