My editor at Tor, Patrick

By Cory Doctorow at 2:55 pm Tuesday, Sep 4

My editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, has revived Electrolite, his blog. Patrick's digging up some great linkage, but it's the commentary that really shines here. Take this bit, a nice rantlet on the diminishing intellectual commons (and remember that this is coming from the manager of the largest, most successful line of science fiction and fantasy books in the whole world)

If my comments on Mike Godwin's copyright piece, below, strike you as alarmist, read about this person's real-life experience, which nicely dramatizes the way that the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act"--now (with the support of Disney, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner, etc) the law of the land--institutes a regime under which those accused of violating certain copyrights are legally treated as guilty until proven innocent.

No, you say, that can't be. It's obviously unconstitutional. It's obviously unfair.

But it is. And it's the law. And it's being supported by some of the very writers and intellectuals who, in any other circumstance, would be the first to lead a charge against such a travesty--because, I guess, they think that in this case, if they side with the big dogs, the big dogs will remember them with fondness.

But just because you're on their side doesn't mean they're on your side.

And you may think you're just defending yourself against smartass hackers who pirate your texts on Usenet. But when you rearrange the basic legal structures that undergird society, it's not actually likely that the consequences are going to be limited to those you happen to find satisfactory. We are trading an old civic and civil model of intellectual property for a strange, ruthless new thing, red in tooth and claw. And its next victim won't be hapless hackers who pirate Harlan Ellison stories on Usenet. Its next victim will be people like you. And you. And you.

Link Discuss