Information Doesn't Want to Be Free
Laws for the Internet Age
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In sharply argued, fast-moving chapters, Cory Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free takes on the state of copyright and creative success in the digital age. Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today — about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them. An essential read for anyone with a stake in the future of the arts, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free offers a vivid guide to the ways creativity and the Internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Internet has expanded and cluttered the debate over intellectual property with technical terms and special interests, but Doctorow (Rapture of the Nerds), co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing and a contributor to Publishers Weekly, breaks down some of the most fundamental concepts at work into plain language. The book is organized around Doctorow's Three Laws, which consider DRM (digital rights management, which Doctorow simplifies to "digital locks"), piracy versus obscurity, and the way copyright ought to work. He excels at translating complex issues into pithy, digestible phrases, and challenges readers to rethink the idea of copyright and who it is meant serve. Doctorow argues that, rather than doing away with copyright as we know it, we need to rethink the way that it is enforced. He deftly explains how an open Internet directly affects freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and why censorship doesn't solve problems. Equal parts manifesto and field guide, Doctorow's primer for artists and creators delivers a healthy dose of clarity to the debate.
