Our minds on media.

I’m coming out of the novel-preparation-stasis today just to post a real quick note about a talk that I just saw Cory Doctorow give at Clemson. His presentation was fantastic. I had been expecting a somewhat understated “nerdy” talk, but not at all—the issue of copyright history and reform is clearly where his passion lies. I was amazed that he kept up the pace and energy that he did for the entire hour. Beyond that, he managed to draw some wildly clear connections that, though I’ve read quite a bit about the issue before, I had never noticed before. The talk was just rife with fantastic information and anecdotes, and he was even nice enough to answer a copyright question I had about my own work. Probably, the highlight of the talk, though, was that after championing the creative commons and railing against our current copyright regime, one of the audience members asked him if he knew he was being videotaped. He responded by saying that he was glad to see it, and that “for the record I release” the audience, the university, etc. to a resounding round of applause. Nice to see someone put their money where their mouth is these days. I pledge allegiance to the creative commons.