Pirate Cinema Cory Doctorow copy @ www.sisudoc.org/ Copyright CorDoc-Co, Ltd (UK), 2012.; License: ‹https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/› SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ ii Contents Contents Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow 1 A commercial interlude ................................ 2 Read this first! ..................................... 3 The copyright thing ................................... 4 About derivative works ................................. 6 Donations and a word to teachers and librarians .................. 8 Commercial interlude the second ........................... 9 Dedication ....................................... 10 Prologue: A star finds true love/A knock at the door/A family ruined/On the road- /Alone ....................................... 11 Commercial interlude III: the reckoning ........................ 22 Chapter 1: Alone no more/The Jammie Dodgers/Posh digs/Abstraction of Electricity 23 Commercial interlude rebooted ............................ 61 Chapter 2: Adrift/A new home/A screening in the graveyard/The anarchists! ... 62 Commercial interlude: a new generation ....................... 91 Chapter 3: Family/Feeling useless/A scandal in Parliament/A scandal at home/War! 92 Revenge of Commercial interlude .......................... 115 Chapter 4: A shot across the bow/Friends from afar/Whatever floats your boat/Let's put on a show! .................................. 116 Down and out in the commercial interlude ...................... 134 Chapter 5: Flop!/A toolsmith/Family Reunion/Late reviews ............. 135 Commercial interlude for the win ........................... 157 Chapter 6: The war hots up/Homecoming/Drowning in familiarity ......... 158 Bride of commercial interlude ............................. 170 Chapter 7: Raided!/Landlord surprise/Taking the show on the road ........ 171 Son of commercial interlude .............................. 182 Chapter 8: Opening night/They love us!/A friend in Parliament .......... 183 Land of the commercial interludes .......................... 189 Chapter 9: Is that legal?/Cowardice/Shame ..................... 191 Cmrcl ntrld ....................................... 202 Chapter 10: Facing the parents/Lasers in London/Rabid Dog's horror ...... 203 The commercial interlude strikes back ........................ 213 Chapter 11: Speechifying/£78 million/A friend in the law .............. 214 Commercial Interlude XVII ............................... 223 Chapter 12: TIP-Ex!/Don't be clever/A sympathetic descendant .......... 224 Love in the time of commercial interludes ...................... 242 Chapter 13: Shopped!/On the Road/Family Reunion ................ 243 Fear and loathing in commercial interludes ..................... 255 SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ iii Contents Chapter 14: Good friends and lifted spirits/Magnum opus (“It's Not Fair!”)/Parliament Cinema ...................................... 256 Commercial interlude 3D ............................... 273 Chapter 15: A less-than-ideal world/Not-so-innocent bystanders/How'd we do? . 274 Twilight of the commercial interludes ......................... 283 Epilogue: Sue me/An announcement/Soldiering on ................. 284 Commercial interlude: a new beginning ....................... 287 Acknowledgements .................................. 288 Biography ........................................ 289 Twilight of the commercial interludes ......................... 290 Creative Commons license .............................. 291 Secret commercial interlude .............................. 298 Metadata 299 SiSU Metadata, document information ........................ 299 SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ iv Contents % SiSU 2.0 Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 1 Pirate Cinema A commercial interlude Today, October 2, 2012 is the hardest it will ever be to copy things. It will never get harder. It only gets easier from here. Our grandchildren will marvel at how hard copying was in 2012. “Tell me again, Grandpa, about the years 2012, when hard-drives with the capacity to hold all the music, movies, words, photos and games ever weren't three for a buck in the check-out aisle at the grocery store! Tell me again about when not everyone knew the magic trick of typing `movie name' and `bittorrent' into a search engine!” I can't stop you from copying this book (even if I wanted to). I can't force you to buy it in order to read it (even if I wanted to). All I can do is ask you to consider purchasing it if you enjoyed it. There's links below for buying the book in print or ebook form. All the ebooks are DRM-free because they come from Tor Books, who, as of summer 2012, publish all of their books without DRM (this is one of the reasons I love them!). If you don't want a print edition, and if you're happy with this ebook, you can still send some money my way by ‹donating a copy to a library or school› . This will also make you a class-A dude. You don't have to buy the book from an online seller, either. ‹Here's a tool› that will find you independent stores in your area that have copies on their shelves. USA: ‹Amazon Kindle› (DRM-free) ‹Barnes and Noble Nook› (DRM-free) ‹Google Books› (DRM-free) ‹Apple iBooks› (DRM-free) ‹Kobo› (DRM-free) ‹Amazon› ‹Booksense› (will locate a store near you!) ‹Barnes and Noble› ‹Powells› ‹Booksamillion› Canada: ‹Amazon Kindle› (DRM-free) ‹Kobo› (DRM-free) ‹Chapters/Indigo› ‹Amazon.ca› Audiobook: ‹DRM-free download› SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 2 Pirate Cinema Read this first! This book is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license. That means: You are free: • to Share -- to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: • Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). • Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. • No Derivative Works -- You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link ‹http://craphound.com/pc› Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get our permission More info here: ‹https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/› See the end of this file for the complete legalese. SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 3 Pirate Cinema The copyright thing The Creative Commons license at the top of this file probably tipped you off to the fact that I've got some pretty unorthodox views about copyright. Here's what I think of it, in a nutshell: a little goes a long way, and more than that is too much. I like the fact that copyright lets me sell rights to my publishers and film studios and so on. It's nice that they can't just take my stuff without permission and get rich on it without cutting me in for a piece of the action. I'm in a pretty good position when it comes to negotiating with these companies: I've got a great agent and a decade's experience with copyright law and licensing (including a stint as a delegate at WIPO, the UN agency that makes the world's copyright treaties). What's more, there's just not that many of these negotiations -- even if I sell fifty or a hundred different editions of this book (which would put it in top millionth of a percentile for bovels), that's still only fifty or a hundred negotiations, which I could just about manage. I hate the fact that fans who want to do what readers have always done are expected to play in the same system as all these hotshot agents and lawyers. It's just stupid to say that an elementary school classroom should have to talk to a lawyer at a giant global publisher before they put on a play based on one of my books. It's ridiculous to say that people who want to “loan” their electronic copy of my book to a friend need to get a license to do so. Loaning books has been around longer than any publisher on Earth, and it's a fine thing. Copyright laws are increasingly passed without democratic debate or scrutiny. In Great Britain, where I live, Parliament recently passed the Digital Economy Act, a complex copy- right law that allows corporate giants to disconnect whole families from the Internet if any- one in the house is accused (without proof) of copyright infringement; it also creates a “Great Firewall of Britain” that is used to censor any site that record companies and movie studios don't like. This law was passed in 2010 without any serious public debate in Par- liament, rushed through using a dirty process through which our elected representatives betrayed the public to give a huge, gift-wrapped present to their corporate pals. It gets worse: around the world, rich countries like the US, the EU and Canada negotiated secret copyright treaties called “The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA) and “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP) that have all the problems that the Digital Economy Act had and then some. The plan was to agree to them in secret, without public debate, and then force the world's poorest countries to sign up for it by refusing to allow them to sell goods to rich countries unless they do. In America, the plan was to pass it without Congressional debate, using the executive power of the President. ACTA began under Bush, but the Obama administration has pursued it with great enthusiasm, and presided over the creation of TPP. The secret part of the plan failed -- ACTA ran into heavy opposition in Congress and has been rejected by Mexico and the European Parliament -- but the treaty SiSU