Cory Doctorow's speech on copyright and successful media internet business models

"no one woke up this morning looking for a way to do less with their music or movies"

Cory Doctorow has long been a tireless champion of emerging business models and shifts in copyright for creatives on the Internet. His argument is simple - a business strategy which turns the majority of web users into criminals (39 out of 40 music downloaders according to the FT) isn't sustainable. His talk, which looks at how digital rights management encourages people to act illegally, has recently appeared on Google Video and is bursting with arguments about why a shift in thinking is needed (inevitable, even). 

The best thing about Cory is that he practices what he preaches - as well as a copyright campaigner he is a bestselling sci-fi novellist, and at the same time he releases physical copies to sell in the shops, he releases creative commons versions for people to download, share and rework even, for free, from his site, Craphound. ('My biggest problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity'). He's also one of the BoingBoingers and recently published an Information Week column which suggested that HiDef video was going to cripple consumers and Hollywood with its inclusion of restrictive DRM.

Beyond the activism part, is the issue about forming conversations between suppliers and consumers, about the democratisation of the media and how artists need to be successful in this context - which again comes right back to Cluetrain. 

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Cory Doctorow at FreeStudios SA, Geneva