Two takes on the future of books: Taylor and Doctorow
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
On Monday night, I was the host for an Ottawa International Writers Festival talk and Q and A session with author Cory Doctorow, who talked mainly about why he gives his books away for free online and why he thinks overzealous licensing and digital-rights-management are evil. What I found really interesting was the first few minutes of his talk (which you can hear in the two YouTube clips below [available on the originating article] or by visiting the writers festival’s channel, where you can also see the Q and A with me that followed the talk, which I didn’t bother to embed here). In these clips, he speaks of “sentimental book fetishism” as an asset – which might surprise Taylor, since Doctorow’s part of that new generation he decries; he’s got ear-buds hanging around his neck. What threatens that healthy sentimentalism, according to Doctorow, is not “electronic gadgetry”, but the people who don’t understand electronic gadgetry, who are afraid of it and who are trying, through anti-piracy rules, to license books and control access to them.
Read more and view video @ Ottawa Citizen online: Two takes on the future of books: Taylor and Doctorow
Tags: literature, Ottawa International Writers Festival, Ottawa Writers Festival, Ottawa Writersfest, writing
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