Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free
A review of

Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free

Laws for the Internet Age

Cory Doctorow • McSweeney's Publishing • 2014

A Kind of Genius

by David Meyer

What happens when creativity meets copyright? Cory Doctorow lays out the issues with clarity and conviction, while warning that most protective locks get broken and that even if artists really could protect their work, most of them would still need a day job.

Protecting creativity

Journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow has long embraced questions over online rights, copyright and access. Information…is his platform for raising what he regards as crucial issues regarding copyright, payment to creatives and regulatory interference. Happily, Doctorow is a writer of great wit, deadpan delivery and sophistication, which means he states the salient issues with clarity and simplicity. Almost nobody does this because almost nobody can. It’s a kind of genius and a great gift to the reader.

A journalist, blogger and curator of the website Boing Boing, Doctorow previously wrote Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom; the award-winning short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More; Walkway, and the Hugo-winning bestseller Little Brother. His most recent sci-fi collection is Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment.

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