Lois Tilton over at Deep Genre doesn’t like Libertarian SF, at least some Libertarian meme she sees as infecting some SF. In a nutshell her main complaint seems to be with the idea that space would be more “free” (meaning absence of regulation) when she sees the scarcity of resources Read more…
I posted earlier about how we needed new models for an Intellectual Property economy. On John Scalzi’s Whatever Blog there’s a thread that goes into the specifics of an existing rental model that seems to work. I also had some thoughts about the economy of Second-Life and MMORPG’s in general, Read more…
Microsoft seems to be in the vanguard, defending a 19th Century economic model for IP law. Not only has it deformed the purpose of its operating system into one giant copy-protection scheme, but now it’s attacking open-source software vendors with vague threats of patent violations. Here’s the problem in a Read more…
Ok, show of hands, how many people out there watch the Superbowl for the commercials? Now, think of this, how many Superbowl ads actually look like ads? At least like things we traditionally think of ads? How many of you have received a mepeg in your e-mail of a funny Read more…
Anyone writing short stories over the past decade or so may have noticed something of an online renaissance of paying on-line markets for short fiction. I started submitting stuff for publication in the late eighties/early nineties, and at that time there were only a handful of professional markets; Analog, Asimov’s, Read more…
For those interested, I found a really decent article on the economics of Second Life and MMORPGs in general. Thinking about what it is examining more closely, I begin to think that IP and capitalism are more emergent properties in society, and not arbitrary legal frameworks . . .
Western civilization is dealing with a crisis over intellectual property. The fact that any digital medium can be easily copied with perfect fidelity ties our legal system into knots, leading some, like Cory Doctorow to call for the outright abolition of Copyright law. However, DMCA et al is a harbinger Read more…
One of the more difficult things a writer can do is write about a culture that is truly alien. A lot of bad SF— especially in TV and movies— has shown alien beings that are significantly less alien to someone from a western culture than many human cultures. My own Read more…
When you write science fiction, you often find yourself in the position of thinking about the sciences in general. And it came home to me recently how strangely out of sync progress in medicine is in comparison with— for instance— physics or chemistry. While it’s easy to point out the Read more…