Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.


Pullman v. Casserly: The future of copyright

Copyright is broken only insofar as the media industries' use of it as a weapon is destructive to everyone, makers of things and the people who enjoy them alike. Meanwhile, the arguments for and against come from very different places. Pullman makes a sympathetic case, showing his proper understanding of the chains of production that get the words he writes to the people who read them, but he's perhaps naive to ignore that he and other creatives should be getting a better deal from their publishers for what they do. Casserly highlights one example of a better deal: authors bypassing the traditional system to market their wares themselves, and often making a good living out of it. But she's also naive in assuming that's something everyone can achieve. For instance, Cory Doctorow isn't just successful because he's a gifted and hard-working writer; his editorship of the highly trafficked web culture blog Boing Boing played no small role in his success, too. Would he be where is is today were it not for already having significant visibility among the bulk of the audience that pays for his work? I doubt it. #link