Laws for the Internet Age

Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? Cory Doctorow examines the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today — about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them.There are three iron laws of information age creativity, freedom and business, woven deep into the fabric of the Internet's design, the functioning of markets, and the global system of regulation and trade agreements. Doctorow argues that you can't attain any kind of sustained commercial, creative success without understanding these laws – but more importantly, the future of freedom itself depends on getting them right.Doctorow provides a vivid guide to the ways creativity and the Internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.In association with Bristol Open Rights Group.

Speaker biography:

Cory Doctorow is a science-fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger. He is co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and author of the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, as well as the novels Rapture of the Nerds and Makers. He is a contributor to the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired and Locus, among other newspapers, magazines and websites. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.

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