Cory Doctorow on Wired on BitTorrent

I've been a fan of Cory Doctorow's writing since I first read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Today he reminds me why he impressed me--but in a completely different way.

This essay is at once sobering, and a complete hoot.

Which brings me back to Clive's casual note that Microsoft DRM can keep media "out of pirate hands." It's a statement that's so categorically untrue, it seems to come from a parallel universe with different laws of physics and economics. BitTorrent proves the futility of DRM as surely as DRM turns honest customers into studio-hating downloaders.

Check it out:

BitTorrent write-up in Wired

(Side note: I have noted with much amusement that since Cory's moved to Great Britain, he's altered his writing style to match British English, including not only lexical differences--"lift" instead of "elevator"--but also spellings, such as "colour" instead of "color", and slang. There isn't much of that in this article, though...it gives me the impression that Britishisms haven't found their way into his natural writing style just yet.)

(Side side note, written 2005/11/7: It occurred to me recently that Cory Doctorow is from Canada, so some/all of the "Britishisms" might have come from his original dialect.)