Cory Doctorow is talking about the Hollywood Agenda. (His desktop wallpaper is Dr. Bonner’s label, a psychotic babble of philosophy, scripture and self-improvement aphorisms.) Cory says: The role of technology is to create opportunities for the entertainment industry. The entetainment industry’s role is to seek legislation that will close down those opportunities. From piano rolls to TV to Napster, that’s been the story.

Factoid: “If you were to tape digital movies and use Fedex to ship them to your friends, it would be about 100x less expensive than shipping them to your friend over the Net.” Even at the fastest connection speeds, it’d take several days to move a movie. So, Hollywood’s belief that it’s a threat is overblown.

The most important theme in Cory’s talk: Hollywood does not want us to have general purpose computing devices. The “broadcast flag” bit the FCC is considering would only work if all digital tech supports it and if device that don’t — like the computer you’re reading this on — are outlawed because they don’t support it.

Because I was session hopping, I missed the second half. The first half was Totally Cory: brilliant, funny, entertaining, right.

Really interesting panel on the future of blogging that I joined late. Paul Bausch (Blogger), Anil Dash (dashes.com), Justin Hall (links.net), Ben Trott (Movable Type), Mena Trott, moderator (Movable Type). I’m sitting on the floor and can’t see who is talking. But here are the topics being discussed:

Personal aggregators that help us read thousands of weblogs.

The price we pay by aggregating: the loss of context.

“The focus on [Clay Shirky’s] Power Law stuff drives me nuts. I have sites I don’t want to be popular.”

Good session.

[I’m back from SXSW now.]

Categories: Uncategorized dw