Last night I went to see Cory Doctorow speaking at ACMI for a fireside chat with cory doctorow.

Cory talked about culture, copyright, and DRM. Specifically, he talked about some of the crazy things the entertainment industry are doing, and how this indicates their business models aren’t in very good shape.

Some signs your business model is crap:

• suing your customers ( RIAA )
• locking in your customers ( Apple )
• removing features customers have paid for ( TIVO )
• highjacking your customers computers by installing root-kits ( Sony )
• competing to see who can have the most restrictive DRM ( Blu-ray and HD-DVD )

Cory’s an excellent speaker, and he’s obviously passionate about the topic. His published books are also available under the Creative Commons license, and he has worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among other things. If you get a chance to see him speak, I’d thoroughly recommend it.

But the best bit about the night? M1K3¥ and Cory had met at conjure, so I got to tag along and have a drink and a chat with Cory and his girlfriend after the lecture!