Cory Doctorow has a new short story in Salon that was posted a couple of days ago. As I mentioned before he is one of my favorite authors.
In addition to the short story, I discovered he has recently posted his newly published novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on his website for free download. Check it out and if you like it, go buy it from Amazon or something. You can also download it from this website if you wish.
By now, you’ve probably heard that the Supreme Court has ruled in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, which challenged the terms of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act . For those who don’t know, the Bono act extended copyrights for corporations and individuals another twenty years. This means that for someone like Disney (a HUGE sponsor of the original bill), they have 95 years of protection for their work. Pretty good considering a considerable amount of their movie collection is culled from public domain stories. Heaven forbid you should ever want to make a Lilo and Stich derivative story. You can begin working on it in 2097.
Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford university, was one of the primary individuals working on this case. His blog has a wealth of information about the case that you should read. For a (slightly) lighter view - check out Reason’s interview with Mickey. It describes how Disney is keeping the mouse in chains. (Just kidding all you budding Disney lawyers..)
Oh, and by the way, this also means you won’t be able to sing Happy Birthday! for a while longer. Remember to tell your kid you’re breaking the law by singing it at their next party.