Cory Doctorow Warns of a Coming War on General-Purpose Computing
The Coming War on General Computation (2011)
In a 2011 speech, Cory Doctorow argues that the fight over copyright is just the opening battle in a larger war over general-purpose computers. He traces how DRM failed technically and commercially, leading to laws like the WIPO Copyright Treaty that made it illegal to inspect or modify your own devices. Doctorow warns that these regulations, which ignore how computers actually work, will inevitably expand to control all computation, threatening freedom and innovation.
Here, 2011, this is as hard as copying will get! Your grandchildren will turn to you around the Christmas table and say 'Tell me again, Grandpa, tell me again, Grandma, about when it was hard to copy things in 2011...'