Panelists: Patrick Nielson Hayden, Cory Doctorow, Ian Nichols, Bill Sutton, Andrew A. Adams
I was really looking forward to this panel, as I see copyright issues as being one of the big battle grounds of the Age of the Internet. While the discussion was lively and interesting, it concerned itself more with perceived problems of the current copyright regime, and less with proposals for fixing it or predictions as to what might happen.
Doctorow started things going by saying that the biggest problem with current copyright laws is that they assume that copying is an industrial process, requiring substantial investment in plant and equipment to achieve, whereas now copying is trivial, and in fact everything you do on the Internet is some form of copying, and therefore copyright law applies to everything you do on the Internet.
As a society we've lost track of what copyright is for. It was originally a mechanism for allowing individuals to earn money from their efforts, but is increasingly about making money for the intermediary companies.
The term "Intellectual Property" is used a lot, but is not a useful term, as it combines aspects of copyright, trade mark, and patent law, all of which are different, into one whole. It is a dangerous term which conflates unrelated things and confuses people.
Copyright law is different between the publishing industry (where the copyright stays vested with the author, who licenses publishers to publish their work) and the music industry (where the copyright is transferred to the publishers). It is even different in different branches of publishing, such as fiction publishing vs academic publishing.
Copyright should be about finding a fair balance between producers and consumers of material. Somehow the middle-men have become the dominant force, when in fact they should be the least important aspect.
All created works have their origins in others. Walt Disney fiercely protects its copyrights despite freely using earlier material in making its movies.
The purpose of copyright should not be to guarantee that the person who made money last year makes money this year (with respect to changing technologies), but rather to ensure that a steady stream of new works reaches the public.
It is never going to get harder to copy things. Encryption systems are doomed because no system will ever survive the determined efforts of a bunch of bored and smart teenagers.
Change is inevitable. What is the best way to protect authors in the new regime?
Doctorow asserted that whenever a new technology comes along that makes it hard to maintain copyright invented under the old technology, blanket licenses get created. He suggested that this model would work for the Internet: everybody gets charged some set fee for use of original materials, and is then free to copy anything they like. The fees thus collected are then distributed to the content creators.
Nichols championed the idea of escrow. Under this system people who like a particular author/musician/whatever put money into an account ahead of the creation of the next work. If the next work gets created and released to the public, the creator gets the money held in escrow. If the work never surfaces then the escrow money is refunded.
Hayden complained that copyright laws are far too complicated, and called for a overhaul in copyright leading to a law that any reasonably intelligent person could understand with only a little study.
This was an interesting performance of an original Star Wars story by a Perth acting troupe. The story concerned two Jedi padawan and their search for their missing Master. Part of the performance was live, on a stage with minimal set, while part was pre-recorded video projected onto a giant screen above the stage. The performance was fun and entertaining, although the live sequences were marred by the decision to play a backing track. Since the actors were not amplified, this meant that for most of the live segments it was impossible to hear the actors speaking. But it was still possible to get the gist of what was going on, and the film sections were fun and well done.
As for the story itself, I was somewhat disturbed by how the Jedi were portrayed. The main padawan felt free to use casual violence, psychological torture, and promises he had no intention of keeping in order to advance his investigation - these are not Jedi qualities!
By far the best part of the show was the spectacular opening sequence, featuring a stylized fight between Jedi (in whites and tans, wielding blue and green lightsabers) and Sith (in black, wielding red lightsabers). The illuminated lightsabers flashing about in the darkened auditorium looked fantastic, and the whole thing felt like a dance - an effect exacerbated by the fact that the actors clearly had to be a little careful with their plastic lightsabers, and so the crossing of blades was more symbolic than cinematic. Good stuff.
More pictures of the performance are available here.
Panelists: Christina Lasaitis, Greg Benford, Alastair Reynolds, Jeff Harris.
This was advertised as a discussion of scientists who became SF writers, with Fred Hoyle as the archetype, but it was mostly reminiscences of Fred Hoyle.
Fred Hoyle turned his mind to writing SF, wrote his first book in two weeks, and got it published. It was so easy he wondered why everyone didn't do it.
One of the panelists (Lasaitis), is a Brazilian scientist who writes SF in Portuguese. None of her work is available in English as it's hard to get translations done. When asked why she doesn't translate her books herself, she said that she writes lots of metaphor, and isn't comfortable enough with English to translate these. Science led her to SF and SF led her to science.
Scientists who have an artistic side gravitate towards either science popularization or SF writing.
There is no mention of Hoyle's SF writing in his biography.
Hoyle got increasingly cranky as he aged. He never gave up his Steady State Universe theory. This is a clear example of the axiom that in science people don't change their minds, it's just that the old guard dies out and takes their ideas with them. Science should be about the rule of evidence, but in reality it's often not so.
Hoyle acted as a catalyst. He would get up his colleague's noses so badly that every time he came up with a radical new idea everyone would try their hardest to prove him wrong.
Hoyle had a lack of fear of being wrong - which is a good quality for a scientist.
Hoyle was certain about everything but was only occasionally right. It become a standard idea that if Hoyle was convinced of something, then think the opposite and you'd be likely to be right. Is it possible that Hoyle's wackier ideas came from the same place his SF did?
SF is the right place to discuss speculative technology.
Robinson's Guest of Honour Speech was originally supposed to take the form of a conversation between him and Sean Williams, but Williams was unfortunately unwell and not present at the con. So Robinson decided to interview himself, removing and donning his jacket and moving from one side of the podium to the other to indicate the switch between interviewer and interviewee.
He said that he grew up on the beach. As a boy the beach and books were the two biggest influences on him. He said that all kids should grow up within a few miles of the sea. He thought he was Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Then when it came time to leave home he suffered a terrible case of Future Shock, going from 1955 to 1875 in the space of an hour's drive.
He talked about all the different sports he's enjoyed at various times in his life. He said that various Internet sources claim that he's a rock-climber or mountain-climber, but dismisses this. In fact he says that he considers these dangerous sports irresponsible, especially if one has dependents. But he enjoys (safe) mountain walking, describing it as a high-altitude museum. He enjoys the sense of being a primate in nature.
As a species are we headed for a utopian or dystopian future? He has full confidence that we'll eventually sort everything out.
Writing dystopian fiction is too easy. You want dystopia? Just open your newspaper - there's a dystopian novel right there. Writing exciting utopian fiction is much harder.
Mars colonization will happen, but it doesn't matter when. He can easily imagined a terraformed Mars ("I read this book about it...")
Economics is the astrology of our time. We need post-capitalists to reinvent economics to make the system more humane.
Panelists: Russell Blackford, Gord Sellar, Charles Stross, Marianne De Pierres.
Is cyberpunk dead? The panel seemed to think that SF has moved to a post-cyberpunk phase - but we don't yet have a term for what cyberpunk evolved into. Cyberpunk (like any other sub-genre) died once it became cliched.
Stross said that in 1999 he was living with 18 computers while working for one dot com while trying to arrange a mass defection to another dot com - as a lifestyle cyberpunk really sucks!
Stross said that cyberpunk emerged as an aesthetic at the same time as the goth movement. It turned up a time when computers where being introduced everywhere, and there was a sense that we were in a rat-race controlled by nameless forces. The aesthetic is still with us - Bladerunner is still cool.
The "taproot" story for the whole cyberpunk movement was "Shockwave Rider" by John Brunner, which featured a whole society suffering from Future Shock.
We are living through a time of change. About 20% of people today are suffering from Future Shock. Our current reality is a different outcome from the same irritant (Future Shock) that lead to cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk stories are often dystopian - but there's much to admire in a cyberpunk future.
For a long time cities were population sinks - more people died in them than were born in them. But this has changed, and we recently passed the 50/50 urban/rural mark worldwide. While Future Shock is often considered a city phenomenon, there is also rural Future Shock, triggered by massive mechanization and genetic engineering.
It is a common trope in dystopian cyberpunk stories for the heroes to move out to the countryside at the end - is this cyberpunk's version of "and they lived happily ever after"?
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