Comments on: Cory Doctorow’s Kindle Hypocrisy

By: spookiewon

spookiewon — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:50:57 +0000

While Cory is a co-editor at bOINGbOING, it really isn’t fair to call it “his blog.” Cory isn’t a founder of bOINGbOING, which was a print ‘zine before it was an online blog, and Cory had no association with it. He was asked to fill in for one of the founders for a time, and was asked to stay on. While Cory certainly uses bOINGbOING as a forum for his ideas, his personal blog is at his own site, craphound.com which ISN’T available as a Kindle blog.

And I really don’t see anything curious about his alleged silence about blogs allegedly being sold by Amazon without their editor’s permission. No one can speak to everything. Can I assume you approve of everything in the world you don’t say anything about?

As to his books not selling, Cory is a New York Times best selling author. If that’s your definition of an author who doesn’t sell, well, then a lot of authors would like to not sell that well.

You look amazingly like a pot…

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:55:40 +0000

And, of course: Cory’s planet burning adventure http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2007/03/the-fossil-of-doctor-carbon/

By: jay

jay — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:25:35 +0000

Doctorow has built a career on hypocrisy: he makes a living preaching the gospel of free content, but everyone with access to bookscan knows that his books don’t sell. He’s the Creflo Dollar of publishing.

By: josh

josh — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:20:07 +0000

“One even suggested that I could download leftover audio snippets of authors from their digital archive and I could edit my questions in.”

That would be a whole different show, but it could be hilarious.

By: Tobias

Tobias — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:15:52 +0000

Looks like he’s addressed some aspects of this in the comments:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/20/amazon-kindle-the-we.html#comment-84231
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/20/amazon-kindle-the-we.html#comment-84232

Maybe some of the other BoingBoing contributors were more enthusiastic about it? He does make a distinction between his own novels and BoingBoing here…

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:07:52 +0000

Glad I could help out Ed. I noticed at Neil Gaiman’s blog that he likes the Kindle but thinks it’s overpriced. He was a tester of the product months ago. In his own words: “For me it’s closer to CDs and iPods. If I’m at home, my iPod tends to sit, half-forgotten, in a pocket or a bag. It’s easier to grab a CD and put it on, and I like looking at the packaging, the audio quality is (or feels) better, and the listening experience is different and probably closer to what the artist hoped for. The iPod is, for me, for the road, and I couldn’t survive without it.

I don’t see that there’s a DRM problem — there’s nothing stopping you either reading books on someone else’s Kindle or putting non-rights-managed stuff on your own. I don’t think everyone has a right to digitally copy and distribute books they bought to others, any more than I think they have a right to, say, photocopy and distribute my books, or to print their own copies and sell or give them away.”

And then throws in a parenthetical pertaining to Cory Doctorow: “(Cory Doctorow isn’t releasing the individual issues of the comics adaptations he’s currently doing under Creative Commons, because the publisher feared it would upset retailers but will be releasing the graphic novel collection as Creative Commons. Fair enough).”

By: Edward Champion

Edward Champion — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:52:41 +0000

Re: Galleycat. I sent an email to Laurel Touby to determine if this is the case with Mediabistro. I’ve received no response.

By: Jane

Jane — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:51:16 +0000

If you check out galley cat, their blog is being sold without their knowledge or return of profit. Actually sound like Amazon is scraping and reselling copyrighted content without permission.