Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author and digital rights activist whose site hosts his stories, novels and essays.
What HN says
Commenters recommend his short stories like Printcrime, Epoch and Scroogled, and note that many of his books are free under Creative Commons licenses.
Stats for nerds
303HN people shared it
48linked in comments
967story points
Jun 2026last shared
Top posts on HN
- 1Mark Zuckerberg and his empire of oily rags2 people · 417 points · first shared 2018 · 232 comments on HN
- 2“Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow8 people · 136 points · first shared 2009 · 77 comments on HN
- 3When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (2007)19 people · 116 points · first shared 2009 · 18 comments on HN
- 4Little Brother20 people · 86 points · first shared 2010 · 26 comments on HN
- 5For the Win, Cory Doctrow's new novel about economics and gaming blackmarket1 person · 70 points · first shared 2010 · 12 comments on HN
- 6All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites (2005)5 people · 49 points · first shared 2009 · 6 comments on HN
- 7Cory Doctorow – With a Little Help1 person · 21 points · first shared 2010 · 3 comments on HN
- 8Launch of Makers, Cory Doctorow's novel on Hardware Hackers.4 people · 14 points · first shared 2009 · 6 comments on HN
- 9Printcrime (2006)3 people · 9 points · first shared 2018 · Discussion on HN
- 10Cory Doctorow's new book: Makers1 person · 9 points · first shared 2009 · Discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
- freedombenMar 2024
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Cory Doctorow's book "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation." I originally had low expectations that anybody would have a reasonable answer, and mainly purchased it to support the author making it available DRM free, but have been very impressed with the analysis.
Relevant to this issue, Cory discusses how this (ab)use of copyright is what enables gigantic tech companies and walled gardens, because competing with them is not a technical problem, but rather a legal problem. He's right! (At least for now until the wet dreams of the DRM people are realized and there's hardware DRM baked into everything). If people could without fear of lawyers build stuff, big tech would have to compete on merits and user experience rather than wielding armies of IP lawyers and legal threats.
[1]: https://craphound.com/internetcon/
- mark_l_watsonSep 2023
I love the idea of Tails. It is unfortunate that it only runs on Intel macOS.
I consider my personal setup to be pretty good, but not Tails grade privacy: 1. Avoid installing apps, use Safari with all possible privacy settings. 2. Run Lockdown mode iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. 3. Use duck duck go and ProtonMail. 4. Prefer to run in Safari private browsing tabs. 5. Become non-private when logging into Amazon to make a purchase, etc.
I would love it if people more knowledgeable than I could critique my setup, make suggestions. Thanks in advance.
I would like to mention Cory Doctorow’s excellent new book The Internet Con [1]. It carries on in the fine tradition of the books Surveillance Capitalism and Privacy is Power for the narrative that regular law abiding people also benefit from doubling down on privacy.
[1] https://craphound.com/internetcon/
- bchJun 2019
> There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What's more, it's easy not to walk kind of like you -- just take one shoe off. Of course, you'll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it's still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition).
-Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow [0][1][2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel)
[1] https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/
[2] https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
- lmkgApr 2017
Made me think of the following Doctorow quote:
There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There
are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no
hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There
are no 3D printers, only computers that drive
peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with
fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas.http://craphound.com/news/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computation/
It's perhaps natural this extends from the computers to the companies that make them: There are no banks, only financial IT companies. There are no TV broadcasters, only media IT companies. Et cetera.
- throw0101aApr 2020
> wouldn't have reached anywhere near the level of fame (and thus sales)
Cory Doctorow in 2008:
> For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy.
* https://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/
Now that he's more established and has a fan base it may be less applicable (just like Stephen King may not want to give away his stuff), but if anyone is starting out, getting readers is a challenge in the first place.
- TeMPOraLJan 2016
Have you read other articles by him, or seen his talk? Like this one I personally consider very insightful and important: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html.
But since you insist - he has a honorary doctorate in computer science from one of the top UK universities[0]. He also co-founded a software company[1]. I think it's enough credentials to give him right to be a tech advocate, with the fact that he's also a journalist backing up the "advocate" part.
[0] - http://craphound.com/bio/
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opencola_%28company%29