Movies

"For the Win," the latest young-adult novel by science-fiction author, journalist, and copyright activist Cory Doctorow, hit the shelves Tuesday. The book is about the drama surrounding the unionization of virtual world "gold farmers," and is based on his hit short story, "Anda's Game."

Doctorow, who has held policy positions at both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons, is also an editor of the influential technology culture blog Boing Boing. Add his spot on the Wired magazine masthead and there are probably few, if any, people with more geek culture cred.

From his home in England, the Canadian-born Doctorow, a Hugo Award nominee, is one of the most prolific writers going, constantly turning out blog posts, magazine articles, novels, and everything in between. And he travels more in a year than most people will in a lifetime.

His Boing Boing posts can cover issues from the fact that there are now at least 13 open-source hardware companies making $1 million or more annually, to anything related to Net neutrality, to the current battle over the U.S. Federal Communications Committee's decision to give Hollywood permission to activate the so-called "Selective Output Control" technologies in consumers' set-top boxes.

Doctorow recently sat down for a "45 Minutes on IM" interview and discussed a range of topics such as a new-style approach to print-on-demand to gold farming, NAFTA, and quite a bit more.

Q: Welcome to the third installment of "45 Minutes on IM." I wanted to start by saying I love how your official bio has a one-sentence version, a one-paragraph version, and a much longer one. How did you decide to break it out like that? Doctorow: It was based on the requests I got from press and such--my publicist, magazines, Web sites, etc.--they'd all request one of the three. I found myself trimming the long bio to fit the other two lengths over and over again, so I just made a template that included all three. I try to make a template out of any text I type more than once. Though sometimes it takes me three or four reps before I go, 'Duh, make a template stupid!' I have a grand plan to put together a wiki-editable FAQ of all the questions I get asked in e-mail someday.

In the long version of your bio, you talk about the "audacious experiment in print-on-demand publishing" for your next book. What does that mean?… Read more

For years now, film industry executives have giggled at the mention of the music industry's legal campaign against individuals who illegally downloaded music.

The movie folks have long quietly mocked the music industry's attempt to protect their copyrights by suing fans. To them, the strategy--abandoned by the recording sector over a year ago--was a fantastic public relations flub that the film industry largely avoided. Apparently, the producers of the critically acclaimed film "The Hurt Locker" didn't get that memo.

The Hollywood Reporter, a trade publication for the film and TV sectors, reported Wednesday that … Read more

Ever since Viacom first filed a lawsuit accusing Google's YouTube of violating copyright law, most of Hollywood has appeared determined to stay neutral. That seems to be changing.

Over the past several days, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., Disney, the Screen Actors Guild, and Directors Guild of America have all filed friend-of-the-court briefs asking the judge in the three-year-old case to rule in favor of Viacom. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), one of the music industry's largest performing rights groups also filed documents in support of Viacom.

"We are pleased that such a broad … Read more

If you've seen any of the previews for Pixar's forthcoming movie, the terrific "Toy Story 3," you've no doubt caught wind of one of the new toys in the trilogy's roster of playthings: Lots-o-Huggin' Bear.

The movie opens on June 18, and until then viewers won't have much of a sense of how Lotso figures into the film's full story line. Suffice it to say, Lotso is a leader at Sunnyside Day Care, the new home of the stars of Pixar's 11th feature, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Hamm, Mr. and Mrs. … Read more

Warner Bros. has expanded its DVD2Blu program, a service that offers customers the opportunity to send in a DVD copy of a movie and receive back from the studio a Blu-ray version.

Citing Blu-ray's success, Warner Bros. said consumers can now choose from 90 of the company's "most popular titles to upgrade." The available movies include several well-known titles like "The Aviator," "A Christmas Story," and "Get Smart."

Although I haven't tested it out, the process of using DVD2Blu seems painless. Customers can go to the site and select … Read more

Sounds like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings can count Mark Cuban among his fans.

"Netflix has been brilliant at monetizing previously unmonetizable content," Cuban said this week. The founder of high-def cable station HDNet and owner of pro basketball's Dallas Mavericks, Cuban made the statements as part of a blogging debate he's engaged in with Newteevee reporter Janko Roettgers.

Cuban is skeptical that Netflix or any other Web video service are serious long-term challengers to cable companies. On Monday, Cuban wrote a blog post called "The Future of TV is TV." He was talking about … Read more

EMERYVILLE, Calif.--Call it Toy Story 3.5.

That's what Pixar's Jason Katz, at least, called Toy Story 3: The Video Game, during a press event for the game at the famous animation studio's headquarters here Wednesday.

Katz, the story supervisor on the forthcoming "Toy Story 3," which will hit theaters on June 18, was explaining to a group of reporters that while the game version of the film is very true to its source material, it also stands on its own and extends the franchise. Someone who plays the game and then sees the … Read more

With the North American debut of "Iron Man 2" still five days away, scores of pirated copies of the comic-flick began popping up online this weekend.

The film, starring actor Robert Downey Jr., generated a whopping $100 million in ticket sales this weekend in its overseas debut, according to Reuters. Apparently, among the millions of International moviegoers to see the film were some hiding handheld cameras.

At The Pirate Bay on Sunday evening, there were dozens of copies of the Paramount Pictures' film available for download. According to comments by users, the copies available were recorded by people … Read more

Last summer, not long after the U.S. government began a review of how piracy affects consumers and the nation's economy, the feds went to the major movie studios for help.

Representatives from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm, asked the studios for information about a survey the studios had commissioned (PDF) that concluded piracy and counterfeiting cost the film industry $6.1 billion in 2005.

But the GAO never got all of the information it requested from the Motion Picture Association of America, according to GAO administrators, including Loren Yager, the author of the summary report … Read more