The novel is an invention, one that was engendered by technological changes in information display, reproduction, and distribution. The cognitive style of the novel is different from the cognitive style of the legend. The cognitive style of the computer is different from the cognitive style of the novel.

Computers want you to do lots of things with them. Networked computers doubly so — they (another RSS item) have a million ways of asking for your attention, and just as many ways of rewarding it.

The problem, then, isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to
read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny
enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens.

The thinking is simple: an information economy must be based on buying and selling information. Therefore, we need policies to make it harder to get access to information unless you've paid for it. That means that we have to make it harder for you to share information, even after you've paid for it. Without the ability to fence off your information property, you can't have an information market to fuel the information economy.

But this is a tragic case of misunderstanding a metaphor. Just as the industrial economy wasn't based on making it harder to get access to machines, the information economy won't be based on making it harder to get access to information. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true: the more IT we have, the easier it is to access any given piece of information — for better or for worse.

[...] Every techno-literate participant in the information economy can choose to access any data, without having to break the anti-copying technology, just by searching for the cracked copy on the public Internet. If there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that an information economy will increase the technological literacy of its participants.

[...] every bit of online content is made possible by removing the cost of paying lawyers to act as the Internet's gatekeepers.

I don't think it's practical to charge for copies of electronic works. Bits aren't ever going to get harder to copy. So we'll have to figure out how to charge for something else. That's not to say you can't charge for a copy-able bit, but you sure can't force a reader to pay for access to information anymore.

Copyright started with a dispute between Scottish and English
publishers, and the first copyright law, 1709's Statute of
Anne, conferred the exclusive right to publish new editions of a
book on the copyright holder. It was a fair competition statute,
and it was silent on the rights that the copyright holder had in
respect of his customers: the readers. Publishers got a legal
tool to fight their competitors, a legal tool that made a distinction
between the corpus — a physical book — and the spirit —
the novel writ on its pages. But this legal nicety was not
"customer-facing." As far as a reader was concerned, once she
bought a book, she got the same rights to it as she got to any
other physical object, like a potato or a shovel. Of course, the
reader couldn't print a new edition, but this had as much to do
with the realities of technology as it did with the law. Printing
presses were rare and expensive: telling a 17th-century reader
that he wasn't allowed to print a new edition of a book you sold
him was about as meaningful as telling him he wasn't allowed
to have it laser-etched on the surface of the moon. Publishing
books wasn't something readers did.

Writers can't ask readers not to interpret their work. You
can't enjoy a novel that you haven't interpreted — unless you
model the author's characters in your head, you can't care
about what they do and why they do it. And once readers model
a character, it's only natural that readers will take pleasure
in imagining what that character might do offstage, to noodle
around with it. This isn't disrespect: it's active reading.

Our field is incredibly privileged to have such an active fanfic
writing practice. Let's stop treating them like thieves and start
treating them like honored guests at a table that we laid just
for them.

[...] Almost all of us could be making more money elsewhere (though we may dream of earning a stephenkingload of money, and of course, no one would play the lotto if there were no winners). The primary incentive for writing has to be artistic satisfaction, egoboo, and a desire for posterity. Ebooks get you that. Ebooks become a part of the corpus of human knowledge because they get indexed by search engines and replicated by the hundreds, thousands or millions. They can be googled.

[...] The thing is, when all you've got is monks, every book takes on
the character of a monkish Bible. Once you invent the printing
press, all the books that are better-suited to movable type migrate
into that new form. What's left behind are those items
that are best suited to the old production scheme: the plays
that need to be plays, the books that are especially lovely on
creamy paper stitched between covers, the music that is most
enjoyable performed live and experienced in a throng of
humanity.

Science fiction is the literature of the present, and the present is the only era that we can hope to understand, because it's the only era that lets us check our observations and predictions against reality.