Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
Pirate Cinema
Unavailable
Pirate Cinema
Unavailable
Pirate Cinema
Ebook462 pages6 hours

Pirate Cinema

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow, comes Pirate Cinema, a new tale of a brilliant hacker runaway who finds himself standing up to tyranny.

Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household's access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Trent's too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke.

Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven't entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people's minds….


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 2, 2012
ISBN9781429943185
Unavailable
Pirate Cinema
Author

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger—the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of novels For the Win and the bestselling Little Brother among many others. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

Read more from Cory Doctorow

Related to Pirate Cinema

Related ebooks

YA Dystopian For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Pirate Cinema

Rating: 3.623404275744681 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

235 ratings33 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fairly standard Cory Doctorow at this point: a plot held together by an important Idea spun out to its logical conclusion--in this case, anti-piracy legislation pushed through by big movie studios. I sound like I'm complaining (all the time, I know), but I think this is actually a strength in some of his writing for teens, particularly in Little Brother, because it introduces teens to these huge ideas in a way that's accessible and makes them understand why it's important. Not to mention planting the seed that you CAN work for change when you're still in high school.

    This time through: Trevor has pretty much always been a filmmaker, taking snippets from tons of movies and cutting them together into a new work. He's an artist, but the whole film library at his disposal has been downloaded illegally. When his downloading gets his family cut off from the internet, he runs away to London--where he finds new friends who introduce him to the world of Pirate Cinema: underground events screening the same kind of films Trevor makes under the name Cecil DeVil. It's harmless fun, until the new Theft of Intellectual Property bills threaten to put every content creator in jail.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A fun romp but too full of didactic political speechifying. Reads more like an instruction manual for teens wanting to become copyfighting anarchists than an actual novel. Still entertaining.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are not enough stars allowed in the rating system to express how perfectly and brilliantly right on this book is. READ IT!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    it might be the genre (young adult), but i'm less entertained by prose that explains things too much. sometimes i wish cory left more for the imagination to fill in. in some ways the book is written like a weird pastiche of cool things (granted, a lot of good books are, but the point here is that the collage is too evident, perhaps haphazard). it might be that i don't interact with that many teenagers but the voice seems forced. as if a grown adult is voicing a puppet. it takes a bit of credibility away when the main character seems overtly mature and or knowledgeable at times, or just too verbose. anyway, lots of cool ideas but at times it feels like a copyfight pamphlet disguised as a novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the first book I've read by Doctorow and I'm sure I'm going to read more. I've seen a few reviews complaining about this book being preachy but I didn't feel it was at all. It felt like a realistic setting with people responding to the world around them. I really liked how the pacing of the narrative made it feel like you were moving along right with the main character.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Trent McCauley is a typical teenager. He spends hours downloading stuff off the Internet and holes up in his room making mashup videos featuring the famous actor Scot Colford. His whole family depends on their Internet access. His father works taking telephone calls for companies, his mother goes online to apply for benefits, and his sister, a school whiz, depends on the computer to do her school work. Which makes him feel terrible when they cut off their Internet connection. So, he runs away.In London he meets an enterprising drifter named Jem who instructs him on the fine art of panhandling and invites Trent, who now calls himself Cecil B. DeVil, to squat in an abandoned pub in a sketchy part of town rife with drug dealers. They clean up the place, invite others to join them, hook up electricity (illegally, of course), and find food to eat in all the best dumpsters in town. Finally Jem introduces Cecil to Aziz who collects electronics found in more dumpsters and Cecil finally gets a laptop with editing software so he can continue to create his movies.At this time, Parliament is passing laws cracking down on Internet pirating, backed of course by the major movie and music companies. In a modern day Robin Hood tale, these outcasts of society attempt to fight the big guys and find imaginative ways to accomplish this.There is a lot of technical stuff that I just accept if it's something I don't understand. There is also a lot of London slang but it's easy to translate.Like his other book, Little Brother, kids fight against adults, using their skills and knowledge instead of fists and weapons, to accomplish something for the common good. Along the way the reader learns something about intellectual property law and the workings of the English legal and legislative systems.An exciting and interesting read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cool story about a young homeless film maker. Great read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Pirate Cinema combines two similar premises explored in previous Cory Doctorow novels, Makers and Little Brother. This combination of ideas is The Government is out to stifle creative individuals and The Government is ultimately owned / manipulated / controlled by a small number of large corporations that get laws passed to limit creativity for the sake of corporate profits. Pirate Cinema is not simply a rehash of these ideas, it is a fresh take on the theme of Intellectual Property Rights and a totally new story. While Cory Doctorow is normally classed as an author of Young Adult literature, the presentation of the material and the writing style is attractive to . . . ahem . . . older readers as well (like me!).The setting is a not too distant future Great Britain. According to the liner notes, Doctorow is now living there, hence the setting for the story. Therein, though, lies one complicating factor: as G B Shaw said the United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. If you are an American English speaker and are not up to figuring out a lot of the slang thrown around, you will quickly get lost in the dialog. For whatever reason, I’ve been reading a lot of Brit Lit lately, so I did OK. But I am still wondering what “biccies” are and how it is pronounced. Luckily, this little item is not essential to understanding the story.It would not be YA without teen protagonists and some teen angst. There’s lot of that. There are also some great older characters too that lend themselves as mentors to our young hero. Parents, you are advised there is a lot of partying going on here and a very freewheeling lifestyle is laid out and played out in these pages, but this is counterbalanced by everyone having a good heart and there is a lesson of when to say no. I’m not apologizing for it and I don’t think the story could have been told without this element. It would not have been as realistic.Trent, going by the Internet name of Cecil B DeVil, downloads movie clips and rearranges, or otherwise alters, these into new movies, a mashup. This is what lands him, and his family, into big trouble. A law was recently enacted making the distribution of mashup film, a serious offense. The offender, and the offender's family, is punished by a one-year loss of Internet privileges. Now begins the author’s social commentary.In reality, we, as a society, are more closely tied to the Internet than we realize, or care to admit. Imagine being denied Internet access for one year. This is what happens to Trent’s family when he is summarily convicted of downloading movie clips from banned websites. There is no trial, no appeal, just an officer showing up saying you are disconnected. Trent’s father depends on the Internet for a living: he works for a telephone pool agency handling service calls: cut off. His mother need the ‘net for help with her medical problems: cut off. He has a younger sister, performing quite well in the equivalent of High School: cut off from using the Internet for research. Trent has never made any money from his films, he produced them for the sake of creativity, no one was dissuaded or prevented from seeing the original films, so the studios did not suffer any monetary loss. Yet he is treated as a major criminal and his family is made to suffer for it.Yes, this is a work of fiction, but if you go back just a short time ago, you can find an eerie parallel in reality with the shutdown of various trading sites. In fact, you can go back the Peter Jackson Games case of the 1980s you can see this is not such a far-fetched reality after all. What follows is a great story of the creative minority banding together to fight the corporate structure. The story is very reminiscent of Rent, but with a more updated feel to it. And like Rent, there is a love story thrown in, just to keep things interesting.If you’ve ever scanned a cartoon and substituted other names for the characters or made any changes to the original, you are engaging in a primitive version of what this story is about and need to read this book to see what consequences your actions could have. If you’ve ever done a mashup video of you own and posted it to a sharing service, you owe it to yourself to read this and consider what the future could possibly be like. If you are the least bit aware of the debate over Intellectual Property Rights, this is something you need to read to see where we could be headed. If you have no clue what Intellectual Property Rights are, you need to read this book to get up to speed.Cory Doctorow has been one of my favorite authors since I discovered Little Brother; Pirate Cinema does nothing to diminish his standing with me. He again demonstrates his ability to sate a case for all age readers to read and understand. I have no hesitation giving this work full marks: a well deserved five stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Kim's BookstackLiked · 23 seconds agoThe newest trend in young adult books - Dicken's Artful DodgerI just read Dodger by Terry Pratchett and now finished a modern approach in Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow.Young Trent is a teen film maker in London piecing together vintage films and showing them on underground sites when he is caught and the government takes away his family's internet forever. This causes a huge backlash for the family so Trent runs away and begins living on the streets of London where he meets other pirate cinematographers who live in abandoned buildings and continue to make movies. He begins a relationship with a girl who is very active in the underground movement and the fight to stop the government from passing more laws to legally take away the internet forever. This band of outlaw building squatters who sleep in shelters, garbage dig for food and meet in graveyards for movie showings is an interesting look at modern day lost boys, the current artful dodgers of London.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book started off kinda preachy. I've heard/watched some of doctorows google talks about the new signed bootloader / hardware stuff. I think he spoke way better at google.
    I see now why it was done.

    The book was great. I loved the characters, and the story.

    If you are a fan of his other books, i'd highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What an amazing and terrifying book. Trent is a 16 year old boy obsessed with making movies be editing together clips from other films. He downloads clips from online all the time. Unfortunately this is a few years in the future and the internet is more heavily policed than ever and the major film companies have bought laws where people are heavily policed and punished for downloading. Trent's downloading gets his families internet cut off for a year. His father can no longer work, his mother can't get her benefits, and his sister can't do her homework. He leaves home and makes a home for himself with other runaways in a squat. Trent makes an amazing life for himself, not without many mistakes though.

    I really wasn't sure what to expect from this book. In the beginning I had trouble getting into. As the book went on though I grew to like Trent, 26 and Jem. I loved the dynamic of the Zero Day group and the amazing creativity and smarts the group displayed. I thought the interpersonal dynamics between Trent and 26 were pretty accurate. I loved that by the end Trent was so much more self aware.

    Like all Doctorow's books this book was definitely terrifying. Our society could so easily slip into the trap that Trent's society fell into.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    *sigh*

    I started out excited. 1/3rd though, I almost put it down. 95% through, I was saying, "I'm going to rate this three stars, but mention it has serious flaws." Then... nope.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Thought-provoking up to a point, but the characters are all a little too good to be true, and it does sound more and more preachy the further it goes.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think the difficulty with this book is it simplifies something that is incredibly nuanced and that made it, for me at least, slightly patronising and poorly handled.
    I liked
    - characterisation
    - some of the premise that the book was based on

    I didn't like
    - the dumbing down of piracy concepts
    - the ending. It could have ended without the very final twist and been ok in that regard.

    It's worth reading if you can suspend disbelief, but it's not as good as 'when says admins ruled the earth'
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Typical leftist Doctrow, but well written enough that the politics can be ignored in favor of the story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another brilliant entry in Doctorow's ongoing campaign of old v new. This time England is the setting, and a young free thinker has run afoul of laws that seem reasonable at first, but are enforced with brutal ruthlessness. Soon he and others are embroiled in an engrossing tale of intrigue, love, and institutional Ludditism.

    A fine read for fans and new readers alike, Pirate Cinema shows Doctorow's dedication to uninhibited creativity.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have to say, I'm a huge Doctorow fan. I loved "Little Brother" (and I can't wait for its sequel, which is out next spring), and I know he has a way with words and social commentary. To mark this book as dystopian/sci-fi is a little off - while there are some dystopian elements to this book, it's more of a near-future social commentary about freedom, one's rights, creativity, politics, and copyright (or as Doctorow and crew at BoingBoing.net call it, "copyfight"), and how all of that comes together in how we lead our lives. While I have to agree with other reviewers in the sense that Doctorow does get a bit preachy in "Pirate Cinema", he makes extremely good (and important) points about the way art is being crafted and driven in our current world, and this story is a cautionary tale of what might happen if we don't pay more attention to our own liberties, artists or not.I really connected with this book. Not just because I agree with most of Doctorow's points on copyfight, how the industry has hijacked the artists and their works, and how the consumer has to pay for it all - but because I myself love to create art (calling oneself an artist at this point seems extremely pretentious, so I won't do that) out of already existing works. I'll admit to creating fanfiction (my first fandom was "The X-Files", writing fic for that at 12/13 years old), which is a copyrighted intellectual property. I also love anime and manga - many of whose authors started as doujinka (or fanartists), creating doujinshi (fan comics) for their favorite series before being discovered or sending their work to Japanese publishers. And I'm afraid the amount of art that comes out of that industry will start to disappear, as Japan has started passing piracy laws dangerously close to the ones Doctorow has talked about in his book (and of which an actual infant version exists in the UK now, along with its admittedly failed French brother). Let's not forget how "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Gabriel's Inferno" got their beginnings - yep, you got it, from "Twilight" fanfiction. Meyer could have sued, but she didn't. Granted, the authors did a lot of rearranging with the characters, but if you've read "Twilight" (yes, I have, I'm not really proud of that), you can see where things have been changed within "Fifty Shades" in terms of characters and names.So when it comes to the whole world of fan art/fic/etc, copyfight, piracy, and all of the trappings that come with it, I've been waiting for a book for the YA market that would bring it down to the YA level without talking down to the audience, able to explain things clearly, and give a clear layout of both sides of the argument. Ladies and gents, while admittedly biased on Doctorow's part, this is that book.While I wish that Doctorow had tortured/killed his darlings a little bit more in his book (especially concerning Trent and his family), I was pretty happy with the way everything came out. While Trent is a sympathetic character, I felt like he could have been moreso, but instead of just a person, he's a generation that's trying to create in a space that's getting smaller and smaller without big business trying to crowd its way in. In a huge way, Trent is a placeholder, a metaphor for what's happening right now with the internet concerning how one creates art, and how it might have awful repercussions that should not be there in the first place (or at least, have them severely scaled back). I loved all of these characters - they were all sympathetic, warm, and believable. And while Doctorow didn't create one person as an antagonist, he used the idea of a shadowy lobby system (not unlike the ones in currently place in the real world that helped produce SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA) - an enemy you can't really see or feel or even get a firm grasp upon, they're so slippery that once you think you've defeated them, they've started building up yet another threat to be focused on. I loved the way that was portrayed, both with the entertainment lobbyists and the pirates, because it's entirely true for both sides, and Doctorow makes that blatantly clear (even states as much for both sides of the copyfight) within the book.The setting of the UK was perfect, considering how much copyfight shenanigans are currently going on with the law, House of Lords, and the ISPs, along with the entertainment lobby as a whole. Though this is in the near future, there was enough worldbuilding to make it completely believable and not much extra worldbuilding was needed mostly because so many of the struts that are already in place with ISPs and current piracy laws, as well as CCTV cameras (and in the US's case, unmanned aerial drones) invading one's privacy. I did love the technology that was created, both from trash and from professionals, and I loved the hackerspace mentality that was presented throughout the book. It was refreshing, and absolutely a delight to read about. Admittedly, there isn't a lot of real "suffering" compared to most YA dystopians in this book that we've seen come out in the last few years. There's a lot of intellectual and creative suffering, but physical suffering? Not a lot of that. Which is why I call this more of a social commentary/politics book for YA with a tissue-thin layer of dystopia as the cherry on top. I feel like there should have been more hurting going on, but everything that Doctorow did worked. I can't complain when it has me going to everyone I can and talking about this book and the whole copyfight thing. However, while there was an 'end' to this book, it didn't feel entirely finished (just as he ended "Little Brother"). So I'm really, really hoping for a second book or a companion book in the near future, maybe to talk about things more in other countries. Like Sweden and their own (I kid you guys not) political Pirate Party, which actually has a place in their diet. I would definitely love to read about that from a YA point of view. This is an empowering book, and one from which the YA market will really learn. It takes balls to write about all of this in a way that leans so far toward the "creative commons culture", and Doctorow has huge ones. It'll get the conversation started and started well, which is why it makes my list of best books of 2012. Both cases in the copyfight argument get presented well, and easy to understand for this age group, and will hopefully educate and empower a whole new generation to keep the creative commmons culture going."Pirate Cinema" is out now from TorTeen/Macmillan in North America, and it's also available for free legally at Doctorow's website through the creative commons license (though I do really urge you to buy the book once you've read it). This is one book that will definitely get everyone talking, no matter what side of the copyfight you're on.(posted to goodreads, shelfari, librarything, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Pirate Cinema is a young adult novel by the prolific Cory Doctorow. I've been around for over half a century, so I'm not exactly this book's target demographic. Nevertheless, I think I can say this is one of Doctorow's weaker efforts.The rest of this review contains SPOILERS. If you're okay with that, read on.----------------------------------------Pirate Cinema is set in near-future England, where Big Content has pretty much bought the government. The protagonist, teenager Trent McCauley, is a driven movie-maker. The trouble is, he makes his movies from clips of copyrighted films (all featuring fictional actor Scot Colford). This results in his whole family being kicked off the internet, with dire results for his mother's health, his father's employment and his sister's education.Trent runs away from home and flees to London. There he has the good luck to fall in with the Dickensian-named Jammie Dodgers, an odd lot of decent people living on the edges of society. He gets a quick education in living on the streets and in cyber-privacy, then goes back to making his movies, which are shown in places like graveyards and sewers. Along the way, he falls in love with a girl named "26," whose father is conveniently a lawyer. Because of course Trent's problems with the law don't end, and he finds himself facing a massive lawsuit.Doctorow's books always contain a strong moral core, which sometimes escalates into a slightly shrill didacticism. I generally agree with Doctorow's opinions, but I dislike being preached at. The manichean good-battles-evil plot here (evil: copyright maximalists; good: makers and creators) is typical of YA novels, but some shades of gray would have been welcome. Moral clarity doesn't imply simplistic moral divisions.One benefit of the author's passion for teaching is that I often learn about valuable tech from his fiction. In Pirate Cinema he describes TrueCrypt, which is real-world encryption software. I'd heard of it before, but Doctorow has convinced me to start using it.The author's grip on voice slips a bit here and there. Even clever, nerdy teens aren't nearly as witty and cool -- as writerly -- in their conversation as some of the dialogue here. And I'm not sure first-person narration was the best POV choice. The sense of oversimplification might have been alleviated if the reader got some other perspectives.In some respects, the novel is too complex. There are too many minor characters with important plot roles for me to keep them all straight, and they are not strongly drawn.The biggest problem with the novel is how easily everything is resolved -- something Doctorow might have felt himself, as there's a bit of rather obvious scuffing applied to the happy ending. Trent's legal victory is a technical loss, and although he's reunited with his family, he loses his girlfriend.Pirate Cinema kept me reading to the end, but with a constant feeling of slight dissatisfaction. It's not a bad book, but unless you're passionate about the political and ethical issues involved, it's unlikely to engage you fully.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I got this in the humble bundle like many others I suppose. It was a nice read, a sort of coming of age story in urban UK with a big dose of the author's views on copyright. The general premise was quite believable, a big part of the copyright restrictions mentioned are more or less with us, at least in some countries. I also didn't find that weird that someone would feel "compelled" to do this kind of art which I also don't think is any less "art" just because the source material is from somewhere else.

    What I did find to be a big problem (like many others apparently) is that there is such a one-way representation of the situation. Copyright infringers only ever really do it for the art and for the greater good. In one case, "Cecil" makes copies of a movie before it is released and distributes it to the people waiting to go see it in the theater. There is not even a hint of a moral dilemma there. On the other hand, copyright enforcement is not even about making money anymore, but about keeping people in line - ok this is a bit more believable, but still.

    Personally, I think that copyright terms and restrictions should be way more limited than now and that the current situation stifles creativity and robs us of our cultural heritage. Unfortunately, this book reads like the exact reverse of the media industry propaganda. It is hard to impress anyone with such a simplistic argument.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This could have been an interesting story, if Doctorow had given more than passing attention to plot and characters, rather than focusing so incessantly on his message. As is, the novel seemed like just framework and mouthpieces for a treatise on copyfighting (with a smattering of other topics equally well-known to anybody who's read much of BoingBoing).

    I kept hoping that Doctorow would get the preaching and explaining out of his system at some point, so some interesting plot development would occur. No such luck. Perhaps the book would be more interesting to somebody completely unfamiliar with criticisms of copyright law in the digital age--but somehow I doubt that's much of the target teen demographic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was entertaining enough, set in a near-future in London when things are just a little more Big Brother-y than they are now. A bunch of kids living in a squat and making remixes and mash-ups of films come under the scrutiny of corporations trying to enforce their copyrights. Then they band together and put on a show in the barn fight the system and say a lot of things about art and creative freedom.It's nicely written in general, perhaps a little meandering and the characters are maybe a little too likely to break into a long expository monologue about fair use regulations. Aside from that, it's easy to like the characters and be interested in what they do. I liked that it depicted people engaged in activism and social justice work in a positive and serious way. Serious in the sense that their convictions are shown as valid, as opposed to meaning they had no fun at all. A lot of their activities seemed extremely fun.One thing that wasn't working for me personally is that even though I agree with the book's sentiments on the state of copyright (I think it's forcing an outdated system to try to manage a new technology to the detriment of everybody involved), the choices the author makes about what supports this stance were ... odd, to me. It's like he tried to fit every possible justification in there, and at some point (well, it was a point toward the beginning), it turned the corner from "convincing argument" to "okay, now you're just rambling."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    To call this science fiction would be an exaggeration - there's scarcely anything sciency about it. Even the speculative fiction label is hard to apply, because what little speculative invention it contains only forecasts into next Tuesday. Hardly a leap of prognosticating wizardry. No, this is about as speculative as a John Grisham novel, which is to say, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the conditions Pirate Cinema show us in Britain do not yet exist there - but for all I know, they could very well exist in Lithuania, or Scotland, or some other less visible corner of the modern world.

    Now, there are lots of great novels set in the contemporary world, or somewhere much like it, but this is not one of them. From the outset, Pirate Cinema feels forced. Its settings, its characters, and the situations they get into all feel entirely contrived, by Doctorow, for the express purpose of lining up his rant on freedom of expression and the tyranny of copyright law. The situation is a complete straw dog from opening to close.

    He does make some interesting arguments, but even those brief glimmers of engagement were snuffed out, for me, by the obviously contrived, artificial situation. I don't think it spoils anything to reveal that the protagonist is a film mashup artist who runs afoul of increasingly strict copyright law. But all through the book, I kept asking myself, "If the point he's making about copyright is so valid, then why didn't he cast Trent as an up and coming pianist or composer or novelist, even?" Surely his reliance on such a niche art form weakens his argument. My only answer to that question is that it's because he trying to present a simplistic analysis of what is actually a complex, multi-layered, and nuanced social problem.

    So as spec fic, there isn't much there, while as social commentary it's entirely contrived and artificial feeling. I suppose it works as a simple urban coming of age piece in a very slightly dystopian setting, but on that basis, it's also pretty formulaic - a David and Goliath tale, pitting little-guy artist against evil corporations, with entirely predictable obstacles, tactics and outcomes.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    'Pirate Cinema' extrapolates curent copyright laws and imagines how the world could be if content owners continue to schmoose our elected representatives and continue ever extend the breadth and duration of copyright. After falling foul of draconian laws, pirate filmmaker Trent McCauley flees to London, and with the assistace of a ragtag army of artists and misfits, tries to make a difference. Cory Doctorow has the novel available for free on his website.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fun. Not entirely believable, in fact naive and idealistic, but making an important point. Some nice hat tips to current reality! - especially WriteToThem.Com which is a genuine website than enables everyone to painlessly email their MP about anything they think they're MP should be aware of. Helping to keep democracy democratic - although as we see in the book, this is easier in principle than in practise.Trent - mostly known by his nom de guerre of Cecil BeVil, is a young lad in the near future, who like everyone else downloads stuff for free off the Internet. He take sit somewhat to extremes though having hundreds and thousands of films from his all-time ever favourite actor, now deceased, one Scot Colford. Not being content with this, he creates mashups - modern art consisting of rearranging clips into new videos. Currently this is legal, ish, although the downloading certainly isn't. In our fictional near future (but time unspecified) book, both activities are heavily illegal, with the multimedia corporations ensuring that plenty of laws are passed to try and stem this 'profit stealing' 'epidemic'. Trent's Internet Access gets turned off, not just fro him, but for everyone a his house - his family, his parent's can't access work or health or benefits and his intelligent sister can't do her homework. Trent guiltily flees to the cesspit of London, bright spark in the decaying UK. Here he quickly faces some realities before being whisked away in a very very unlikely set of scenarios that end up with him in a safe comfortable squat and able to make his mashup videos again. A few lucky connections lead him to the alternative party scene, pretty girls and anarchistic groups. Modern polite civilised anarchs though, who use non-violent protest to make their point - that of the tyranny of the corporations, corruption of MPs and powerlessness of the downtrodden. Trent's amazing film editing skills win him friends and fame.In making his basically unarguable point, that people should be free to express their creativity without the nasty corporations suing them, locking stuff up behind walls, spying on them to ensure they're playing by the rules and generally being nasty, Cory does rather blithely skip over vast swathes of more tricky ground. For a start, Trent is definitely guilty of downloading - stealing - works that many people put vast amount s of efforts into making, and whom deserve recompense for their time and imagination. That Cory himself is able to earn a living without insisting on people paying for his books is one thing - to expect the same to hold true for all creative artists is somewhat different. Running away from home is not generally a pleasant adventure! No big city, or even town, has genuine friends ready to help the poor and naive kid who turns up lost in it. By portraying such actions in a positive light, Cory is leading more kids to do this - sometimes it is the only answer, sure. But it is a desperate action, and needs to be portrayed more realistically. Squats are generally not pleasant places to live. I'm sure there are exceptions, but again, the expectations here are way out of line with reality. Even dumpster diving, while frequently done, is not by all accounts a bountiful way of keeping ones body and soul together. In other areas Cory;s imagination has been far less creative than it ought. Where necessary for the plot, new technologies are invented, but the greater cultural adoptions to new tech that keeps emerging, is ignored altogether.A lot of the characters are somewhat stereotyped, and he has completely missed the recent changes in the political landscape, casting the LibDems as they wish to be seen, rather than the party they've turned out to be. Cory somewhat innocently assumes that copyright will remain at author's death+70 years- an already heinous length, but recent plans have already been announced extending this to death+90 to ensure that Disney retain the rights to Mickey Mouse for a while longerAll that carping aside, what remains is fun fast and thought provoking - although probably not that applicable to a world wide audience, being very UK centric in term s of how our government works. The Three Line Whip is another genuine part of politics, and something that isn't mentioned enough. Trent's escapades are clever, and although it is very difficult to describe a film (2D again poor imagination of the future), in words, the reactions of the supporting characters is sufficient.Clever - but not as clever as it thinks it is. It will promote (more) argument about the justification for copyright......................................................Can't argue with that review after re-read. Being set in the slightyl near future means it isn't yet out of date, and the copyright arguments haven't gone away.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Draconian copyright laws in a slightly dystopian future mean that Trent's family looses internet access for a year after he makes unauthorized downloads. His dad can't work, his mother can't file for benefits, his sister can't do her schoolwork, and Trent runs away from home. As Cecil B DeVille, he creates original films by remixing copyrighted materials, and with his friends, fights the unfair copyright laws that are destroying families and putting teens in jail.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Trent is obsessed with movies. When his family's Internet access is suspended due to his illegal downloading, he runs away to London. He joins up with a group called the Jammie Dodger who scrounge for food, live in a squat, and make lots and lots of movies. The group joins a fight against Parliament to try to get the laws about pirating changed. Trent finds himself leading the charge to change the law in this exploration of creation, copyright, and intellectual freedom.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    ATTENTION AMERICA: C. Doctorow is teaching your children how to subvert surveillance, break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, break copyright laws, steal internet access and do all of this without getting caught. More power to him, but what I can’t figure out is whether he is actually becoming a better writer or whether I am just numbing to his formula. Said formula would be: adolescent with a subset of uber-nerd tech skills leaves home, finds love, tech skills get protagonist entangled, tech skills save the day, but big evil (usually some combo of corporation / government) lingers, simmering for a sequel (can’t wait to read Homeland by the way). Since the skill set in question for this one was primarily video editing it was a little closer to my heart. Large portions of the denouement were still just teenagers doing things on computers. Where’s Richard Ford when you need him? William Gibson can’t write his way out of a wet paper bag either. Me? I’m good with cliches. I listened to this book on CD and what really sealed the deal was the performance of Bruce Mann. His working class youth from northern England worked for me though I must admit I’m ignorant as to whether his accent is accurate or not. Can anyone from the UK chime in on this?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    another great Cory Doctorow tale with copyright, digital rights, privacy, and an engaging story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "If it's just theft, then why do they need to get their laws passed in the dead of the night, without debate or discussion?" - 26 in Pirate Cinema

    There's something more than a little bit After School Special-ish about Pirate Cinema, I'm afraid. Well, let's say half After-School Special and half Steal This Book. With maybe a little of some sunny Oliver!-ish can-do musical extravaganza thrown in here and there. Which is to say that in a lot of ways, the didactic agenda of this novel gets noticeably in the way of the story a little too often to make this a genuinely enjoyable read. And however praiseworthy that agenda may be, a novel-length parable illustrating its importance is a bit much.

    But! Fear not, for the bits where we don't feel the author sitting next to us and preaching at us (and let me just get it out there right now: I sing an enthusiastic tenor in every performance of the choir to whom Cory Doctorow is preaching) are pretty good, though in some ways that almost makes it worse -- they're good enough to just make the reader ache for an edit of this book with maybe at least some of the finger-wagging cut out or cut down.

    I wonder how Doctorow, champion of remix culture, culture jamming, sharing, and all the other ideas that are illustrated in this book, would feel about such an edit, though? On the one hand, his work would be getting watered down, stripped of a lot of its political message and used as mere entertainment, and thus maybe undermining that message; on the other, well, it would be a remix like any other. Another fan might choose to edit out all of the teenage romance and cheerful "we can do it" remodeling/repurposing/squat claiming stuff and just leave the expounding dialogues in place to educate everyone about the dangers of copyright maximalism and the move to privatize free expression and bring all media under corporate control.

    Actually, as I consider it, I would probably enjoy reading either of those edits, at least more than I enjoyed reading this novel.

    That's not to say it's a horrible novel; it's not. Doctorow has considerable narrative skill and has populated his story with a host of very charming characters, young punks all, lovable scamps with talent and creativity and technical know-how (and, in more than a few cases, an impressive knowledge of property law, both intellectual and real). One would have to have a heart of stone not to root for Trent and his girlfriend 26*, Jem and Rabid Dog, Cora and Aziz and all the rest**. Especially since their foes are so faceless, so nameless as to not even be human at all: Paramount, Universal, Disney-Marvel, Virgin -- you get the idea.

    Trent and co. live in an absolute copyright dystopia that takes things even further than that depicted in my good friend Paul Laroquod's Swap Thing videos. If you want to see a movie on the big screen, you not only have to fork out the cash for a ticket, but also subject yourself to metal detectors, searches, and temporary confiscation of any personal electronics you've been dumb enough to bring. Download too many illegal files off the internet and you can have your entire family's access cut off for a whole year. And all that's even before yet another piece of draconian legislation gets passed that imposes, among other things, mandatory minimum jail sentences for being caught in possession of any music, photos, films or other files you can't prove you obtained 100% legally.

    Enter our hero, Trent, a teenaged kid who happens to be a very talented video editor, and to be, as teenagers are, utterly disinclined to wait until he's done with school and has been hired and vetted by a corporate overlord to sanction/pay for/control his exercise of his talents, anymore than a kid who was good at a sport would wait for a professional league to discover him before playing that sport. Of course, as we've established, Trent does not live in a world that acknowledges or respects this equivalency; it is as if a promising young basketball player got busted and banned for enjoying some pick-up games on the playground, sharing his ball and the court and his knowledge of the rules and the history of the sport with other kids freely being suddenly banned from ever touching any ball or court or uniform, perhaps even any spectator's seat at a game, ever again.

    I know, ridiculous, right? What's to stop such a kid from, say, stealing a ball from a sporting goods store and shooting some hoops on a deserted playground in the dead of night? Maybe even teaming up with other people who got busted and starting a secret club where they head off to a secret cobbled-together court somewhere to indulge their shared passion.***

    That's pretty much what Trent does. When a third copyright offense, logged as he finishes his latest mash-up masterpiece on his laptop at his parents' house, triggers the harshest penalty -- his entire household, parents and sister and all, being banned from the internet for an entire year -- Trent runs away and goes rogue, joining up with a bunch of other similarly banned/punished people to continue doing what they love outside of/under mainstream society, hacking hardware to circumvent the latest crufted-on copyright protection cripples, remixing films and books and music into their own weird new creations, throwing parties in which their artwork is freely shared and enjoyed by anyone cool enough and smart enough to be willing to put in the time to find out where to go and how to do it.

    Ahh, hackers. Ahh, culture jammers. How are they not lovable? Romantic? Quixotic? Charming? Plucky? And yet also, somehow boring. They always get along. They always make things happen. Hell, even the parents and other adults like and encourage them, even 26's parents, who tell Trent it's just fine that he sleeps over in their 17-year-old-daughter's bedroom. With her. Even if they don't sleep. Wink wink. Really?

    After a while, even the important jeopardy -- the big bad so big and so bad and so important that Doctorow couldn't allow even the ghost of any other kind of conflict so that even the neighborhood drug dealers where Trent squats are nice and friendly and helpful -- feels unreal and inchoate. The corporate sharks are swimming out there in the deep water, watchful and hungry, but our carefree happy little heroes stick to the shallows and frolick away, and just occasionally chuck some chum out to sea out of sheer exuberance.

    Don't get me wrong; I had fun reading this at times. But I could never just immerse myself in the story, between the preaching and the excessive benevolence of the book's universe. In the end, I found that for all my love of Doctorow and what he does, I didn't ever feel like I was this book's audience.

    But I'm not sure who is.

    *Yeah, that's really her name. Sometimes people call her Twenty for short.

    **Not that they need much rooting for.

    ***You sports fans should all take a moment and contemplate with gratitude the fact that, as dickheaded as the NBA, NFL, FIFA, etc. can be, they haven't to date tried to get play not under their aegis banned by law.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Eh. There's a good story in there, but it's kind of boring and preachy about it.