a book release with a smart guy

every once in a while you meet a "smart person". and you know that they're a smart person because you get that enlightening feeling when the enter the room -- like the collective iq of this little space just jumped. i got that feeling tonight, when i met cory doctorow.

i mentioned him a while back. shift.com had done a piece on him and his then new book entitled down and out in the magic kingdom and how he'd not just released a paperback version, but also an e-book version as well. he has since re-licenced the book under an even less-restrictive banner and out of all of this we're seeing russian and japanese translations cropping up from around the world. some diehard perl geek even wrote some nifty code to "remix" the entire novel. after downloading and reading it months ago, i bought a copy tonight at the launch of his new book called eastern standard tribe.

he's got some really interesting views on everything ranging from copyright, to terrorism, to globalisation, and agree with him or not, you can't deny that he's well read in all of the above. a toronto native and living these past few years in san francisco, he's moving to the uk to help the electronic frontier foundation fight some potentially damaging copyright laws being generated in the european union. his books are intelligent, eloquent and funny. i highly reccomend the read... and you can read it all for free.