Just read Cory Doctorow's new essay on Digital Rights Management. This is a pretty good read; like Lessig, Doctorow has a way of keeping you reading even though the subject matter (digital rights management) would seem to call for boring, dry texts. There is certainly something of an art in making material like this so readable and engaging.

Doctorow's main argument seems to me that DRM is BAD because it takes away choices from the end-user. People won't want "features" like not being able to copy a song from their laptop to their MP3 player to their cellphone ringtone. These "features" work against the medium, and devices which use them are doomed to the same fate as the Betamax.

People will take cheap, less-glamarous "open" systems over expensive, closed systems anyday. Eventually people will prefer reading these ASCII files than plunking down the cash (and shoring up the shelf space) for a nice, colorful book. 10,000 audio files on a laptop take up a lot less space than CDs.

This is where I think space opens up for wikis. Sure, wikis aren't usually glamorous, nor are they always the easiest and most efficient means for publishing information. However, they are wide-open and can easily shift between formats (HTML, BBCode, wiki code, etc).

All in all, it's a damn good read. I wish more SF writers would take Doctorow's lead in promoting open source and the public domain. Instead, even controversial "cutting-edge" SF authors like Harlan Ellison are trying to sue people who dare to make their printed texts available for free online.