Never mind the cultural sensitivities: Canadian sci fi writer Cory Doctorow calls Dr. Hayden a “no foolin'” librarian.  

If Cory Doctorow is FOR the nominee for Librarian of Congress which oversees the Copyright Office is something seriously wrong? Cory Doctorow is one of the most dishonest and hysterical critics of copyright protections and artist’s rights. To call him a “demagogue” is putting it lightly. For example in this same article he comes up with one of his patented falsehoods seemingly designed to generate maximum hysteria from his ignorant tl/dr followers:

“Next up: watch for a move to rip the US Copyright Office (which now gets to make rules on things like whether the DMCA prohibits you from using generic insulin in your insulin pump) out of the Library of Congress…”

The Copyright Office could prohibit you from putting generic insulin in your insulin pump? I want some of the generic insulin he is smoking. This is such a wild claim I don’t even think it’s been debunked yet. It makes no sense. It is science fiction. And remember Cory Doctorow is really good at science fiction (seriously).  Maybe he got confused. He thought he was writing fiction?

Thankfully  Mr. Doctorow  encouraged me to go ahead and look into the background of the Librarian of Congress nominee, Dr. Carla Hayden.  A two minute search on my iPhone revealed  that Dr. Hayden is on the leadership council for the Open Society Institute of Baltimore. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. I’m sure they do good work. The problem is that OSI Baltimore is a part of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. The Open Society Foundation is quite hostile to copyright protections for authors.   The Open Society Foundation is STILL calling for further exceptions and limits to copyright knowing full well author’s revenues have been devastated by lack of effective copyright protections the last 15 years.  This concerns me.  This should really concern every author.

We should really thank Mr. Doctorow for alerting us to this possible “Manchurian nominee” for Librarian of Congress.  Artists and authors should get a chance to thoroughly question her stances on copyright protections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canadian Sci-Fi Writer Cory Doctorow in natural habitat. By Ed Schipul from Houston, TX, US (Cory Doctorow @ eTech 2007) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons