Cory Doctorow at The Melbourne Writer's Festival

It may be a bit almost an hour, but if you're interested in copyright and what it means today, then Cory Doctorow can always be relied on to promote a very interesting and progressive point of view.

This talk from the Melbourne Writer's Festival is on "Copyright and Creativity", something close to Doctorow's heart. As an author, activist, journalist and blogger his approach to releasing his work under the Creative Commons licence is a bold step, but one he says actually encourages his readers to spread the word without fear of legal recrimination.

Coming on the back of an interesting article about "Legal Blackmail" on Wired.com, and the buzz of Freeconomics over the past couple of years, these are well worth considering if you, like most of us, are wondering what the internet continues to mean for traditional channels of controlled distribution.

For the win, here's Radiohead's Colin Greenwood explaining not only why they released In Rainbows for free, but also noting that "Three years later, we have just finished another group of songs, and have begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again."

If you like what you see in Doctorow's speech then you should download his collection of essays, Content. If you like it, you can even dontate some money and he'll give a physical copy of the book to a teacher or school library! Go on and take a risk, for once you actually do have NOTHING to lose...