Pirate Cinema

This book has a story line about a teenager becoming an adult, but more importantly, woven through the story is a warning about ridiculous copyright law and powerful media conglomerates . . . and the hope that citizens will wake up enough to stop these laws before it's too late.

magical

Better than the initial impression, that's for sure. Wish-fulfillment fantasy for copyfighters, for sure, but at the same time a rather entertainng novel. Not Doctorow's best work, but not a dog, either.

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.

It took me awhile to get through this. I mean I think copyright reform is important but I kind of skimmed a lot of the legalese. I did like the slightly future setting with raised stakes for copyright infringement–it's easy to see a world where copyright violations get your internet disconnected for a year, and a world where that's truly a dire punishment. I liked reading about Trent/Cecil's adventures in homelessness and dumpster diving. I kind of wondered if it's glamorizing homelessness? But people do say you can get awesome stuff from dumpster diving. OK, that's not really the point of the book, just a social consciousness concern that flitted through my mind while reading.

This might appeal slightly more to the hacker/vidder crowd? Or to the homeless? IDK.