Quinn Norton

Quinn Norton (photo by Aaron Swartz)

Quinn Norton (born 1973) is a San Francisco-based journalist, photographer and blogger covering hacker culture, intellectual property and copyright issues, and the Internet. Her work has appeared in Wired News, The Guardian, and O'Reilly Media publications such as Make magazine. She has also been a long-time fixture at O'Reilly's Foo Camp. She has recently became a columnist for Maximum PC magazine, primarily on the subject of copyright.

Norton had a magnet implanted in the tip of her ring finger as an experiment in body augmentation, enabling her to sense magnetic fields. The magnet eventually shattered and the pieces were later removed.

Quinn's Symphonic Conundrum

Quinn's Symphonic Conundrum is a conceptual prank involving writing and executing a computer program that would output all possible melodies, and then copyrighting the resulting score. Any music made afterwards would, depending on licensing terms, therefore be a copyright violation. One possibility is that the completed work would be licensed under a noncommercial license, thereby providing that people could make music, but never again be able to sell it.

External links

• Guardian Unlimited Quinn's Symphonic Conundrum
• NPR All Things Considered Radio Interview about the magnet in her finger and her body hacking story
• A Sixth Sense for a Wired World Article and pictures about her magnetic implant
• Quinn Norton's articles for Wired News