Best. Of. Cory Doctorow’s essays (with sh*t i had no idea about)
Stopped reading when he misexplained and oversimplified the microchip shortage.
You should finish it, there are a lot of good points later on. I almost bailed when I thought he was trying to say that socialism was the proper fix (maybe that’s his view, but it’s not the conclusion in the article).
What he’s really saying is that IP law is the one to blame for things becoming so anti consumer. If companies didn’t have as much IP protection, it would be a lot more difficult for them to control end devices, to the point where it may end up being more profitable to benefit consumers instead. For example, if we cut copyright to 5 years instead of creator’s life + 70, we’d have no problems with game preservation because it would be completely legal for older games to be freely distributed and repackaged (e.g. you could buy arcade cabinets with dozens of games preloaded). But because they have the government there to enforce IP law, nobody can touch those old games without risking a major lawsuit.
Essentially, the fight for the right to repair is just a symptom of the issues with the IP legal framework.
There’s a lot of crap in there too, but skim past all that.
For example, if we cut copyright to 5 years instead of creator’s life + 70, we’d have no problems with game preservation because it would be completely legal for older games to be freely distributed and repackaged (e.g. you could buy arcade cabinets with dozens of games preloaded). But because they have the government there to enforce IP law, nobody can touch those old games without risking a major lawsuit.
That sound like a band aid against a septic shock.
What do you mean?
The main problem isn’t capitalism, but monopolies. When a market is sufficiently competitive, we don’t tend to see these issues. And a huge component to a lack of competition is legal protections.
There’s a lot more to it, like anti-trust, cronyism, etc, but IP law is a huge component that no longer does what it was intended to do: protect smaller companies from larger companies. It was originally a tool to encourage competition, and now it’s the opposite. We’d get quite far if we just roll it back to how it was originally (14 years + one optional 14 year extension for copyright, not sure about patents).
I mean we are heading towards a climate catastrophe, people in the “western” world are so fed up by corporate friendly governments that many are attracted by facist movements like front nationale, ukip, afd or the trumpets in the republican party, super-rich idiots are making world politics just because tgey own stuff and you think slight adjustments to IP laws will do anything?
Btw, intelectual property already does not matter much. Amazon rips off legally protected stuff that is sold on their plattform and the original creators can’t do shit about it. Chinese manufactures give a shit about IP since rhe early ninties and they have been really successful.
I mean that we need to do much more to survive this century.
Yes, I think changes to IP law are absolutely a step in the right direction.
climate change
Yeah, it’s a problem, but you shouldn’t be pointing the finger at Western countries, since CO2 emissions are going down in the US and Europe. And the US doesn’t have severe restrictions on CO2 emissions, this improvement is largely through innovation. I’m hopeful that those innovations will spread to the rest of the world.
fed up by corporate friendly governments
I don’t think that is the reason people are shifting to the right. Here are a few other takes:
- several answers on Stack Exchange - consensus seems to be: baby boomers, failure of liberal fiscal policy in the 70s, and better literature from conservatives (liberals had and still largely have a monopoly in academia)
- BBC article - each country has different reasons for it’s populace to shift right
- disagreement over COVID policies - masks and shutdowns weren’t nearly as effective as we initially thought, and people may be reacting to having that much influence over our lives
When I talk to people, we don’t talk much about corporate America, we talk about inflation, COVID policies, and LGBT issues. I personally don’t think people think either end of the political spectrum is particularly better when it comes cronyism, so they instead focus on which policies impact them more.
Amazon rips off legally protected stuff… China
Sure, that sort of thing happens, but how much of an impact does it really have on large businesses? We don’t see ripoff iPhones or cracked copies of Windows much here in the West. They’re not ripping off cars, expensive clothing brands, or higher end electronics.
They rip off the little guy because they know they can get away with it. And that’s the problem. IP law stopped protecting smaller companies a long time ago. Who do you think benefits more from copyright lasting life + 70 years, the indie author/game studio, or Disney? It doesn’t matter if you have a patent, trademark, or copyright if a larger org can just tie up the case in the courts until you run out of money, and they know that so they abuse the current system.
we need to do much more
Sure, there are lots of things we should be doing. iP reform is absolutely one of them.
>> climate change
> Yeah, it’s a problem, but you shouldn’t be pointing the finger at Western countries, since CO2 emissions are going down in the US and Europe. And the US doesn’t have severe restrictions on CO2 emissions, this improvement is largely through innovation. I’m hopeful that those innovations will spread to the rest of the world.
As long as western countries are importing so much energy and goods from the rest of the world, western countries are still responsible for the CO2 emissions by association. Sometimes even directly, when western companies have CO2-Emissions in other countries.
>> fed up by corporate friendly governments
> I don’t think that is the reason people are shifting to the right. Here are a few other takes:
There are many studies that suggest that there is a correlation between voting and trust in politics. Mainly it comes down to the majority of people are less likely to vote if they don’t trust the system. Only that gives extremist actors more voters because their supporters are inherently more likely to vote (because they’re political extremist, politics are important to them, hence is voting).
Furthermore, especially in Germany, but also in the U.S. many people, especially with low political knowledge and low education in general, are prefering political actors who claim to “drain the swamp”, that meaning beeing an alternative to regular political actors they don’t trust anymore.
The strong focus on economy and capitalism, especially after the fall of the iron curtain, is undenialably a major driving force in shaping our societies. Social security has been a target for these kind of politics, and the result was forcing people to do shit jobs for shit wages while everything else went up in price.
> > Amazon rips off legally protected stuff… China
> Sure, that sort of thing happens, but how much of an impact does it really have on large businesses? We don’t see ripoff iPhones or cracked copies of Windows much here in the West. They’re not ripping off cars, expensive clothing brands, or higher end electronics.
Well, what are other smartphones when not ripoff iphones? Apple has around 20% marketshare in a sector that they invented. Many companies actively copy Apples designs, like Xiaomi, who has around 10% now. And it is not about the impact on the businesses, we, as a species, need a lot less manufacturing and therfore businesses. The drive to make profit carries things like planned obsolence and tiered development (like in electronics, where often times big advances in consumer tech are possible but the companies earn way more if they make small improvements every year for five years).
> They rip off the little guy because they know they can get away with it. And that’s the problem. IP law stopped protecting smaller companies a long time ago. Who do you think benefits more from copyright lasting life + 70 years, the indie author/game studio, or Disney? It doesn’t matter if you have a patent, trademark, or copyright if a larger org can just tie up the case in the courts until you run out of money, and they know that so they abuse the current system.
Yes, but this influence in IP law stuff is only a symptom of companies having enough influence to shape legislation, jursidiction and executive power. Since money rules everything and they got the most, they can do whatever the fuck pleases them. And your IP law changes will not do much there, even if comes through in a non-tampered-with way. Big companies and the super rich are abusing the current system in general.
importing
I think this website is interesting since it compares CO2 emissions by a number of metrics, like manufacturing vs transportation, type of fuel, etc.
The US’ biggest polluting sources (i.e. market sector) are energy and transportation (i.e. 100% domestic), and manufacturing/construction and industry come in fourth and seventh (I.e. offset from imports). China’s top four are energy, manufacturing/construction, industry, and transportation. So that makes sense, they’re an export-heavy country. But if we take a closer look at fuel source, the US is drastically reducing use of coal and leveling off use of oil (replacing largely with natural gas it seems), whereas China is growing in both, and very quickly.
So as China needs more energy, they seem to be building more coal plants. As the US needs more energy, they seem to be replacing coal with natural gas.
Apple has around 20% marketshare in a sector that they invented
They didn’t invent it, they claim they did, but Palm and Blackberry existed before iPhone.
Regardless, designs aren’t covered by copyright, but by design patents, and those have very limited enforcement, especially for something like a phone where they all kinda look the same. Basically, you need to try to pass your device off as another in order for it to reliably trigger.
Big companies… are abusing the system
Agreed, which is why we need a concerted effort to take back control of the legislative process. IP law reform is one such effort, and it would be a huge blow to large companies.
I stopped reading when you made up the word “oversimplificated”.
English is a foreign language for me. Which languages do you speak?
Mainly I’m objecting to the “I stopped reading at…” thing. I generally find Doctorow’s work and activism to be good quality.
Well, I have limited time and happen to know what the microchip crisis was actually about. If he makes this the introduction of his article, he really should try to be more factual and less simplyfing. It sends a signal what to expect from the rest of the article. If have since then skimmed over the article and found some complaints about big tech that I share but in absolutly no way anything that could make things better nor a concise explanation.
And he gets stuff wrong all the time.:
- His depiction of capitlism as something where you create value and get rewarded vs feudalism where you own stuff and get rewarded is fundamentally screwed. How does he think John Rockefeller made his fortune? By refining oil? Well, I’m pretty sure he never in his live refined even one barrel of crude oil. How did Howard Hughes made his fortune? Making something valuable is for some (some also skip this through inheritance) the first step of becoming a super rich. The next step is always letting others (or even your money) work for you, give them less than they deserve and take more than you need.
- Companies trying to maximise profits and being not consumer friendly is no thing that was born in the information age. Already the light bulb had planned obsolence, food safety regulations haven’t always existed so people literally died because some companies liked producing cheaper more than having healthy costumers, tons of highly addictive drugs were sold to people with various claims, most of the time without medical evidence. Consumer protection is a thing that emerged from people fighting for it, and in the end, becoming law. Why this extra step with questionable effects when we could just say: “corporations have to ensure that they’re products are made in a way so they last as long as possible plus must provide ways to repair them really cheap and if anyone fails to comply their company gets taken away by the state”?
It seems to me that he is so much brainwashed by capitalist propaganda that he refuses to call capitalism a broken system despite him decribing it as a broken system but with a different name.
To me the feudalism vs. capitalism idea refers to an emphasis on inheritance and low mobility between financial/social classes. Capitalism doesn’t have to work the way it does now in the US, but alas, this is how it is now. Sure, it sucked 100 years ago also, but it’s getting steadily worse.
I really don’t think Doctorow is brainwashed by capitalist propaganda. He has steadily and consistently opposed the excesses and abuses of the system.
It only gets worse from there.
Funny how imaginary trust systems somehow “killed” imaginary property. Maybe someone could expedite the meaning of this essay into my brain (I seem to have misplaced my Word Salad-to-English dictionary).
Maybe someone could expedite the meaning of this essay into my brain (I seem to have misplaced my Word Salad-to-English dictionary).
The “meaning” if it can even be called that is just a really unhinged rant hating on the fact that cars have computers in them despite seemingly having zero understanding of automobile design, consumer market research, or economics.
There’s a lot of BS in there, but here’s my takeaway:
IP law protects large organizations and limits competition
For example, if I want to make an arcade cabinet, I need to get permission from all of the rights holders of each game, even if those games aren’t available for sale today. If copyright expired after a reasonable time (say, 5-10 years), I could make competitive products.
Another example is that if I buy a movie, I cannot legally buy tools to break the encryption to make a backup. So if my disk breaks, I’m SOL and need to buy another. So I do not truly own the thing I bought.
Or for the example of cars, if I buy a car today that has hardware for heating my seats, I cannot use those seat warmers unless I pay to unlock them. I cannot do that because the company owns the IP for the system to enable it and I have to pay to access that closed system. If they didn’t have such strong protections, I could buy cracked software to break whatever stupid encryption they have.
And so on. I think the comparison with feudalism is silly (this is different, though if you squint it’s related), but I see that as largely SEO and rage-baiting.
The real argument is useful, and here’s my takeaway:
- we should fight for the right to repair, but realize it’s a distraction from the real fight we should be having, rich is:
- we should fight to fix IP laws to encourage more competition in the marketplace; if there’s enough competition, companies will need to make better products instead of just suing competition into the ground
Yeah, but fixing IP law is a much more broad problem than computers and cars, and is honestly approached much more cleanly through the lens of basically anything else it applies to in the consumer market. Because frankly, cars are not only one of the least user-serviceable items people own simply due to complexity and price, but also the truly bad practices are honestly pretty narrow in scope, with most people not driving cars that have the aforementioned user-facing issues.
It also doesn’t really help that the article leads with an utterly uninformed and reductive summary of the chip shortage and goes on to complain that an integrated GPS system… has access to it’s own location.
And don’t get me wrong, IP law is a massive issue, and you’ll be hard pressed to find me defending it as it exists, but this article is just a terrible argument against it. The strongest point are the links to other people making better arguments.
Cars are absolutely user-serviceable. I do pretty much all of my own maintenance, and I’m not all that mechanically inclined, I just watch YouTube videos and follow along. All you need is a set of wrenches and screwdrivers and you can do most regular repairs.
It’s a lot easier imo to do most car repairs than replace a phone screen imo. With a screen repair, you need finesse with a heat gun and be careful with ribbon cables.
The problem with modern cars and phones though isn’t the Inherent complexity, but the artificial complexity from vendors locking things down. As in, they pair components cryptographically and it’s illegal to distribute tools for profit that break that encryption. If they provided the tools to pair components, it wouldn’t be an issue, but they hide behind IP and DMCA protections, which essentially locks you into their service.
That’s kind of what the article was getting at imo. Vendors are finding new ways to lock you in instead of retaining you with a better product. So companies are trying to get the benefits of being a monopoly through technical and legal means.
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My favorite part of the internet (aside from porn) is that there’s exactly zero obstacles in the way of people posting their unhinged schizo rants for everyone to read.
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It’s a turn of phrase. Cool your tits.
It really isn’t.
