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Each day hyperlinks from Cory Doctorow

Each day hyperlinks from Cory Doctorow

2023-08-02 12:34:18




My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.

My subsequent e book is The Web Con: The best way to Seize the Technique of Computation: it is a Large Tech disassembly guide that explains how one can disenshittify the net and convey again the outdated good web. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, however the audiobook comes from me – as a result of Amazon refuses to promote my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When Its Gone

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require obligatory DRM for each e book bought, locking these books endlessly to Amazon’s monopoly platform. When you break up with Amazon, you need to throw away your whole audiobook library.

That is a hell of numerous leverage handy to any firm, not to mention a rapacious monopoly that ran a program concentrating on small publishers referred to as “Mission Gazelle,” the place execs had been ordered to assault indie publishers “the way in which a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow's sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly

I will not promote my work with DRM, as a result of DRM is essential to the enshittification of the web. Enshittification is why the outdated, good web died and have become “5 big web sites full of screenshots of the opposite 4” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech firm can lock in its customers and suppliers, it will probably drain worth from either side, utilizing DRM and different lock-in gimmicks to maintain their enterprise whilst they develop ever extra depressing on the platform.

Right here is how platforms die: first, they’re good to their customers; then they abuse their customers to make issues higher for his or her enterprise prospects; lastly, they abuse these enterprise prospects to claw again all the worth for themselves. Then, they die:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI

The Web Con is not simply an evaluation of the place enshittification comes from: it is a detailed, shovel-ready coverage prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing again the outdated, good web.

How can we try this? With interoperability: the power to plug new know-how into these crapulent, decaying platform. Interop helps you to select which components of the service you need and block the components you do not (consider how an adblocker helps you to take the take-it-or-leave “supply” from a web site and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

However interop is not nearly making platforms much less horrible – it is an explosive cost that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you may go away a social media service, however hold speaking to the individuals who keep. With interop, you may go away your cellular platform, however carry your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you may break up with Amazon, and nonetheless hold your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so nice, why is not it all over the place?

Nicely, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft grew to become the dominant working system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one's better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That's The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine
It is how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious marketing campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Each tech big used interop to develop, after which each tech big promptly rotated and attacked interoperators. Each pirate desires to be an admiral. When Large Tech did it, that was progress; if you do it again to Large Tech, that is piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly energy to make interop with out permission unlawful, making a sort of “felony contempt of enterprise mannequin” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Web Con describes how this got here to cross, however, extra importantly, it tells us how one can repair it. It lays out how we will mix completely different sorts of interop necessities (just like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Proper to Restore regulation) with protections for reverse-engineering and different guerrilla ways to create a system that’s robust with out being brittle, exhausting to cheat on and simple to implement.

What’s extra, this e book explains how to get these insurance policies: what present legislative, regulatory and judicial powers may be invoked to make them a actuality. As a result of we live by the Nice Enshittification, and crises erupt each ten seconds, and when these crises happen, the “good concepts mendacity round” can transfer from the fringes to the middle in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL

In spite of everything, we have recognized Large Tech was rotten for years, however we had no concept what to do about it. Each time a Large Tech colossus did one thing ghastly to thousands and thousands or billions of individuals, we tried to repair the tech firm. There isn’t any fixing the tech firms. They should burn. The best way to make customers secure from Large Tech predators is not to make these predators behave higher – it is to evacuate these customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I have been campaigning for human rights within the digital world for greater than 20 years; I have been EFF’s European Director, representing the general public curiosity on the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. That is the topic I’ve devoted my life to, and I stay my rules. I will not let my books be bought with DRM, which implies that Audible will not carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this resolution has value me sufficient cash to repay my mortgage and put my child by school. That is a value I am prepared to pay if it implies that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

However not promoting on Audible has one other value, one which’s extra essential to me: a lot of readers choose audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of these readers begin and finish their searches on Audible. Once they do not discover an writer there, they assume no audiobook exists, interval. It received so unhealthy I put up an audiobook on Amazon – me, studying an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It is referred to as “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly profitable, each financially and as a way of getting different outstanding authors to interrupt up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the hole. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim day-after-day as physio for a continual ache situation, and I hearken to 2-3 books/month on my underwater MP3 participant, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull backwards and forwards in my public pool. I can get these audiobooks on my MP3 participant because of Libro.fm, a DRM-free retailer that helps indie booksellers all around the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my very own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like Wil Wheaton, Amber Benson, Neil Gaiman and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

However for this title, I made a decision that I’d learn it myself. In spite of everything, I have been podcasting since 2006, studying my very own work aloud each week or so, whilst I traveled the world and gave 1000’s of speeches concerning the topic of this e book. I used to be excited (and somewhat trepedatious) on the prospect, however how may I cross up an opportunity to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everybody from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went again to these each day recordings totally ready to hate them, however they had been good – even nice (particularly after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Hear for your self!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you may think about backing this Kickstarter. When you’ve ever learn my free, open entry, CC-licensed weblog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one in all my talks and wished there was a option to say thanks, that is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, whilst audiobooks develop extra central to a author’s revenue and whilst a single firm takes over almost all the audiobook market.

Backers can select from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free e book (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover – together with a signed, personalised possibility, fulfilled by the good LA indie bookstore E-book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s extra, these ebooks and audiobooks are not like any you may get anyplace else as a result of they’re bought with none phrases of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, if you purchase these books, they’re yours, and you’re allowed to do something with them that copyright regulation permits – give them away, lend them to mates, or just learn them with any know-how you select.

As with my earlier Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps individuals who battle with “sideloading,” a course of that Apple and Google have made progressively more durable, whilst they drive audiobook and e book sellers handy over a 30% app tax on each greenback they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting each layer of the tech stack: cellular, funds, internet hosting, social, supply, playback. Each tech firm is pulling the rug out from beneath us, utilizing the chokepoints they constructed between audiences and audio system, artists and followers, to select all of our pockets.

The Web Con is not only a lament for the web we misplaced – it is a plan to get it again. I hope you may get a duplicate and share it with the individuals you’re keen on, even because the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.




A Wayback Machine banner.

#20yrsago Linksys utilizing GPLed code, not releasing modifications https://web.archive.org/web/20031008144210/http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3580

#15yrsago Public Information’s “Selectable Output Management” video https://publicknowledge.org/soc-in-context/

#10yrsago Google flips on web neutrality: all pirates wish to be admirals https://www.wired.com/2013/07/google-neutrality/

#10yrsago Cyber-crooks mail heroin to Brian Krebs https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/07/mail-from-the-velvet-cybercrime-underground/

#5yrsago Chicago’s ‘Aloha Poke Co’ desires Hawaiians to cease utilizing the phrases ‘aloha’ and ‘poke’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2018/07/30/a-midwestern-chain-told-hawaiians-to-stop-using-aloha-with-poke-igniting-a-heated-debate

#5yrsago Koch thinktank inadvertently proves that America would save trillions by switching to socialized medication https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/30/koch-funded-hit-piece-backfires-shows-medicare-all-would-save-whopping-2-trillion

#5yrsago FDA warns firms: cease promoting quack “vaginal rejuvenation,” provides, “Individuals, please don’t do that to yourselves” https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/dont-try-to-rejuvenate-your-vagina-the-fda-warns-after-scolding-companies/

#5yrsago The more serious your city was hit by austerity, the extra seemingly you had been to vote for Brexit https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/381-2018_fetzer.pdf

#5yrsago Trump desires handy a $100,000,000,000 tax minimize to the super-rich, with out Congressional approval https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/us/politics/trump-tax-cuts-rich.html

#5yrsago The paradox of fine authorities: the very best stuff works properly and is thus unnoticeable (and subsequently straightforward to dump) https://www.wired.com/story/the-danger-of-invisible-government-deeds/



At this time’s high sources:

Presently writing:

Newest podcast: Let the Platforms Burn: The Reverse of Good Fires is Wildfires https://craphound.com/news/2023/07/16/let-the-platforms-burn-the-opposite-of-good-fires-is-wildfires/

Upcoming appearances:

Latest appearances:

Newest books:

Upcoming books:

  • The Web Con: A nonfiction e book about interoperability and Large Tech, Verso, September 2023
  • The Misplaced Trigger: a post-Inexperienced New Deal eco-topian novel about fact and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023


This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed beneath a Artistic Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Meaning you should utilize it any manner you want, together with commercially, offered that you just attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and embody a hyperlink to pluralistic.web.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and pictures aren’t included on this license; they’re included both beneath a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the premise of a separate license. Please train warning.


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When life offers you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Man” DeVilla



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