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Best. Of. Cory Doctorow’s essays (with sh*t i had no idea about)
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think that is the reason people are shifting to the right. Here are a few other takes:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed, which is why we need a concerted effort to take back control of the legislative process.
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.:
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.