Pluralistic: Autoenshittification (24 July 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Best. Of. Cory Doctorow’s essays (with sh*t i had no idea about)

  • @[email protected]English
    -3•1 year ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•1 year ago

      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.