I was *supposed* to be on vacation, and while I didn't do any blogging for a month, that didn't mean that I stopped looking at my distraction rectangle and making a list of things I wanted to write about. Consequentially, the link backlog is *massive*, so it's time to declare bankruptcy with another #linkdump:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/15/in-the-dumps/#what-vacation
2/
Let's kick things off with a little graphic whimsy. You've doubtless seen the endless #TrolleyProblem memes, working from the same crude line drawings? Well, philosopher John Holbo got tired of that artwork, and he whomped up a fantastic alternative, which you can get as a poster, duvet, sticker, tee, etc:
https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/145078097
3/
The trolley problem has been with us since 1967, but it's enjoying a renaissance thanks to the insistence of "#AI" weirdos that it is very relevant to our AI debate. A few years back, you could impress uninformed people by dropping the Trolley Problem into a discussion:
Amazingly, the "AI" debate has only gotten *more* tedious since the middle of the past decade.
4/
But every now and again someone gets a #StochasticParrot to do something genuinely delightful, like the #JollyRogerTelephoneCompany, who sell chatbots that pretend to be tantalyzingly confused marks in order to tie up telemarketers and waste their time:
https://jollyrogertelephone.com/
Jolly Roger sells different personas: "Whitebeard" is a confused senior who keeps asking the caller's name, drops nonsequiturs into the conversation, and can't remember how many credit-cards he has.
5/
"Salty Sally" is a single mom with a houseful of screaming, demanding children who keep distracting her every time the con artist is on the verge of getting her to give up compromising data. "Whiskey Jack" is drunk:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-hire-phone-bots-to-torture-telemarketers-2dbb8457
The bots take a couple minutes to get the sense of the conversation going. During that initial lag, they have a bunch of stock responses like "there's a bee on my arm, but keep going," or grunts like "huh," and "uh-huh."
6/
The bots keep telemarketers and scammers on the line for a long time. #Scambaiting is an old and honorable vocation, and it's received a massive productivity gain from automation. This is the #AIDividend I dream of.
The less-fun AI debate is the one over artists' rights and tech. I am foresquare for the artists here, but I think that the preferred solutions (like creating a new copyright over the right to train a model with your work) will not lead to the hoped-for outcome.
7/
As with other copyright expansions - 40 years' worth of them now - this right will be immediately transferred to the highly concentrated media sector, who will simply amend their standard, non-negotiable contracting terms to require that "training rights" be irrevocably assigned to them as a condition of working.
8/
The real solution isn't to treat artists as atomic individuals - LLCs with an MFA - who bargain, B2B, with corporations. Rather, the solutions are in collective power, like unions. You've probably heard about the #SAGAFTRA actors' strike, in which creative workers are bargaining as a group to demand fair treatment in an age of generative models. SAG-AFTRA president #FranDrescher's speech announcing the strike made me want to stand up and salute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4SAPOX7R5M
9/
Hollywood actors formally went on strike after negotiations between their union and motion picture studios collapsed, a serious blow for the entertainment in...
The actors' strike is historic: it marks the first time actors have struck since 2000, and it's the first time actors and *writers* have co-struck since 1960. Of course, writers in Writers Guild of America (west and east) have been picketing since since April, and one of their best spokespeople has been @adamconover, a WGA board member who serves on the negotiating committee.
10/
Conover is best known for his stellar #AdamRuinsEverything comedy-explainer TV show, which pioneered a technique for breaking down complex forms of corporate fuckery and making you laugh while he does it. Small wonder that he's been so effective at conveying the strike issues while he pickets.
11/
Writing for #Jacobin, #AlexNPress profiles Conover and interviews him about the strike, under the *excellent* headline, "Adam Pickets Everything." Conover is characteristically funny, smart, and incisive - do read:
https://jacobin.com/2023/07/adam-conover-wga-strike
Of course, not everyone in Hollywood is striking. In late June, the #DGA accepted a studio deal with an anemic 41% vote turnout:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23773926/dga-amptp-new-deal-strike
12/
They probably shouldn't have. In this interview with *#TheAmericanProspect*'s #PeterHong, the brilliant documentary director #AmyZiering breaks down how #Netflix and the other streamers have rugged documentarians in a classic #enshittification ploy that lured in filmmakers, extracted everything they had, and then discarded the husks:
https://prospect.org/culture/2023-06-21-drowned-in-the-stream/
13/
Now, the streaming cartel stands poised to all but kill off documentary filmmaking. Pressured by Wall Street to drive high returns, they've become ultraconservative in their editorial decisions, making programs and films that are as similar as possible to existing successes, that are unchallenging, and that are *cheap*. We've gone directly from a golden age of docs to a dark age.
In a time of monopolies, it's tempting to form countermonopolies to keep them in check.
14/
Yesterday, I wrote about why the #FTC and #LinaKhan were right to try to block the #MicrosoftActivision merger, and I heard from a lot of people saying this merger was the only way to check #Sony's reign of terror over video games:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion
But replacing one monopolist with another isn't good for anyone (except the monopolists' shareholders). If we want audiences and workers - and society - to benefit, we have to *de-monopolize* the sector.
15/
Last month, I published a series with @eff about how we should save the #news from #BigTech:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech
After that came out, the *EU Observer* asked me to write up version of it with direct reference to the #EU, where there are a lot of (in my opinion, ill-conceived but well-intentioned) efforts to pry Big Tech's boot off the news media's face. I'm really happy with how it came out, and the header graphic is *awesome*:
https://euobserver.com/opinion/157187
16/
Download this whole series as a single PDF.Media is in crisis: newsrooms all over the world are shuttering and the very profession of journalism is under sustained ideological and physical assault. Freedom of the press is a hollow doctrine if the only news media is written or published by...
De-monopolizing tech has become my life's work, both because tech is foundational (tech is how we organize to fight over #labor, #gender and #race equality, and #ClimateJustice), and because tech has all of these *technical* aspects, which open up new avenues for shrinking Big Tech, without waiting decades for traditional #antitrust breakups to run their course (we need these too, though!).
17/
I've written a book laying out a shovel-ready plan to give tech back to its users through #interoperability, explaining how to make new regulations (and reform old ones), what they should say, how to enforce them, and how to detect and stop cheating. It's called "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation" and it's coming from #VersoBooks this September:
https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con
18/
I just got my first copy in the mail yesterday, and it's a gorgeous little package. The timing was great, because I spent the whole week in the studio at #SkyboatMedia recording the audiobook - the first audiobook of mine that I've narrated. It was a fantastic experience, and I'll be launching a #Kickstarter to presell the #DRMFree audio and ebooks as well as hardcovers, in a couple weeks.
18/
Though I like doing these crowdfunders, I do them because I *have* to. #Amazon's #Audible division, the monopolist that controls >90% of the #audiobook market, refuses to carry my work because it is DRM-free. When you buy a DRM-free audiobook, that means that you can play it on *anyone's* app, not just Amazon's.
19/
Every audiobook you've ever bought from Audible will disappear the moment you decide to break up with Amazon, which means that Amazon can absolutely *screw* authors and audiobook publishers because they've taken our customers hostage.
If you are unwise enough to pursue an #MBA, you will learn a term of art for this kind of market structure: it's a "#moat," that is, an element of the market that makes it hard for new firms to enter the market and compete with you.
20/
#WarrenBuffett pioneered the use of this term, and now it's all but mandatory for anyone launching a business or new product to explain where *their* moat will come from.
As #DanDavies writes, these "moats" aren't really moats in the Buffett sense. With Coke and Disney, he says, a "moat" was "the fact that nobody else could make such a great product that everyone wanted." In other words, "making a good product," is a great moat:
https://backofmind.substack.com/p/stuck-in-the-moat
21/
But making a good product is a lot of work and not everyone is capable of it. Instead, "moat" now just means some form of lock in. Davies counsels us to replace "moat" with:
> our subscription system and proprietary interface mean that our return on capital is protected by a strong Berlin Wall, preventing our customers from getting out to a freer society and forcing them to consume our inferior products for lack of alternative.
22/
I really like this. It pairs well with my 2020 observation that the fight over whether "IP" is a meaningful term can be settled by recognizing that IP has a precise meaning in business: "Any policy that lets me reach beyond the walls of my firm to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers":
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
23/
To see how that works in the real world, check out "The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy," a magisterial piece of scholarship from #SarahLamdan, #JasonSchultz, #MichaelWeinberg and #ClaireWoodcock:
https://www.nyuengelberg.org/outputs/the-anti-ownership-ebook-economy/
> Something happened when we shifted to digital formats that created a loss of rights for readers. Pulling back the curtain on the evolution of ebooks offers some clarity to how the shift to digital left ownership behind in the analog world.
24/
The research methodology combines both anonymous and named sources in publishing, bookselling and librarianship, as well as expert legal and economic analysis. This is an eminently readable, extremely smart, and really useful contribution to the scholarship on how "IP" (in the modern sense) has transformed books from something you own to something that you can *never* own.
25/
The truth is, capitalists hate capitalism. Inevitably, the kind of person who presides over a giant corporation and wields power over millions of lives - workers, suppliers and customers - believes themselves to be uniquely and supremely qualified to be a wise dictator. For this kind of person, competition is "wasteful" and distracts them from the important business of making everyone's life better by handing down unilateral - but wise and clever - edits.
26/
@pluralistic We do not buy e-books. Although some have said so we do not rent them either.
We lease them. And on terms where the freeholder can revoke our lease without compensation at any moment.
That freeholder is not the author and not even the publisher but the retailer. In most cases Amazon.
Cory Doctorow
Matthew Malthouse
Änn Euing 📜