Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/
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Going to #Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," today (Aug 12) at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!
https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826
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Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States: The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act protects the people who need it least.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110876807189638595
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Cory Doctorow's linkblog (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image The vast majority of America's debt collection targets $500-2,000 credit card debts. It is a filthy business, operated by lawless firms who hire unskilled workers drawn from the same economic background as their targets, who routinely and grotesquely flout the law, but only when it comes to the people with the *least* ability to pay. 1/
Hey look at this
* How #Fanatics Is Building a Weird #Monopoly Over Sports #TradingCards https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-fanatics-is-building-a-weird
* How to Move Your Instagram Feed to #Pixelfed, the Photo App That Doesn't Track Your Every Move https://www.wired.com/story/migrate-move-instagram-to-pixelfed-no-tracking-fediverse/
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#20yrsago #Ultima’s economic indicators http://www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/2003_08_01_playmoney_archive.html#106022990884580908
#15yrsago #TrafficCams bring in $250,000/month in a town with a $4.6 million budget https://web.archive.org/web/20080813150522/https://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/47592.html
#15yrsago #WalMart: you can’t scan century-old photos of your ancestors because copyright lasts forever https://www.flickr.com/groups/100_years_old/discuss/72157594167106526/
#15yrsago Janes in Love: #GraphicNovel is a call-to-art for young people https://memex.craphound.com/2008/08/12/janes-in-love-graphic-novel-is-a-call-to-art-for-young-people/
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#10yrsago #NYPD #StopAndFrisk procedure ruled unconstitutional https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html
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#10yrsago Podcast of “Metadata – a wartime drama” https://ia600704.us.archive.org/28/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_255/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_255_Metadata_A_Wartime_Drama.mp3
#10yrsago Jimmy Wales: #Wikipedia won’t surveil users for China https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-DGB-28426
#5yrsago The eminently hackable police #bodycam https://www.wired.com/story/police-body-camera-vulnerabilities/
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Yesterday's threads: The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110871883425734524
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Cory Doctorow's linkblog (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/ #Pluralistic 1/
My latest book is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!
Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US):
and Forbidden Planet (UK):
https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/
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My latest nonfiction book is Chokepoint Capitalism (with Rebecca Giblin), nonfiction about monopoly and fairness in creative labor markets.
https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Signed copies available from Book Soup:
https://www.booksoup.com/book/9780807007068
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #SanDiego Union Tribune Festival of Books, Aug 19
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks
* #BurningMan Center Camp, 1430h, Aug 29
https://playaevents.burningman.org/2023/playa_events/03/
* @eff Awards (#SanFrancisco), Sept 14
https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023
* An Evening with #VESchwab (#DesMoines), Oct 2
https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab
* 26th #ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (#Minneapolis), Oct 16
https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/
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Festival of Books 2023
The San Diego Union-Tribune’s 7th Annual Festival of Books will be held on August 19 presented by the University of San Diego. The Festival of Books, hosted on the University of San Diego campus, is an event for book lovers of all ages. Attendees will enjoy workshops, activities, photo booths, live entertainment, discussions with award-winning authors and more.
Recent appearances:
* New Books Network
https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-internet-con
* #HauntedMansion #GhostPost Panel Live From #MidsummerScream
https://dizneycoasttocoast.libsyn.com/haunted-mansion-ghost-post-panel-live-from-midsummer-scream-disney-podcast-episode-1027
* how big tech makes the internet worse (What's Gonna Happen)
https://www.stitcher.com/show/what-s-gonna-happen/episode/how-big-tech-makes-the-internet-worse-with-cory-doctorow-305645071
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You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/
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If you're a @medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.
My latest Medium column is "Fool Me Twice We Don't Get Fooled Again: There's a crucial difference between federatable and federated"
https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f
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I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To #SeizeTheMeansOfComputation," a #BigTech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It's a #DRMFree book, which means #Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:
http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org
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John Francis@pluralistic nice "snowball" photo reference 🙂
@johnefrancis Here's my sliced/layered cutup of the original for your remixing pleasure: craphound.com/images/beaten-princetonians.xcf
Chris BussardBack when I practiced law in NYC, I did consumer bankruptcy, along with some debt collection defense and FDCPA stuff too. So this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I've got some thoughts. Oh yes I do.
First and foremost, Mr. McKenzie seems not to understand something of **really critical importance**: The harassment calls and the eventual lawsuit are largely operating on independent tracks. Stopping the calls may give great psychic relief, but it doesn't stop the sue-sue train that's coming down the tracks. If you don't do something about *that* then one day you're going to wake up to a frozen bank account.
For this reason, I'm concerned about the impression readers may take away from a "paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States" tone. Often that's not the case, and believing that dealing with the calls fully deals with the problem can set someone up for a terrible surprise.
(continues...)
(continued)
Second thought: No, the FDCPA is not a particularly robust protective law. It was back in the 70s when $1000 automatic statutory damages really stung. (That's about $5000 in today's money.) But that number isn't indexed to inflation and all efforts to get Congress to update it have failed. (I'll give you one guess which party opposes that.) Today, paying out on the occasional FDCPA suit is just a cost of doing business that doesn't deter future violations. At all. Mr. McKenzie is spot-on that having every call center employee violating the FDCPA multiple times per minute is the industry standard business practice.
Congress could do much good with little effort simply by updating the dollar amounts and adding an index-to-inflation provision in the FDCPA and other 70s-era consumer protection laws (e.g., FCRA).
(continues)
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Third thought: You might have noticed that earlier I skipped over the lawsuit and went straight to "wak[ing] up to a frozen bank account." It's time to add a new phrase to your lexicon: "sewer service." In every jurisdiction where they can get away with it, debt collection attorneys utilize process servers who don't serve the summons and complaint, then file a perjured affidavit saying they did. *That* is how they achieve such high rates of default judgments. And how they blindside debtors with frozen bank accounts. Nothing in the world is so miserably desperate as discovering your bank account is frozen, but your rent is due, and your next paycheck is direct deposit, and getting the court to set aside the default will take days.
(The term "sewer service" comes from the figurative(?) image of the process server sliding the papers down a sewer drain.)
Google (or, better yet, SearXNG) for Pfau v. Forster and Garbus.
(continues)
(continued)
[edit: Fourth though seems to have gotten lost from the thread somehow. Oh well..]
Fifth thought: I don't think Mr. McKenzie correctly understands what stops collection calls and what doesn't.
All you need to do is send the collector a "fuck off" letter invoking 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(c) by certified mail with wet-ink return receipt required. (Make sure to include the certified mail label number in the body of the letter and to transfer the small sticker to the return receipt.) That's it. They will stop calling. (However, as I said before, they may still sue. And that's a bigger problem.)
I believe that getting onto the "litigious debtor" scrub list requires actually filing a FDCPA suit. I don't think frustrating a particular collector by standing on your rights in the ways Mr. McKenzie suggests will be sufficient to get you onto an industry-wide blacklist.
(continues)
(continued)
While you can and should demand verification in the form of photostatic copies of all the original wet-ink documents, that isn't particularly effective except as a way of signaling that interacting with you is a FDCPA lawsuit waiting to happen. There's case law to the effect that a simple letter/e-mail from the original creditor saying "yup, that account's correct." is all the collector needs to obtain. Having done that, they are free to continue harassing you with collection calls.
And, let me reiterate again, stopping the calls does not stop the impending lawsuit.
If anyone's interested in listening to my interminable blather any further, I could go on about what you can do about the impending lawsuit, but I think I've written enough for one day.
Bex Markwick@pluralistic can't wait! And I have a tiny fish for you - hoping to have a quick catch up but I reckon you'll be mobbed 😂
@infobex Dawww! What a cutie! See you soon.
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️@pluralistic ANy idea if videos of it will be made available?
@Blort I believe all talks end up on the Defcon YouTube channel
Strypey@pluralistic
> I believe all talks end up on the Defcon YouTube channel
Any chance of putting them on PeerTube as well?
@strypey @pluralistic It seems that conf.tube would be an ideal instance for this, given that it's specifically for conference talks...
@pluralistic
> Not my call
Of course. But sometimes casual suggestions can plant seeds. Such a seed is going to have a *much* higher chance of germinating at DefCon if planted by someone of your stature, than if it comes from random fed-heads like us : )
@pluralistic Cool! Thanks! I wonder if they might be talked into creating a #Peertube channel one day 🤔 (or some other non #GAFAM option, at least...)
Anand R@pluralistic I discovered the FDCPA some 10-15 years ago when I got a debt collection notice out of the blue for a debt I was sure I didn't owe. I made the mistake of calling them before reading about it. But the mistake was easily rectified by sending a letter telling them to stop calling me and only correspond in writing. Since then, I've realized that the even better thing to do is just throw debt collection notices in the recycling. It's (usually) too low value for the collectors to care.
@pluralistic When people are unfairly charged for something, they end up paying eventually because they don't have the time or the energy to fight it and they don't want it to affect their credit score (gasp!). I try telling them that they should refuse to pay any debt that they don't owe and it will work out fine, but the threat of the credit score hangs heavy over all of us.
Matt@anand @pluralistic sending the letter is the best thing but I always loved saying “I don’t owe that let me look at my records” and then taking a walk or something. Usually they were so desperate to keep contact with someone who didn’t just hang up they’d wait.
Waste more time of theirs than the debt is worth before telling them I’m not paying because I don’t owe it and good luck collecting (so many times it’s so old they can’t even sue).