Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#31

Post by zoobab »

like_any_other wrote: post #6
palata wrote: post #2

> What would be better is for the countries to break the monopolies of the US tech giants by making it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak, and modify American products and services. Let companies jailbreak Teslas and deliver all of the features that ship in the cars, but are disabled by software, for one price; that is a much better way to hurt Elon Musk, rather than by expressing outrage at his Nazi salutes, since…

> making it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak, and modify American products and services It's amazing that merely learning about how items that we own work (so-called "reverse-engineering") and exercising control over them (jailbreaking - this time the term is apt) has been made illegal. A heinous overreach by corporations into the lives of people that own their products, and a ridiculous expansion of IP rights -…

"a ridiculous expansion of IP rights - as if patents weren't enough"

Expanding patents to software, in Europe they replaced the 2005 software patent directive by the Unified Patent Court, which will ignore the exclusion of 'computer programs', like the EPO did, with no way for the question to be escalated to the CJEU:

https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-has-an-eu-treaty-legal...

Multinational corporations also became part time judges, because rubberstamping software patents is easier when you can also corrupt the judicial system:

https://ffii.org/nokia-and-airbus-elected-as-judges-at-the-k...

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#33

Post by ikr678 »

keiferski wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate that he is continuing to use the term enshittification, because that pretty much guarantees that no serious academic, legal scholar, or politician is going to engage with these ideas publicly. Which is a shame, as many of the solutions here are explicitly legal ones. Words and names matter, especially when it comes to political actions.

I think that's a bit of projection on your part, not everyone is scared of naughty words. It was the Australian word of the year in 2024 and appears in our senate hearing transcripts.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#34

Post by octo888 »

bootsmann wrote: post #16
whinvik wrote: post #8

> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card debt, especially if some of that is delinquent, the amount offered is reduced. "Because, the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come into work and do that grunt work of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying." I think this should be mad…

It's really funny to me that with both the AI act and GDPR, you will see swathes of threads of people on HN bashing the law only to then later discover the purpose of this legislation from first principles.

The same could come to Europe (lowballing broke people), because you can just make employees give their consent by baking it into all employment contracts. Just like the working time directive opt-out (HR say "take it or leave it" to 99.9% of people).

It probably already happens where it's already acceptable to request financial checks such as the finance industry.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#35

Post by flir »

keiferski wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate that he is continuing to use the term enshittification, because that pretty much guarantees that no serious academic, legal scholar, or politician is going to engage with these ideas publicly. Which is a shame, as many of the solutions here are explicitly legal ones. Words and names matter, especially when it comes to political actions.

Value engineering. When you can't grow by selling more widgets, your only real choice is to make (almost) the same thing, but cheaper.

But Cory's a polemicist. He'd absolutely prefer the memorable word he coined himself to the acceptable, drab one that already exists.

(Plus value engineering is only one way to enshittify a product. There's also subscription models, selling data, jamming ads in everywhere... the advantage of Cory's word is that it captures everything).

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#36

Post by keiferski »

ikr678 wrote: post #33
keiferski wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate that he is continuing to use the term enshittification, because that pretty much guarantees that no serious academic, legal scholar, or politician is going to engage with these ideas publicly. Which is a shame, as many of the solutions here are explicitly legal ones. Words and names matter, especially when it comes to political actions.

I think that's a bit of projection on your part, not everyone is scared of naughty words. It was the Australian word of the year in 2024 and appears in our senate hearing transcripts.

It has nothing to do with my own personal opinion on vulgar words. It's a basic understanding of how the political system works.

The name of a political movement matters. Always has, always will. It's no different for adjacent concepts that describe a phenomenon the movement is organizing against.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#38

Post by phrotoma »

keiferski wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate that he is continuing to use the term enshittification, because that pretty much guarantees that no serious academic, legal scholar, or politician is going to engage with these ideas publicly. Which is a shame, as many of the solutions here are explicitly legal ones. Words and names matter, especially when it comes to political actions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#39

Post by komali2 »

keiferski wrote: post #36
ikr678 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit of projection on your part, not everyone is scared of naughty words. It was the Australian word of the year in 2024 and appears in our senate hearing transcripts.

It has nothing to do with my own personal opinion on vulgar words. It's a basic understanding of how the political system works. The name of a political movement matters. Always has, always will. It's no different for adjacent concepts that describe a phenomenon the movement is organizing against.

I disagree that your personal opinion isn't tainting your perspective. You presume that this name negatively affects the political movement opposed to enshittification - even when faced directly with the fact that sovereign governments are engaging seriously with the term.

Is Australia not big enough to count?

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#40

Post by philipallstar »

aredox wrote: post #24
whinvik wrote: post #8

> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card debt, especially if some of that is delinquent, the amount offered is reduced. "Because, the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come into work and do that grunt work of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying." I think this should be mad…

Well, you wanted a "free enterprise" society, why do you complain now? Isn't that freedom? Of expression, of commerce, of association... ...Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist ?

> Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

If you were in a communist country you are definitely worried about the power asymmetry, and rushing to go to West Germany or just out of the USSR, or to the USA from Cuba or out of pre-capitalist China if you could.

Post reply on HN