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

41–50 of 138 posts

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#41

Post by keiferski »

komali2 wrote: post #39
keiferski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What laws have been passed that explicitly use vulgar words in their names?

Plenty of terms are used in senate hearing transcripts. Hearings are a completely different thing from actual laws being passed.

As I said, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the government operates.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#42

Post by komali2 »

keiferski wrote: post #20
piva00 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academics are completely free to rebrand the naming if they need to sound more pompous and serious, the semantics are the same.

It has nothing to do with being pompous, and this attitude is precisely why none of these solutions will ever go anywhere. If you want laws to be passed, you need senators and judges and legal scholars to engage with your ideas. None of those people are going to take the idea of “enshittification” seriously with a name like that, nor are they going to put their name on a bill referencing it. There are plenty of examp…

The easiest answer to your point here is "says who?"

Seriously, can you back up this claim?

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#43

Post by actionfromafar »

octo888 wrote: post #34
bootsmann wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could try, but that would most likely be illegal and also fought tooth and nail by unions, which aren't as neutered as American unions. In Europe, sympathy strikes aren't Verboten like in the US.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#44

Post by tgv »

bambax wrote: post #27

The article is very long; that part is fascinating and a fantastic suggestion: > Europe and Canada have passed strong right-to-repair legislation, but those efforts ""have been hamstrung by the anti-circumvention laws"" (like the DMCA). (...) That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA. > The answer is tariffs, it seems. The US trade representative has long threatened count…

There already are alternative app stores for iOS and Android. They don't seem to do well. There's no "flocking."

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#45

Post by schnitzelstoat »

bambax wrote: post #27

The article is very long; that part is fascinating and a fantastic suggestion: > Europe and Canada have passed strong right-to-repair legislation, but those efforts ""have been hamstrung by the anti-circumvention laws"" (like the DMCA). (...) That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA. > The answer is tariffs, it seems. The US trade representative has long threatened count…

I agree with him that the retaliatory tariffs don't make much sense but equally basically throwing out copyright law would be crazy, as the US would likely respond in kind and it'd probably hurt Europe more in the long run.

They should stop the anti-competitive practices that prevent third-party app stores and so on though.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#46

Post by croes »

octo888 wrote: post #34
bootsmann wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would violate privacy laws. They could put it into the contract but they would be void

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#47

Post by krzyk »

tgv wrote: post #44
bambax wrote: post #27

The article is very long; that part is fascinating and a fantastic suggestion: > Europe and Canada have passed strong right-to-repair legislation, but those efforts ""have been hamstrung by the anti-circumvention laws"" (like the DMCA). (...) That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA. > The answer is tariffs, it seems. The US trade representative has long threatened count…

There already are alternative app stores for iOS and Android. They don't seem to do well. There's no "flocking."

So the inevitable end of the world that Apple App store apologists predicated didn't happen.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#48

Post by keiferski »

komali2 wrote: post #42
keiferski wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with being pompous, and this attitude is precisely why none of these solutions will ever go anywhere. If you want laws to be passed, you need senators and judges and legal scholars to engage with your ideas. None of those people are going to take the idea of “enshittification” seriously with a name like that, nor are they going to put their name on a bill referencing it. There are plenty of examp…

The easiest answer to your point here is "says who?" Seriously, can you back up this claim?

Sure - take a look at every major piece of legislation passed in the last century. Notice anything about their names? The Patriot Act. The New Deal. They are all pretty "positive" names without any sort of vulgarity or negative connotation.

Then also notice the total lack of major legislation with vulgar, offensive, or immature words in the name.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#49

Post by krzyk »

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

Is anywhere in EU reverse-engineering, jailbreaking, and modifying any products illegal?

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#50

Post by patapong »

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 agree with this - beyond the sound of the term, it is also not very obious in what it refers to. In the beginning, it was used with a very specific meaning, of platforms squeezing market participants on both sides. Now, it seems to have come to refer to all instances of online services getting worse and more user-hostile over time. Dare I say, enshittification of the term enshittification?
Post reply on HN