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Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

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Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#71

Post by subjectsigma »

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 hate the name too, it has this distinct Toys R’ Us feel to it. It makes Doctorow seem like a petulant baby, even though his general message is sound. And every time I see Doctorow mentioned there’s at least one comment saying it’s a bad name. People criticized RMS for years for using terms like “iCrap”, etc. but for some reason Doctorow is allowed to do this

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#72

Post by aitchnyu »

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.

15 years back, I was subscribed to EU official blog which presents their side of tabloid headlines like "Overpaid French suits want to ban blue stickers on only freckled apples". Did they publish ones for AI Act and GDPR, especially as more countries elect manly commonsense billionaire sympathizers?

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#73

Post by rwmj »

Mindwipe wrote: post #60
like_any_other wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of circumvention and reverse-engineering bans is not remotely "copyright law". It is restoring basic ownership rights to our own property.

You would effectively have to exit all international copyright law treaties to do so, which is defacto removing any international recognition of copyright for works from your country.

Not really. A digital lock is not a creative endeavour in the same way we think of books or records.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#74

Post by komali2 »

keiferski wrote: post #41
komali2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Is that the argument? I understood your argument to mean that the term "enshittification" is holding back the movement because nobody will use it. As others are saying, I don't think there's any issue people take with some drop-in term being used if actual laws are passed discussing the topic.

Plenty of movements involving vulgar language, however, did result in laws being passed - "Fuck the Draft" comes to mind, the attitude surrounding which led to the draft ending (after all, why else would it end?), but also was a central fixture in a supreme court ruling that furthered defined 1st amendment rights in the USA.

So again, I just don't understand how one intellectual describing one aspect of the digital rights movement could negatively impact the movement as a whole, which I interpret as your argument.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#75

Post by like_any_other »

Mindwipe wrote: post #60
like_any_other wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of circumvention and reverse-engineering bans is not remotely "copyright law". It is restoring basic ownership rights to our own property.

You would effectively have to exit all international copyright law treaties to do so, which is defacto removing any international recognition of copyright for works from your country.

Copyright is covered by the Berne convention, which prohibits neither circumvention nor reverse-engineering, so even in this "what you're proposing couldn't easily be done without also doing this other thing, so I'm going to pretend you've proposed that other thing also, but I won't say so explicitly" interpretation, that is not true.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#76

Post by hoseja »

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…

You do realize that US still enjoys its cryptohegemony. CIA surely has a lot of levers to ensure uppity euros don't undermine profits.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#77

Post by rwmj »

Mindwipe wrote: post #59
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…

> That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA. > The answer is tariffs, it seems. No it isn't. Like literally, the US and it's tariff madness has literally nothing to do with it. The EU and Canada are both signatories to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and signatories of the WTO provisions that include continued operation to it. They are international treaties with a wide degree…

Because of course we can never change international treaties.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#78

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #48
komali2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#79

Post by keiferski »

komali2 wrote: post #74
keiferski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What laws have been passed that explicitly use vulgar words in their names? Is that the argument? I understood your argument to mean that the term "enshittification" is holding back the movement because nobody will use it. As others are saying, I don't think there's any issue people take with some drop-in term being used if actual laws are passed discussing the topic. Plenty of movements involving vulgar language,…

The argument is:

There is a phenomenon that is very clearly happening. Doctorow and others use a vulgar term to describe this phenomenon.

Because this vulgar term is used, it limits the ability of lawmakers, academics, and other "serious" people to care about, discuss, or pass laws that aim to address this phenomenon.

As an analogy: imagine if the concepts of inequality or social injustice were primarily described by a vulgar term. Instead of discussing, "democratic backsliding" or "failure of democracy" we said "democracy shit the bed." This would limit the range of the critique, which if one is interested in actually solving the issue, is an immensely impractical move.

Re: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

#80

Post by whinvik »

sneak wrote: post #58
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…

Why should it be illegal? Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market. An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch. Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.

To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.
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