8 ms·

“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.” Doctorow never uses this word, but the dynam

“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.” Doctorow never uses this word, but the dynamic he describes — where tech companies, rather than try to keep customers by offering good products, prefer to keep customers by making it impossible for them to leave — is fundamentally abusive. The entire essay is a detailed explanation of the ways that tech companies exploit and abuse their customers and society as a whole, but he never uses those words. I’m in agreement — they are abusive; they are exploitive; they are preying upon society and need to be regulated — but it’s odd that he doesn’t use the words.

onethought 6y ago
So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? I don’t quite buy the leap that “software companies being exploitative” is at all related to “protecting IP through the use of copyright”. Cory does not link the two successfully in my mind.
- NobodyNada 6y ago
  > Books do the same thing Huh? If I have a book, I can lend it to a friend, sell it on eBay, or even put it in a library where thousands of people can read it for free. If I "own" a book on a Kindle, I can do none of those things -- and if our corporate overlords decide they don't want me to read that book anymore, then they can remotely remove it from my device, even if I paid for it [0]. The abuse is that DRM is being weaponized to criminalize fair use and other consumer rights that copyright law otherwise would not give corporations authority over -- and because of DMCA 1201, it is illegal to work around DRM even for fair-use purposes. In fact, DRM does next to nothing to prevent piracy, as evidenced by the thriving piracy "industry" today. Every DRM system can eventually be bypassed, somehow -- there has to be some way to decrypt the content, otherwise I wouldn't be able to watch it. It's akin to putting up a "no stealing" sign outside my house -- sure, it means that thieves are technically trespassing now -- but they were already breaking the law to begin with and no flimsy little sign is going to stop them. It could be argued that DRM only makes piracy more enticing, because consumers can use pirated content in completely normal, fair-use ways that are blocked by DRM. As Doctorow explains in the article, DRM was never about protecting copyright, it's about protecting monopolies. DRM means I can only watch a movie with an approved web browser on an approved operating system on an approved computer using an approved cable to connect to an approved monitor, and that I can only repair a tractor at an approved tractor dealership. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
  - onethought 6y ago
    In your book example... I don’t think you can (legally) redistribute your book. It’s just publishers don’t really care if you do, because cost of enforcement is too high. That’s why they like kindles. Software used to be like this too, back when it was distributed as a physical thing (disks). DRM was about protecting copyright, your book/kindle example was a perfect illustrator of that. But I agree, it has been weaponised and misused.
    - namibj 6y ago
      You can't distribute copies of the book (outside of limited exceptions). First Sale doctrine says you can pretty much do whatever you want with the physical item.
      - onethought 6y ago
        Huh, I wasn’t familiar with that (again another US nuance to Copyright). This isn’t globally accepted.
        fabianhjr 6y ago
        It is globally accepted. There are many community libraries throughout the world that consist on a small shelf on a sidewalk where people leave books for others and take the ones they are interested in. https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/
        dmurray 6y ago
        And plenty of used bookstores, who do the same thing commercially and generally don't even get nasty letters from publishers.
        onethought 6y ago
        No it isn’t. As law. It might be accepted as practice. They are different.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  If you read the essay in full, you’d see that he distinguishes between copyright laws meant to encourage authorship and what is currently meant under the “IP umbrella,” which is more about protecting monopoly power.
  - onethought 6y ago
    Yes, he does conflate a bunch of behaviour into IP. But that’s just his conflation. Monopolistic practices exist with or without IP laws, terms of service, etc. Take a look at some other industries: energy companies have protected fossil fuel exploitation and stifled research and adoption of nuclear and green alternatives. Finance industry have maintained monopoly and avoided regulation despite there being obvious harm to their practice. These behaviours are related to capitalism... not intellectual property.
    - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
      It really seems you haven’t read the essay. He does not conflate them; he distinguishes between them, at length. I encourage you to read it.
      - onethought 6y ago
        Frustrating that you'd seek to just undermine my knowledge on it rather than honestly assess my point. But I'll play: - He intros by talking about copyright, DRM, terms of use, etc - Then jumps to the fact that Opioid companies try to hook you with addiction, just like Facebook. (So what's that got to do with Copyright, DRM, Terms of use?) - Then hints at network effects of "How can you leave Facebook if all your friends are there?" (What's that got to do with anything?) - Then he talks about service lock-in which again has nothing to do with Intellectual Property. You are locked in to all sorts of things in your life as a consumer, that is a capitalistic practice the fact that software companies use IP as the way to pull the lock-in lever is kind of secondary to the point isn't it? Isn't the main point: Why do we accept lock-in at all? (Again he's conflated these, not separates them) - He talks about Copyright like it's just the US... so what about GDPRs "Right to data portability?", that's the beginning of inter-op. Or Countries copyright exceptions for interop purposes? No mention of those. So not only has he conflated Monopolistic tendencies with IP, he then conflates "Global IP laws" with "US IP law"... which misrepresents the vast majority of the world. As I've mentioned in other comments, in the country I live in: there is no such thing as "Fair Use", you are allowed to copy things for certain protected reasons, and people can't even bring a case against you for those reasons (A subtle but important difference). - Lets take the kindle example where he says (paraphrase) "Amazon have locked you in, and you are breaking the law if you attempt to undo it"... Well what if I live in a country that allows me the right to reverse engineer for the purposes of inter-op? I can (legally) hack that kindle to pieces... Now they might make that really hard, or even impossible... In a similar way that Oil companies have depressed the EV market and made it WAY harder to own an EV to an ICE... But IP isn't getting in the way here.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? If by "books" you mean "copyright on books, as enforced against people rather than corporations[0]", then yes, yes 'they' are. 0: Nitpick: legal action against a corporation for printing something by request from a particular customer is legal action against that customer, the same as if you'd prosecuted 15'000$ that you stole from their car for being drug money.
  - onethought 6y ago
    So on books (copyright) then, what is the alternative?
- the_af 6y ago
  > So he is referring to copyright. Doctorow is referring to IP, which he explicitly claims is a mix of unrelated terms under an arbitrary umbrella, only one of which is copyright. IP also groups trademarks & patents, which are unrelated to copyright. He also explains how each part of the so-called IP laws used to have an escape hatch, something that was useful to society at large even though the "owner" would prefer it didn't exist. And how, given the trend towards concentration of money and consolidation of monopolistic actors, these escape hatches are being eroded. > Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? There's copyright for books, sure. But nothing else applies. I can resell books. I can quote them (with some restrictions, such as not quoting the entire book). I can lend them to whomever I choose. I can read them upside down. I can cut them up, I can pick a page and analyze its chemical composition. I can do all sorts of things that, when books turn into digital goods, their publishers make an effort to prevent me from doing -- making it effectively and practically illegal to try to bypass their arbitrary restrictions.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > do you find books abusive as well? Book publishers certainly can be. Copyright enables them.
b0rsuk 6y ago
Maybe he counts on the reader to connect the dots?
bscphil 6y ago
If you're willing to connect the dots in this way, where anything that gives you legal authority to control the conduct of others (competitors, critics, customers) in specific ways is "abusive", then you should realize that this sort of argument is very easily extended, because that's exactly what all property does. Intellectual property is the right to say how others are allowed to use an abstract thing that belongs to you. Ordinary property is the right to say how others are allowed to use a physical thing that belongs to you. It's effectively the same concept, just extended. Of course, it doesn't immediately follow from either physical property or intellectual property that it will be abused in the way Doctorow describes (by "keeping customers by making it impossible for them to leave"), but it certainly could be. For example, suppose a relatively small number of individuals or companies owned most of the land, and most of the industrial machinery, and all the investment capital - then everyone else would have to go work for them, and produce whatever the property owners wanted to produce, instead of what they wanted to make for themselves. Someone might describe such a dynamic as fundamentally abusive in exactly the same way that intellectual property is.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  No. The ability to abuse comes specifically from power imbalances, and that’s what we need to take into account when designing policy. This is something that can’t be explicitly enumerated in all cases, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed. We do have anti-trust law for a reason (even if it hasn’t been enforced).
  - zepto 6y ago
    What power imbalances are you thinking of in the case of tech companies?
    - feanaro 6y ago
      A single company owning and having their fingers in everything from search engines, operating systems, phone and laptop hardware, self-driving cars, payment platforms, online shopping platforms, cloud computing platforms and a myriad of other things. I'm of the opinion no single entity should be allowed to be in control of so many things.

onethought 6y ago

So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? I don’t quite buy the leap that “software companies being exploitative” is at all related to “protecting IP through the use of copyright”. Cory does not link the two successfully in my mind.

NobodyNada 6y ago
> Books do the same thing Huh? If I have a book, I can lend it to a friend, sell it on eBay, or even put it in a library where thousands of people can read it for free. If I "own" a book on a Kindle, I can do none of those things -- and if our corporate overlords decide they don't want me to read that book anymore, then they can remotely remove it from my device, even if I paid for it [0]. The abuse is that DRM is being weaponized to criminalize fair use and other consumer rights that copyright law otherwise would not give corporations authority over -- and because of DMCA 1201, it is illegal to work around DRM even for fair-use purposes. In fact, DRM does next to nothing to prevent piracy, as evidenced by the thriving piracy "industry" today. Every DRM system can eventually be bypassed, somehow -- there has to be some way to decrypt the content, otherwise I wouldn't be able to watch it. It's akin to putting up a "no stealing" sign outside my house -- sure, it means that thieves are technically trespassing now -- but they were already breaking the law to begin with and no flimsy little sign is going to stop them. It could be argued that DRM only makes piracy more enticing, because consumers can use pirated content in completely normal, fair-use ways that are blocked by DRM. As Doctorow explains in the article, DRM was never about protecting copyright, it's about protecting monopolies. DRM means I can only watch a movie with an approved web browser on an approved operating system on an approved computer using an approved cable to connect to an approved monitor, and that I can only repair a tractor at an approved tractor dealership. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
- onethought 6y ago
  In your book example... I don’t think you can (legally) redistribute your book. It’s just publishers don’t really care if you do, because cost of enforcement is too high. That’s why they like kindles. Software used to be like this too, back when it was distributed as a physical thing (disks). DRM was about protecting copyright, your book/kindle example was a perfect illustrator of that. But I agree, it has been weaponised and misused.
  - namibj 6y ago
    You can't distribute copies of the book (outside of limited exceptions). First Sale doctrine says you can pretty much do whatever you want with the physical item.
    - onethought 6y ago
      Huh, I wasn’t familiar with that (again another US nuance to Copyright). This isn’t globally accepted.
      - fabianhjr 6y ago
        It is globally accepted. There are many community libraries throughout the world that consist on a small shelf on a sidewalk where people leave books for others and take the ones they are interested in. https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/
        dmurray 6y ago
        And plenty of used bookstores, who do the same thing commercially and generally don't even get nasty letters from publishers.
        onethought 6y ago
        No it isn’t. As law. It might be accepted as practice. They are different.
stonecraftwolf 6y ago
If you read the essay in full, you’d see that he distinguishes between copyright laws meant to encourage authorship and what is currently meant under the “IP umbrella,” which is more about protecting monopoly power.
- onethought 6y ago
  Yes, he does conflate a bunch of behaviour into IP. But that’s just his conflation. Monopolistic practices exist with or without IP laws, terms of service, etc. Take a look at some other industries: energy companies have protected fossil fuel exploitation and stifled research and adoption of nuclear and green alternatives. Finance industry have maintained monopoly and avoided regulation despite there being obvious harm to their practice. These behaviours are related to capitalism... not intellectual property.
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    It really seems you haven’t read the essay. He does not conflate them; he distinguishes between them, at length. I encourage you to read it.
    - onethought 6y ago
      Frustrating that you'd seek to just undermine my knowledge on it rather than honestly assess my point. But I'll play: - He intros by talking about copyright, DRM, terms of use, etc - Then jumps to the fact that Opioid companies try to hook you with addiction, just like Facebook. (So what's that got to do with Copyright, DRM, Terms of use?) - Then hints at network effects of "How can you leave Facebook if all your friends are there?" (What's that got to do with anything?) - Then he talks about service lock-in which again has nothing to do with Intellectual Property. You are locked in to all sorts of things in your life as a consumer, that is a capitalistic practice the fact that software companies use IP as the way to pull the lock-in lever is kind of secondary to the point isn't it? Isn't the main point: Why do we accept lock-in at all? (Again he's conflated these, not separates them) - He talks about Copyright like it's just the US... so what about GDPRs "Right to data portability?", that's the beginning of inter-op. Or Countries copyright exceptions for interop purposes? No mention of those. So not only has he conflated Monopolistic tendencies with IP, he then conflates "Global IP laws" with "US IP law"... which misrepresents the vast majority of the world. As I've mentioned in other comments, in the country I live in: there is no such thing as "Fair Use", you are allowed to copy things for certain protected reasons, and people can't even bring a case against you for those reasons (A subtle but important difference). - Lets take the kindle example where he says (paraphrase) "Amazon have locked you in, and you are breaking the law if you attempt to undo it"... Well what if I live in a country that allows me the right to reverse engineer for the purposes of inter-op? I can (legally) hack that kindle to pieces... Now they might make that really hard, or even impossible... In a similar way that Oil companies have depressed the EV market and made it WAY harder to own an EV to an ICE... But IP isn't getting in the way here.
a1369209993 6y ago
> So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? If by "books" you mean "copyright on books, as enforced against people rather than corporations[0]", then yes, yes 'they' are. 0: Nitpick: legal action against a corporation for printing something by request from a particular customer is legal action against that customer, the same as if you'd prosecuted 15'000$ that you stole from their car for being drug money.
- onethought 6y ago
  So on books (copyright) then, what is the alternative?
the_af 6y ago
> So he is referring to copyright. Doctorow is referring to IP, which he explicitly claims is a mix of unrelated terms under an arbitrary umbrella, only one of which is copyright. IP also groups trademarks & patents, which are unrelated to copyright. He also explains how each part of the so-called IP laws used to have an escape hatch, something that was useful to society at large even though the "owner" would prefer it didn't exist. And how, given the trend towards concentration of money and consolidation of monopolistic actors, these escape hatches are being eroded. > Books do the same thing, do you find books abusive as well? There's copyright for books, sure. But nothing else applies. I can resell books. I can quote them (with some restrictions, such as not quoting the entire book). I can lend them to whomever I choose. I can read them upside down. I can cut them up, I can pick a page and analyze its chemical composition. I can do all sorts of things that, when books turn into digital goods, their publishers make an effort to prevent me from doing -- making it effectively and practically illegal to try to bypass their arbitrary restrictions.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> do you find books abusive as well? Book publishers certainly can be. Copyright enables them.

b0rsuk 6y ago

Maybe he counts on the reader to connect the dots?

bscphil 6y ago

If you're willing to connect the dots in this way, where anything that gives you legal authority to control the conduct of others (competitors, critics, customers) in specific ways is "abusive", then you should realize that this sort of argument is very easily extended, because that's exactly what all property does. Intellectual property is the right to say how others are allowed to use an abstract thing that belongs to you. Ordinary property is the right to say how others are allowed to use a physical thing that belongs to you. It's effectively the same concept, just extended. Of course, it doesn't immediately follow from either physical property or intellectual property that it will be abused in the way Doctorow describes (by "keeping customers by making it impossible for them to leave"), but it certainly could be. For example, suppose a relatively small number of individuals or companies owned most of the land, and most of the industrial machinery, and all the investment capital - then everyone else would have to go work for them, and produce whatever the property owners wanted to produce, instead of what they wanted to make for themselves. Someone might describe such a dynamic as fundamentally abusive in exactly the same way that intellectual property is.

stonecraftwolf 6y ago
No. The ability to abuse comes specifically from power imbalances, and that’s what we need to take into account when designing policy. This is something that can’t be explicitly enumerated in all cases, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed. We do have anti-trust law for a reason (even if it hasn’t been enforced).
- zepto 6y ago
  What power imbalances are you thinking of in the case of tech companies?
  - feanaro 6y ago
    A single company owning and having their fingers in everything from search engines, operating systems, phone and laptop hardware, self-driving cars, payment platforms, online shopping platforms, cloud computing platforms and a myriad of other things. I'm of the opinion no single entity should be allowed to be in control of so many things.