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I find this kind of funny since I've always associated Doctorow with the EFF and the big tech-funded campaign to undermine copyright so Big Tech wouldn't need t

I find this kind of funny since I've always associated Doctorow with the EFF and the big tech-funded campaign to undermine copyright so Big Tech wouldn't need to share any revenues with the authors, artists and publishers. It was even hilarious at times when this crew was demonizing the so called "big publishers" even when Google, Yahoo and the rest of Big Tech were worth 10-100 times as much on the stock market. Cory-- this is the world you built.

rektide 3y ago
This is a willldddd take, that deeply mischaracterizes the EFF. There's a ton of places where EFF & Big Tech don't line up. Glomming them together & saying they all are trying to wreck content creators is a severe misdeed. I do think the EFF does have an anti-IP platform, but it is directed very strongly at software patents & DRM, systems which firewall tech from humanity & technocratically enforce consumerdom, create the inflexibility that permits this capture.
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  DRM is anti-copyright. For Doctorow and the EFF, encryption is good when a person uses it but bad if a publisher uses it. The EFF was built by Big Tech to help support the wild, piracy-friendly growth of the Intertubes. All of the stances taken by Doctorow were anti-artist-rights because they got in the way of Big Tech making money.
rcktmrtn 3y ago
To me, he definitely does symbolize the same, though I don't think it's fair to pin all the blame on him. People make mistakes and there are a lot of factors in play. Also, to Doctorow's credit I do think releasing through creative commons and touting remix culture is admirable. That said, holding onto the scrappy tech-rebel free internet idealizer persona of early 2010s is just silly today, and those who do it look like fools. You can't just treat the fact that the big tech companies "went bad" as an incidental that can be fixed. The implicit promise of the early internet idealizers was that big tech companies were good because they were tech companies and that big copyright holders were bad because they were IP owners. This has been proven ridiculous. I think now is the time for honest people who idealized the internet needs to take a few big steps back and reexamine their premises more deeply than just whinging about needing regulation for "big tech" so we can get back to our anarchist cyberpunk future and start giving some more respect to the people who they considered backwards ten years ago for not being excited about the newest shiny thing.

rektide 3y ago

This is a willldddd take, that deeply mischaracterizes the EFF. There's a ton of places where EFF & Big Tech don't line up. Glomming them together & saying they all are trying to wreck content creators is a severe misdeed. I do think the EFF does have an anti-IP platform, but it is directed very strongly at software patents & DRM, systems which firewall tech from humanity & technocratically enforce consumerdom, create the inflexibility that permits this capture.

xhkkffbf 3y ago
DRM is anti-copyright. For Doctorow and the EFF, encryption is good when a person uses it but bad if a publisher uses it. The EFF was built by Big Tech to help support the wild, piracy-friendly growth of the Intertubes. All of the stances taken by Doctorow were anti-artist-rights because they got in the way of Big Tech making money.

rcktmrtn 3y ago

To me, he definitely does symbolize the same, though I don't think it's fair to pin all the blame on him. People make mistakes and there are a lot of factors in play. Also, to Doctorow's credit I do think releasing through creative commons and touting remix culture is admirable. That said, holding onto the scrappy tech-rebel free internet idealizer persona of early 2010s is just silly today, and those who do it look like fools. You can't just treat the fact that the big tech companies "went bad" as an incidental that can be fixed. The implicit promise of the early internet idealizers was that big tech companies were good because they were tech companies and that big copyright holders were bad because they were IP owners. This has been proven ridiculous. I think now is the time for honest people who idealized the internet needs to take a few big steps back and reexamine their premises more deeply than just whinging about needing regulation for "big tech" so we can get back to our anarchist cyberpunk future and start giving some more respect to the people who they considered backwards ten years ago for not being excited about the newest shiny thing.