Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #CFAA
Most recents (7)
This week on my #podcast, I read #Twiddler, a recent @Medium column in which I delve more deeply into #enshittification, and how it is a pathology of digital platforms, distinct from the rent-seeking of the analog world that preceded it:
doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9… 1/
doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/kno… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/kno… 2/
Enshittification, you'll recall, is the lifecycle of the online platform: first, the platform allocates #surpluses to end-users; then, once users are locked in, those surpluses are taken away and given to business-customers. 3/
#Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-#PasswordSharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger @netflix's automated enforcement mechanisms:
thestreamable.com/news/confirmed… 1/
thestreamable.com/news/confirmed… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/non… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/non… 2/
Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same "#household" to share an account. 3/
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.
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Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.
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In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.
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Just so it’s crystal clear for all to hear. I stand with #JulianAssange as he greatly suffers & suffocates in a UK prison with his very life in jeopardy from the predations of State power — while way too many still spout & shout out gov’t allegations against him as inviolate. 1/6
I know what it’s like to risk one’s life & liberty & experience pathological & vindictive vice grip of State power as I was framed, indicted by US under draconian Espionage Act & labeled as a self-radicalized Insider Threat, then sentenced & went free under a #CFAA plea deal. 2/6
Why? Becuz I blew whistle as duty to warn on deep abyss of StateSecrecy & in public interest as press source reporting on harm & abuse of normalized psychopathic NatSecState power, violations of law & rise turn-key technocratic tyranny for societal surveillance & control ends 3/6
After more than a year of investigations, House Dems have produced a 450-page report on market concentration in the tech industry, with a slate of findings that are obvious and long overdue, and a slate of recommendations that are simultaneously traditional and radical.
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Start with the findings: the market is concentrated and the companies preserve their monopolistic standing with anitcompetitive tactics:
* Apple's App Store stranglehold raises prices and transfers money from creators to the company
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* Apple's App Store stranglehold raises prices and transfers money from creators to the company
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* Google preferences its own services in search results
* Facebook buys companies for predatory reasons, to snuff out potential future competition threats
* Amazon rips off its sellers and engages in predatory pricing
wired.com/story/congress…
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* Facebook buys companies for predatory reasons, to snuff out potential future competition threats
* Amazon rips off its sellers and engages in predatory pricing
wired.com/story/congress…
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US lawmaking has a distinctive failure mode: because of the Constitution's absolute language and extensive jurisprudence, lawmakers can please their base by enacting bad, overreaching or stupid laws and then hope the courts will narrow or overturn them before they detonate.
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This moral hazard is not evenly distributed: if you are the party that decries "activist judges" and campaigns on the idea that governments are bad at everything, then enacting bad laws and then having them overturned serves your cause especially well.
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On a totally different subject, let's talk about Ronald Reagan. After Reagan saw Matthew Broderick's classic technothriller WAR GAMES, he became convinced that America needed a far-reaching cybercrime bill, something Fed prosecutors had been demanding for years.
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Lately, I've been talking about how monopolization in the tech sector has been attended in a rise of defensive legal tools to prevent new competitors from "disrupting" the firms that gained dominance through disruption (the golden age for pirates who become admirals)
Here's a good concrete example: when Uber and Lyft walked away from Austin, TX (a tantrum over drivers being regulated like taxi drivers), the drivers formed a co-op and cloned the rideshare app: @ride_austin
Ride is just fuckin' great. Seriously. It works exactly like Uber and Lyft, but the drivers get an extra 25% -- the share that would normally be siphoned off for Uber/Lyft's shareholders.
