I met @mala on 9/11/01, at a surreal dinner we pressed on with despite (or really, because of) the intense terror of the day. He was wearing a t-shirt from NTK, his seminal digital newsletter, bearing its slogan: "THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK"

1/ EFF's 'public interest internet' illustration: a 2.5-D gamel
Online culture has its roots in a strange swirl of hobbyists, the military, corporate misfits fooling around with their employers' vast computer labs and students and academics dabbling in the early digital world.

2/
It was no garden of Eden. There was plenty of fighting and plenty of difference, but there was, despite it all, a sense of mission: a collegial urgency to build a commons that would be part of the digital world that everyone could use.

3/
Right from the start, there was a sense that this commons was wonderful and fragile, facing a remorseless enclosure movement that would turn all our collective work into someone's private, rent-generating preserve.

4/
It's been 20 years since I met Danny, and the enclosure is well underway. Danny - who's been warning us about stolen revolutions and fighting to steal them back since last century - has now embarked on a wonderful series of essays for @eff on the subject.

5/
These essays are grouped under the banner of the "#PublicInterestInternet," EFF's equivalent to @EthanZ's "digital public infrastructure" @hanaschank's "public interest technology," the @EU's "public stack" and @elipariser's "New Public."

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

6/
Despite decades of sustained assault, the Public Interest Internet is still with us and still vital, from the @internetarchive to @wikipedia to @creativecommons to the vast array of #FLOSS projects. Any effort to rein in Big Tech must not destroy these vital commons.

7/
Danny: "When Big Tech is long gone, a better future will come from the seed of this public interest internet: seeds that are being planted now, and which need everyone to nurture them."

8/
Danny's published two case studies so far. The first, "The Enclosure of the Public Interest Internet," recounts how early film enthusiasts migrated from Usenet's rec.arts.movies to the volunteer-maintained and hosted Cardiff Movie Database.

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

9/
You probably haven't heard of the Cardiff Movie Database, but you've certainly heard of @imdb, the Amazon-owned system it turned out, privatizing the hard work of public-spirited volunteers and turning it into the exclusive preserve of a digital monopolist.

10/
IMDB shows us how volunteers' passion projects can turn into someone else's private concern, but as Danny writes, this isn't inevitable. From @wikimedia to @openstreetmap, public interest projects have shown how to resist enclosure

11/
The next installment is "Outliving Outrage on the Public Interest Internet: the CDDB Story." The first great volunteer music metadata database became the private property of Nielsen.

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

12/
But the volunteer love of music is alive and well: from gnudb to @MetaBrainz, public interest music metadata - a necessity for finding, enjoying, and paying for music - has resisted enclosure.

13/
The next installment - still forthcoming - deals with the thorny question of how you finance a commons.

There's always someone who wants to steal the revolution. But there's always a rebel alliance who'll fight to steal it back.

eof/
ETA - If you'd like an unrolled 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/2021/05/17/dis…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @doctorow

18 May
"What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?" That's the question @brainwane set out to answer in her @github talk earlier this week - a talk that considers #FLOSS in the broadest possible terms and still makes specific, concrete proposals.

harihareswara.net/sumana/2021/05…

1/ The title-card from Sumana ...
Harihareswara starts with the obvious proposition that "open source" can't be healthy if the programmers who create it aren't healthy, and draws a link between basic income, child care and universal health care and the health of open source.



2/
She also points out that the "health" of open source has been systematically poisoned by harassment, misogyny and racism, and names people who were driven out of OSS because of their gender and race - as well as people like @aaronsw, hounded to death by the FBI.

3/
Read 12 tweets
18 May
Bruce Schneier coined "feudal security" to describe the dominant Big Tech security model, in which you surrender your autonomy by moving into a warlord's fortress (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc) and in return get protection from the bandits that roam the badlands without.

1/ A medieval tapestry illustr...
The historian Stephen Morillo pointed out that this is more like "manorialism" than "feudalism." As I wrote in January, digital manorialism works well (if the warlord wants the same thing as you) but fails badly (if they decide to sell you out).

locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-d…

2/
Google wants to kill third party cookies to protect you from randos doing tracking and targeting - but it wants to retain the ability to nonconsensually track and target you on its own:

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

3/
Read 20 tweets
18 May
Last Jan, @NorthwellHealth was the subject of a viral @nytimes story about the thousands of patients it had sued over medical debt, in the midst of a pandemic. The publicity was so bad that the company abandoned its legal campaign of terror.

nytimes.com/2021/01/05/nyr…

1/ A comic-book drawing of a giant grim reaper bringing down a
But not every bloated, financialized hospital chain got the message. The massive chain Community Health Systems has long been addicted to suing the shit out of its patients, and the pandemic didn't change that.

edition.cnn.com/2021/05/17/us/…

2/
CHS's financial crimes are investigated in a must-read @CNN story by @caseytolan. While the company insists that it doesn't sue poor patients over their medical debts, Tolan debunks this claim, revealing the cruel and ugly lengths CHS has gone to during the pandemic.

3/
Read 25 tweets
18 May
A truism in security is "attribution is hard." It's really hard to know who hacked you, first, because it's easy to deflect suspicion by leaving false clues, and second, because the bar for hacking even big, critical systems is so low.

1/ The Windows keyboard selection dialog.
The ransomware epidemic has been raging for years now, and it's quite a tangle. It includes idiots who download (or pay for) some off-the-shelf malware and turn it loose on whatever systems they can find, who don't even know WHO they've hacked.

2/
It includes sophisticated crime-gangs with high degrees of specialization: tooling, payment processing, even "customer service" for victims who can't figure out how to buy cryptocurrency to pay their ransoms.

3/
Read 18 tweets
17 May
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Paygo, false consciousness and the IRS; The Public Interest Internet; Concluding How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/dis…

#Pluralistic

1/
This Weds (5/19), I'm doing a talk called "Seize the Means of Computation," at the Ryerson Centre for Free Expression:

cfe.ryerson.ca/events/how-des…

And on Thu (5/20), I'm doing a keynote called "Privacy Without Monopoly," for the Northsec conference:

nsec.io/speaker/cory-d…

2/
Paygo, false consciousness and the IRS: Why we can't have nice things.



3/
Read 18 tweets
17 May
This week on my podcast, the seventh and final part of my serialized reading of my 2020 @ozm book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, a book arguing that monopoly – not AI-based brainwashing – is the real way that tech controls our behavior.

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

1/ The cover of One/Zero/Medium's paperback edition of 'How to
The book is available in paperback:

bookshop.org/books/how-to-d…

and DRM-free ebook :

sowl.co/bm2F7c

and my local bookseller, @darkdel, has signed stock that I'll drop by and personalize for you!

darkdel.com/store/p2024/Av…

2/
Here's the podcast episode:

craphound.com/nonficbooks/de…

And here's part one:

craphound.com/nonficbooks/de…

And part two:

craphound.com/nonficbooks/de…

And part three:

craphound.com/nonficbooks/de…

2/
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(