Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 20, 2021 22 tweets 17 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons; The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/viz…

#Pluralistic

1/
The paperback for Attack Surface - a standalone Little Brother book for adults - is out!

us.macmillan.com/books/97812507…

Signed copies:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

One-month only audiobook sale with Little Brother and Homeland:

sowl.co/uqT2G

2/
Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons: Software Freedom Conservancy realizes the dream of "Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement."



3/
The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars: The victory condition isn't highest profits, it's market dominance.



4/
#15yrsago Boy Scouts shill for MPAA with copyright merit badge web.archive.org/web/2006111006…

#10yrsago Canadian Tories admit that Canadians don’t want DRM rules, push for them anyway hollywoodreporter.com/business/busin…

5/
#5yrsago Turing’s law: UK to retroactively pardon thousands of men prosecuted for having sex with men bbc.com/news/uk-377115…

#5yrsago By stealing from innocents, Chicago PD amassed tens of millions in a secret black budget for surveillance gear chicagoreader.com/news-politics/…

6/
#5yrsago Turkish court fines bystander/tourist who sued police for shooting out his eye hurriyetdailynews.com/kyrgyz-tourist…

#5yrsago Montana judge unrepentant after sentencing man to 60 days for repeatedly raping his own 12 year old daughter edition.cnn.com/2016/10/19/us/…

7/
#1yrago Cadillac perfects the murdermobile pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the…

#1yrago Feds gouge states, subsidize corporations pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the…

8/
Yesterday's threads: The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin; and more!



9/
My latest book is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books, now in paperback, wherever books are sold.

Signed copies at @darkdel:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

One-month, $30 audiobook bundle with all three Little Brother books:

sowl.co/uqT2G

10/
My book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is a critique of Big Tech connecting conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies (proposing a way to deal with both) is now out in paperback:

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

Signed copies here:
darkdel.com/store/p2024/Av…

11/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

craphound.com/shop/

12/
Upcoming appearances:

* From Wayback to Way Forward: The @InternetArchive turns 25, Oct 21
eventbrite.com/e/from-wayback…

* Lessons from the First Internet Ages (@KnightFndn Nov 2-3
blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2021/…

* Keynote for @SeaGL 2021, Nov 5-6
seagl.org/news/2021/06/0…

13/
Recent appearances:

* Reconciling Social Media & Democracy, Tech Policy Press
techpolicy.press/podcast/

* Internet Archive:


* Trom:
videos.trom.tf/w/2vBxVQTa4hfC…

* This Week in Google
open.spotify.com/show/0lTcKFcbc…

14/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

15/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/viz…

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You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/viz…

17/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

18/
My latest @Medium column is "Against the great forces of history," What @AdaPalmer’s University of Chicago Papal election LARP can teach us about our own future

medium.com/@doctorow/agai…

19/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🪤". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: pluralistic.net/plura-list

20/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @pluralistic@mamot.fr.

Here's today's edition: mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1…

21/
Today's top sources: @Slashdot (slashdot.org), Economics From the Top Down (economicsfromthetopdown.com).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Dec 16
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Dec 13
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
Dec 9
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red.   Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Nov 20
Well, this fucking *sucks*. A federal judge has decided that Meta is not a monopolist, and that its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were not an illegal bid to secure and maintain a monopoly:



1/ gizmodo.com/meta-learns-th…The classic Puck Magazine editorial cartoon entitled 'The King of All Commodities,' depicting John D Rockefeller as a man with grotesquely tiny body and a gigantic head, wearing a crown emblazoned with the names of the industrial concerns he owned. Rockefeller's head has been replaced with that of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The names of the industrial concerns have been replaced with the wordmarks for Scale AI, Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. The dollar-sign at the crown's pinnacle has been replaced with the Facebook 'f' logo. The chain around Rockefeller's neck sports the charm th...
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/2025/11/20/if-…

2/
This is particularly galling because Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly, explicitly declared that these mergers were undertaken *to reduce competition*, which is the only circumstance in which pro-monopoly economists and lawyers say that mergers should be blocked.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Nov 18
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called *Who Censored Roger Rabbit?* which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

1/ The final scene of Disneyland's 'Roger Rabbit's Toontown Spin,' in which Roger Rabbit is deploying a pair of portable holes; the holes have been replaced with copyright symbols, which are partially cropped.  Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/  CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
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/2025/11/18/im-…

2/
But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Nov 8
A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because...

1/ A tuxedoed figure dramatically shoveing greenish pigs into a tube, from whose other end vomits forth a torrent of packaged goods. He has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' avatar. He stands upon an endless field of gold coins. The background is the intaglioed upper face of the engraving of Benjamin Franklin on a US$100 bill, roughed up to a dark and sinister hue.
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/2025/11/08/fae…

2/
...The fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives:



3/reuters.com/investigations…
Read 59 tweets

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