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Cory Doctorow

20 Oct, 22 tweets, 17 min read

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

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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/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450852865627418624

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

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450852865627418624

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450874400102772738

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

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450874400102772738

#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…

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#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/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450494320860024836

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

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450494320860024836

@darkdel

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/

@torbooks

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/

@InternetArchive

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/

https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1448785942852997120

Recent appearances:

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

* Internet Archive:

https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1448785942852997120

* 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…

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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…

16/

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/

@Medium

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/

@Medium

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…

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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/

@Slashdot

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

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

20 Oct

It's often said that there is a trade-off between privacy and convenience - while that's often overstated, there are some ways in which it is inarguably true.

1/

For example, it would be convenient to give all your devices radio chips that constantly broadcasted a unique number, and whenever one of our mobile devices encountered a radio beacon, it could log the event and the location.

2/

Then, if we wanted to find something we'd lost, we'd have this great database of where-everything-is.

Likewise, if we wanted to do viral exposure notification, we could set our phones to broadcast a unique ID everywhere we went and log all the unique IDs it encountered.

3/

Read 15 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

20 Oct

@BichlerNitzan

#CapitalAsPower, a framework from @BichlerNitzan, holds that companies don't seek to be as profitable as possible - but rather to accumulate as much POWER as possible. A company doesn't seek to be as big as possible, but rather, as dominant.

capitalaspower.com

1/

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/2021/10/20/viz…

2/

There are two strategies for accumulating power: one is "breadth": to grow the market as much as possible, thus accumulating profits faster than the average competitor, eventually taking a commanding lead over the rest of the field.

3/

Read 21 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

20 Oct

When the free software movement started to make headway, proprietary software companies like Microsoft went to war against it, describing the licenses at its core (like the #GPL) as "viral licenses" to scare companies off from using free software.

1/

The GPL is a software license that coders add to their work that says, "You can do anything with this - change it, sell it, copy it, incorporate it into something else, BUT...you have to redistribute the new projects under the same terms."

2/

In other words, we are making a software commons - code that anyone can use and improve, but only if they agree to maintain the commons. Like any shared resource, commons need protection from freeloaders who take but do not replenish.

3/

Read 21 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

19 Oct

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/10/19/moi…

#Pluralistic

1/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450491937954226185

The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin: It's a feature, not a bug.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1450491937954226185

Read 20 tweets

Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

19 Oct

The #DebtCeiling debate is genuinely absurd: Congress authorized the spending of new dollars, so the Treasury has to create them. For Congress to turn around and force the Treasury NOT to create the dollars it ordered the Treasury to create is an obvious political gimmick.

1/

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/2021/10/19/moi…

2/

Hence the #TrillionDollarCoin - a proposal to use a 2000 amendment to 31USC§5112k ("Denominations, specifications, and design of coins") that permits the Treasury Secretary to "mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coin [at] the Secretary’s discretion."

3/

Read 31 tweets