Technofeudalism

Cory Doctorow advances the position that capitalism isn't evolving into socialism (as classical Marxism predicted) but into a new form of feudalism:

Capitalists Hate Capitalism

His explanation of the difference between "rents" and "profits" is new information to me (being a bear of very little brain where economic theory is concerned, anyhow). "Rent" in the technical sense used by economists means "income derived from owning something that the capitalist needs in order to realize a profit." It's passive income, so to speak. In Doctorow's example, the manager of a coffee shop has to compete actively with other shops to attract labor and customers. The landlord who owns the building, though, receives money from rent no matter who occupies the space.

In these terms, a gigantic storefront such as Amazon, to which all the individual sellers pay rent, exemplifies "the contemporary business wisdom that prefers creating the platform to selling on the platform" -- "technofeudalism." Doctorow offers several examples, e.g., draconian noncompete agreements forced on employees, the expansion of IP rights to absurd degrees such as the author who attempted to own the word "cocky," and patent trolls whose "only product is lawsuits."

One related abuse he doesn't cover in this article but discusses elsewhere is the universal software marketing practice of not selling electronic products outright but "licensing" them. A "buyer" of a Kindle book, for instance, doesn't literally own it like a hard-copy book, for Amazon can remove the text from the customer's device at any point for any random reason. Granted, this probably doesn't happen often (I haven't experienced it), but the only way to avoid that risk would be to refrain from ever connecting that device to the internet again -- hardly practical.

By Doctorow's title, "Capitalists Hate Capitalism," he means, "They don’t want to be exposed to the risks entailed by competition, and feel the goad of that insecurity. They want monopolies, or platforms, or monopoly platforms." Unlike in many of his essays, in this one he doesn't suggest hypothetical remedies but simply describes a problematic situation.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Intermediaries on the Internet

Another post by Cory Doctorow about how good platforms go bad and, by extension, how the internet goes bad:

Intermediation

Why didn't the internet, as promised, "disintermediate the world"? Because in many situations we NEED "middlemen." Doctorow cites publishing as an example. While some authors self-publish and accomplish all the steps of the process themselves or directly pay others to do them (such as cover artists and freelance editors), most of us prefer to have someone else handle those tasks. And even the totally independent self-publishers typically need platforms such as Amazon, Draft2Digital, etc. to sell their work; very few earn money solely by hand-selling their books one by one, like the eccentric wordsmith Doctorow describes in his essay.

"The internet did disintermediate a hell of a lot of intermediaries –- that is, 'middlemen' –- but then it created a bunch more of these middlemen, who coalesced into a handful of gatekeepers." The gatekeepers, as he sees it, are the problem. Online sales of almost anything we might want or need on a single, convenient website is a service most customers value. The problem arises when a giant internet retailer locks out its competitors and/or restricts what customers and third-party sellers can do with the products. We don't hate intermediaries as such, according to Doctorow; we hate "powerful intermediaries." His solution -- for governments to enforce competition-supportive laws.

While I can't deny monopolies are generally a bad thing, except in public service spheres such as utilities and roads, I also highly value the convenience of being able to buy almost anything from Amazon, a website that remembers my address, past purchases, and payment methods and that has been reliably trustworthy with that information so far, as well as fast and efficient. Moreover, I like the capacity to sell my self-published e-books on a site that most potential readers probably use regularly. I love knowing I can find almost any book ever published, a cherished fantasy of mine in my pre-internet childhood and youth. I'd have a hard time getting along without Amazon if it vanished. Yet doubtless the abuses of which Doctorow accuses it are real, too.

As for one area in which powerful middlemen exploit their near-monopoly to perpetrate blatant ripoffs: In the Maryland General Assembly's current session, they're considering a law to forbid companies such as Ticketmaster from buying up most of the tickets for a high-demand event and reselling them at extortionate prices, among other protective measures:

Ticket-Scalping Bill

Despite such abuses, I endorse Doctorow's conclusion that, overall, "A world with intermediaries is a better world." In past centuries, people "in trade," who at first glance seem to add no value to products they profit from through their own middleman activities, used to be scorned by the upper class and regarded with suspicion by their customers. (We encounter the stereotype of the cheating miller in Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES.) But what would we do without them?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

One Bite at a Time

Cory Doctorow's column for the March 2023 issue of LOCUS, for once, asserts a position I can support without reservation:

End-to-End

Concerning the many problems involved in making the internet user-friendly, a quest for perfection may result in no improvement at all. As Doctorow summarizes the situation, "The internet succeeded where other networks failed" because it didn't try to implement a "seemingly monolithic technological project" that would require all parties to agree on an ultimate solution that would deal with all difficulties once and for all. Instead, find one small element that everyone can accept. "Build that, then do it again, finding another step that everyone can get behind." In other words, figuratively speaking, eat the elephant one bite (or byte?) at a time. To quote Doctorow again, "I want a better internet now, not years down the road. I’ll happily take a smaller bite."

The main issue to which his current column applies this approach is the end-to-end principle, an older name for what's now usually called net neutrality. In brief, "when a willing speaker wants to say something to a willing listener, our technology should be designed to make a best effort to deliver the speaker’s message to the person who asked to get it." After decades of development of the internet, why don't we have this transparently obvious, user-friendly system?

When we ask a question with Google, why does it prioritize its own search engine's results over those of others that might be more relevant to the questioner's needs? When we search for a specific book or other product on Amazon, why do several other products pop up at the top of the page ahead of the one we typed in the search box? Why do Facebook posts from people and organizations we actually want to hear from get drowned in a sea of sponsored posts? Well, yeah, money and profit (duh). But why are such practices legally permitted? Why is Facebook allowed to restrict our access to posts from users we've liked or followed by blackmailing them into "boosting" their posts—paying to have their material seen by people who've expressed a wish to see it? Suppose when we tried to telephone a local business, the phone company routed the call to a rival business that had paid for the privilege? Nobody would stand for that, yet the equivalent happens online all the time.

Doctorow suggests examples of a few modest rules that internet companies should be required to follow: E.g. “The first result for a search should be the product that most closely matches the thing I searched for” and “If I subscribe to your feed, then when you publish something, it should show up in my feed.”

For a long time I was puzzled that my posts on my Facebook author page showed such low numbers of "Reach." The page doesn't have a huge throng of followers, but it certainly has a lot more than those being "reached." It was a shock to learn that in order to be read by more than a handful of followers, those posts needed to be boosted. In other words, I would have to bribe Facebook to carry out the function it purports to perform, connecting senders with willing receivers. Likewise, it's a constant, though minor irritant that searching for a book on Amazon often connects to a page where I have to scroll halfway down to find the desired item. According to Doctorow, the volume of ads and sponsored posts is delicately designed to stay "just below the threshold where the service becomes useless to you." I fear he may be right.

Will the limited ideal of his online utopia ever become a reality? Maybe not, but it's worth discussing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Corporate Bullies and Copyright

Cory Doctorow's article for the November 2022 LOCUS discusses the ever-increasing reach of monopolies that prey on the work of writers and other content creators, in terms of a parable about bullies stealing lunch money. If the victims get more lunch money, they don't get more food; the bullies get more money. No matter how much artistic creators produce and theoretically earn, the greed of the rights-grabbers will never be sated:

Structural Adjustment

Doctorow reminds us that only five (maybe, soon, four) major publishing conglomerates exist and that the realms of physical bookselling, online retailing and e-book sales, book distribution, and music production are each dominated by one mega-corporation. "Publishing and other 'creative industries' generate more money than ever — and yet, despite all this copyright and all the money that sloshes around as a result of it, the share of the income from creative work that goes to creators has only declined." In book publishing, unless an author chooses to self-publish (or go with small independent presses, which he doesn't mention in this article), "Contracts demand more — ebook rights, graphic novel rights, TV and film rights, worldwide English rights — and pay less." And of course the major online retailers exercise their dominance over self-publishers' access to markets.

He summarizes in terms of his parable, "We’re the hungry school kids. The cartels that control access to our audiences are the bullies. The lunch-money is copyright."

Asserting, "Cartels and monopolies have enacted chokepoints between creators and audiences," Doctorow recommends a book, CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM: HOW BIG TECH AND BIG CONTENT CAPTURED CREATIVE LABOR MARKETS AND HOW WE'LL WIN THEM BACK, and gives an example of one of the strategies recommended in it.

While I understand his points and recognize the dangers he often cites in his articles, as a reader (and online consumer in general) I would have trouble getting along without Amazon. It's a great boon to be able to find almost any book, no matter how obscure and long out of print. I value being able to acquire the complete backlist of almost any author I'm interested in. I enjoy having purchases delivered to our doorstep, since the older I get, the less I want to go out searching for items —- especially given the not-unlikely frustration of not finding what I want in stock locally. And I trust Amazon to fill orders reliably and handle credit information securely, rather than my taking the risk of buying from websites unknown to me. As an author, if I decide to self-publish a work, I like being able to upload it for free on the most popular e-book seller's site, plus other retailers through Draft2Digital. At the same time, I realize Doctorow isn't wrong that by embracing convenience and economy, we put ourselves at the mercy of the provider's whims. For one thing, buying a product in electronic form (e-book, music file, movie, etc.) means the seller can make it evaporate from the consumer's hard drive or tablet anytime. So what's the ideal solution? I don't know.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Big Tech Tyranny?

Cory Doctorow's March LOCUS column discusses tech tycoons from the perspective of monopoly and world domination. Well, that phrase may be a bit exaggerated but not totally inapplicable, considering his term "commercial tyrant":

Vertically Challenged

Is meritocracy a "delusion"? Are people such as Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) unique geniuses, or did they just get lucky? One might maintain that some sort of genius is required to recognize opportunities and take advantage of the "luck," but that's beside Doctorow's point. He argues against "vertical integration" and in favor of "structural separation." Fundamental antitrust principles should forbid mega-corporations from competing with the companies to which they sell services. "Amazon could offer virtual shelf space to merchants, or it could compete with those merchants by making its own goods, but not both. Apple could have an app store, or it could make apps, but not both."

It's easy to see his point. It would be better if Google could somehow be prevented from giving preference in search results to entities in which it has a financial interest. On the other hand, more ambiguous "liminal" cases exist, a point Doctorow himself does acknowledge. For example, "Amazon might say it gives preferential search results to businesses that use its warehouses because it can be sure that those items will be delivered more efficiently and reliably, but it also benefits every time it makes that call." Granting the second half of that sentence, I'm still not sure this practice is a bad thing. Given a choice between two identical products of equal price, I DO tend to choose the one labeled "Fulfilled by Amazon" for that very reliability, as well as speed of delivery. As for splitting off Amazon's publishing services, as he advocates, I'd be dubious. I like the way Kindle self-publishing currently works.

Doctorow also brings up problems that may require "structural integration" rather than separation, to prevent Big Tech from evading its legitimate responsibilities. He tentatively calls for "a requirement that the business functions that harm the rest of us when they go wrong be kept in-house, so that the liabilities from mismanaging those operations end up where they belong." Is there a simple answer to the dilemma of maintaining the conveniences we enjoy while preventing the abuses?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Resolution 1: Don't Get Fooled Again

Scams are all around us. Maybe mixed in with your Christmas cards is a tiny white postcard from Cochran et al v. The Kroger Co.

 

Maybe don't toss it without more than a glance. Perhaps you don't need another --likely concurrent-- year of free credit monitoring, but this class action settlement also appears to offer cash if you claim before March 5th, 2022.

 

www.KrogerFTADataBreachSettlement.com

 

Apparently, some authors are receiving cold calls from someone rejoicing in the name of "Powell's Books" (or something similar) that has nothing to do with the reputable bookseller Powell's Books. The reputable Powell's Books does not offer publishing/promotional services... at least, not through telephone solicitations.

 

Other authors allegedly are having their names taken, and their brands allegedly damaged on Amazon.

 

Mitzi Szereto has a fascinating an informative blog post about how some scammer on Amazon is allegedly infringing her brand, and stealing her identity to sell their own, allegedly inferior quality porn.

https://mitziszereto.com/blog/self-publishing-copyright-theft-and-author-brand-infringement/

For authors whose brands are perhaps not strong enough to be given specious credit for someone else's allegedly substandard work, there is a chance that their works are being pirated, substandard covers are being slapped on, thinly disguised titles are being attached, and improbable author names are being applied.

 

Concerned authors may spend hours reading Amazon offerings (in Search, and in Look Inside), and have to get to at least the third page to find out if their works have been pirated.  Then, victims of the piracy have to go through the hoops of the Amazon KDP "Copyright Infringement Report".

There is a brief blog by two lawyers from Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz that reports on the alleged (my word) fact that millions of "invalid and false copyright infringment claims" were received by another very popular site.

https://www.pearlcohen.com/millions-of-false-and-invalid-copyright-claims-filed-with-youtube-in-2021/

The problem with the DMCA is that copyright owners of limited financial means are in a bind. One can make a genuine copyright infringment claim, but if the creative user --on a site that appreciates the uploaded content-- files a counter claim (as he/she is often encouraged to do), the copyright owner is up fecal matter creek unless they file a lawsuit.

So-called transparency reports are not necessarily accurate.

The mother of all fecal matter creeks was recently obliged to settle with a very small fish on what the court ruled was a clear cut (or "straightforward") counterfeit case.

Legal bloggers Jeffrey A. Berkowitz and  David K. Mroz of the law firm of Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett and Dunner LLP report on the historical victory of Israeli firm Maglula in winning orders from a court:

• denying Amazon’s multiple challenges to Maglula’s complaint in the first instance;
• granting multiple inspections at Amazon warehouses (over Amazon’s strenuous and repeated objections)—ostensibly a first of its kind in an IP case against Amazon; and
• finding Amazon destroyed evidence after Maglula filed its complaint—another first in an IP case against Amazon.

Lexology link:  

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=358c657c-02cd-44c9-9e0d-2cc99a708605

 

Original link:

https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/articles/maglula-beats-amazon-in-counterfeit-claims.html

 

Could this be a turning of the tide?

If you buy self-defense-related accessories online, be very careful not to buy a cheap knock-off that might malfunction.

Another word to the wise: use "alleged" and "allegedly" a lot when reporting on other people's dirt. It may not make for the most readable of prose, but it's prophylactic writing.

If you feel like "being activist" for the New Year, there is a hashtag you can use to share warnings and entertaining or salutary experiences, and help others not to get fooled: #SlamTheScam.

Visit oig.ssa.gov/scam for more information. Alternatively, you can follow SSA OIG on Twitter @TheSSAOIG and Facebook @SSA Office of the Inspector General for the latest information on Social Security-related scams. Visit the Federal Trade Commission for information on other government scams.

 

OIG is the Office of the Inspector General.  They are happy to receive emails, calls, or texts that report scams where suspicious individuals claim to be from the Social Security arm of the Government and wanting to help you.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing