Pluralistic: Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (15 Oct 2025)


Today's links


A 1989 black and white photo of the Berlin Wall; peering over the wall is Microsoft's 'Clippy' chatbot.

Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (permalink)

Even though he's the darkest of clouds, Trump has some deeply weird silver linings, formed out of a combination of his self-owning isolationism and blunt aggression.

In my quarter-century as a digital activist, I've had cause to work in more than 30 countries. Wherever I went, I'd meet with policymakers about the rules they should be thinking about in order to make their technology work better for their countries. Every single time, they'd agree politely with me, but insist that making any kind of tech-improving rules was impossible, because the US trade representative would kick their teeth in if they tried.

For all of this century, the USTR has been one of the greatest global impediments to a better world, hopping from country to country, demanding policies that would protect American tech firms from foreign competitors – especially the kind of competitor who would improve on American tech products by protecting users' privacy, consumer rights or labor rights while they used them.

The most glaring example of this are "anticircumvention laws." Under these laws, it's illegal to modify any technology that has any kind of anti-modification defenses. In other words, if the manufacturer draws a kind of virtual dotted line around part of the product's software and labels it, "Do not look inside this box," then it becomes illegal to do so, even if you're trying to do something that's otherwise legal.

That means that if your printer is designed to reject generic ink, you can't change the code that verifies the ink cartridge. There's no law that says, "You have to buy your ink from the same company that sold you your printer," but if HP adds any kind of anti-modification measure to its ink-checking code, then disabling that code becomes a serious crime.

Now, these laws are obviously an invitation to mischief. They are used to prevent independent repair of everything from tractors to cars to phones to games consoles to ventilators. They're used to stop you from blocking ads or surveillance on your phone or "smart" TV. They keep you locked into manufacturers' app stores, payment systems and other add-ons, which means that you are constantly being ripped off with junk fees, and you can't install the software of your choosing, including software that will help you avoid being kidnapped by masked thugs and sent to a secret torture prison:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

The US passed the first of these laws in 1998, when Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As the ink was still drying on Clinton's signature, the US trade rep started racing around the world, demanding that America's trading partners adopt their own version of the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/13/ctrl-ctrl-ctrl/#free-dmitry

As these laws were adopted around the world, US tech giants were given carte blanche to extract more money and data from their global users. American users were getting ripped off too, of course (they were the first victims of Big Tech), but at least the US stock market reaped the benefit of Big Tech's incredibly lucrative scams. But for America's trading partners, anticircumvention was an entirely losing proposition: their people got ripped off for their data and their money, and their tech companies couldn't go into business selling products to disenshittify America's cash-and-data extraction machines.

So why did America's trading partners agree to anticircumvention law? Well, that was down to the tender ministrations of the US trade rep. Countries that didn't pass anticircumvention were threatened with US tariffs.

I used to occasionally guest-lecture at an international relations grad program at the Central European University in Budapest, and one summer, I had a student who had served as the information minister to a Central American country while the US was negotiating the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This student described getting a phone call from their country's chief negotiator who said, "I know you told me not to budge on anticircumvention, but the USTR tells me that if we don't give them this, they will block our agricultural exports. I'm sorry." Country by country, the world fell into line.

When someone tells you, "You'd better do what I say or I'm going to burn your house down," and then they burn your house down, you'd be an absolute sucker if you kept up your part of the bargain.

I find it absolutely bizarre that the USTR spent decades racing around the world, getting every country on earth to sign up to "America First" policies by threatening them with tariffs, and then Trump actually imposed the tariffs anyway, which has opened up the space for every country to get rid of those America First policies.

Of course, that's not all Trump has done. He's also made it abundantly clear that he considers America's (former) allies to be geopolitical and economic competitors, and that US tech is one of the primary weapons he will use to wage war on the world. He got Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to cave on taxing Big Tech, which means that they'll be able to go on cheating on their taxes, while Canadian companies won't be able to, which means Canada's tech sector will never be able to compete:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0vv2pe7ydo

Trump has also ordered the EU to scrap its new tech antitrust laws, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, which aim to open up space for European competitors to US tech:

https://www.politico.eu/article/trumps-antitrust-agency-chief-blasts-eu-digital-rules-as-taxes-on-american-firms/

But more than that, Trump and US tech have teamed up to attack and deplatform public officials that Trump has beef with. Take Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Khan swore out a criminal complaint and arrest warrant for the génocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu, and Trump sanctioned Khan. Then, Microsoft cut off Khan's access to his account, nuking his email, calendar, address book and files:

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3

For officials all over the world, the message couldn't be clearer: Trump sees you as the enemy, and he will use American tech companies to cut you off at the knees if you don't roll over for him.

Enter the Eurostack. This is an initiative from the EU that seeks to fund and deploy open source equivalents to the platforms that the European public, its businesses and its governments are currently locked into:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

Thus far, Eurostack's focus has been on building those Made-in-the-EU alternatives to the US tech stack, and on financing data-center rollout. But very shortly, Eurostack advocates are going to hit a wall.

Escaping from US Big Tech isn't merely a matter of having another service to move your data and interactions to. You also have to have a way to transition from the old, US service to the new Eurostack equivalent.

No government ministry, no business, no individual is going to manually copy-and-paste thousands (or millions) of documents out of Microsoft, Apple or Google's cloud into the Eurostack. No one is going to individually move all the edit histories, email chains, and file permissions over. These files and data-structures are essential to the people who created them, and they often contain sensitive information and compliance data that is illegal to delete.

Sure, the EU could try to order American Big Tech companies to create export tools so that Europeans can easily retrieve their data in formats that can be faithfully imported into Eurostack services, but we can already see how that will play out.

Last year's Digital Markets Act contains a modest set of "interoperability" requirements that require big US companies like Apple to open up their platforms to rival app stores and payment processors. Apple's monopoly over iPhone apps is a big deal – it lets the company structure the market for software in Europe, without any accountability or limits, and Apple extracts a 30% tax on every euro that changes hands via an iOS app. Globally, Apple makes more than $100b/year from this "app tax."

When the EU passed a law aimed at halting this racket, Apple lost its mind. First, they proposed a "solution" to this that was so onerous and tortured that it was a kind of sick joke:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

Then they threatened to stop selling iPhones in the EU altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

Now, Apple has filed 18 legal challenges to any interoperability mandate under the DMA:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/5213/oj/eng

If this is how an American tech company responds to a small-potatoes order to give Europeans more choice over how they use their own devices and data, imagine what these US giants will do if the EU orders them to open up their platforms so people can leave altogether!

The only plausible path from US Big Tech to the Eurostack runs straight through anticircumvention. The EU needs to repeal Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, a law it passed at the behest of the US Trade Representative, to protect the rent-extraction tactics of American tech companies. We need to make it legal for European technologists to reverse-engineer the American tech platforms' websites and apps so that Europeans can get their data out of America's tech silos and into open, sovereign, privacy-respecting, consumer rights-preserving, worker-protecting Eurostack versions.

Building the Eurostack without thinking about migration tools is a recipe for disappointment. It's like building housing for East Germans…in West Berlin, without sparing a thought for how those East Germans are going to get to the new apartment blocks.

The good news is, there's no reason to keep Article 6 of the Copyright Directive on the books. The law has always been a wreck. It's one of the primary barriers to Right to Repair: companies now build devices with "access controls" on their parts. Even after you install a new part into a device, it won't start working until the manufacturer's representative unlocks it (for a hefty fee). Under anticircumvention laws like EUCD Article 6, it's illegal to bypass these locks.

What's more, the digital locks that EUCD 6 protects are almost all to be found in American products. Only a handful of EU manufacturers rely on these, and they use them to in terrible ways. Volkswagen used the fact that it was illegal to reverse-engineer its engines to disguise the fact that it was cheating on its emissions tests, and the resulting "Dieselgate" scandal killed thousands of Europeans:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/18/dieselgate-kills-5000-europeans-per-year/

Newag, a Polish train manufacturer, boobytraps the trains they sell. When these trains sense that they have been taken to a competitor's train-yard for maintenance, they render themselves inoperable. Newag then charges thousands of euros to remotely "repair" their own sabotage. When this was revealed by a team of independent security researchers, Newag used claims under EUCD 6 in an attempt to intimidate them into silence:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Mercedes won't let you unlock your new car's full acceleration capability unless you pay them a monthly subscription fee, and any mechanic who tries to bypass this and give you your whole engine's capability violates EUCD 6. BMW won't let you use the feature that auto-dims your high-beams when there's oncoming traffic, and once again, that can't be fixed by another company because of EUCD 6:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Any business that relies on EUCD 6 is garbage and should be killed with fire. The global champions of this legal sabotage are all American, but the EU companies that copied their business models are also trash and the EU should be terminating them with extreme prejudice.

It's pretty remarkable that we've forgotten about the kind of reverse-engineering that EUCD 6 bans. This used to be totally normal. Providing tools to move data from one system to another – without permission from your old vendor – is a completely legitimate business.

The only reason we forgot that this stuff existed is that the US trade rep spent 25 years lobotomizing us all, threatening us with tariffs if we dared to do anything that disrupted American Big Tech. With those companies, it's always "disruption for thee, never for me."

In a few short months, Trump has sown the seeds of the destruction of one of the most world's pernicious "America First" systems. Now, it's in the EU's power to send it to a long-overdue grave.

"Mr Cook, Mr Nadella, Mr Ellison, Mr Pichai – tear down that wall!"

(Image: Armin Kübelbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Japanese court: links to news stories can’t use headlines for link-text https://web.archive.org/web/20060309190419/http://www.ridingsun.com/posts/1129257907.shtml

#20yrsago Understanding broadband regulation https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557330

#20yrsago Anti-game wacko designs ultra-violent video game to prove games are violent https://web.archive.org/web/20051030003500/http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883

#20yrsago Gilberto Gil in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/oct/14/brazil.popandrock

#15yrsago BoomCases: self-powered amps built into old suitcases https://theboomcase.wordpress.com/gallery/

#15yrsago The Singularity won’t be heaven: Annalee Newitz https://web.archive.org/web/20101016204801/http://io9.com/5661534/why-the-singularity-isnt-going-to-happen

#15yrsago Webcam spying school settles with students, pays $1.2M in fees and damages https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39631890

#15yrsago Rucker and Sterling’s new story: “Goodnight Moon” on Tor.com https://web.archive.org/web/20101016231350/http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/10/good-night-moon

#15yrsago Wonderful Japanese pudding ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sEI1AUFJKw

#15yrsago Anatomical illustrations from Japan’s Edo period https://pinktentacle.com/2010/10/anatomical-illustrations-from-edo-period-japan/

#15yrsago Travel author sues DHS to make it obey the law with its vast traveller databases https://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001887.html

#15yrsago Kevin Kelly’s WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS: how technology changes us and vice-versa https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/13/kevin-kellys-what-technology-wants-how-technology-changes-us-and-vice-versa/

#10yrsago TPP requires countries to destroy security-testing tools (and your laptop) https://web.archive.org/web/20151020122940/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/white-hat-hackers-would-have-their-devices-destroyed-under-the-tpp

#10yrsago How to make “Dracula’s dentures” cookie sandwiches https://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/draculas-dentures-for-halloween/

#10yrsago Playboy (circulation 800k, down from 5.6m) drops nude images https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html

#10yrsago Glitchlife: Gallery of public Blue Screens of Death, including a world-beater https://web.archive.org/web/20151013003105/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/public-blue-screens-of-death-remind-us-that-life-is-a-farce

#10yrsago Bernie Sanders is beating all of Obama’s important 2008 records https://web.archive.org/web/20151013123107/https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/remember-obamas-historic-2008-presidential-run-bernie-sanders-so-far-exceeding-it

#10yrsago How to teach gerrymandering and its many subtle, hard problems https://mitesp.tumblr.com/post/130793404248/how-i-teach-gerrymandering

#10yrsago Police end round-the-clock Assange detail at London’s Ecuadorian embassy https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/police-stop-24-7-monitoring-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-ecuadorian-embassy-1523634

#10yrsago CIA black-site torture survivors sue shrinks who made $85M overseeing CIA torture program https://theintercept.com/2015/10/13/former-u-s-detainees-sue-psychologists-responsible-for-cia-torture-program/

#10yrsago SRSLY, they want to put DRM in JPEGs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/theres-no-drm-jpeg-lets-keep-it-way

#10yrsago Fury Road as a vintage run-and-gun side-scroller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsXWTcVvCwQ

#10yrsago Information leakage shows DEA blew millions on the secret phone trackers it won’t admit it bought https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/oct/14/dea-cell-phone-trackers/

#10yrsago No, poor kids don’t struggle in school because their parents have small vocabularies https://newrepublic.com/article/123093/rich-kids-better-poor-kids-school-its-not-word-gap

#10yrsgo Thrust/parry/counter: the history of Web authentication http://blog.slaks.net/2015-10-13/web-authentication-arms-race-a-tale-of-two-security-experts/

#5yrsago How to spreadsheet https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#csv

#5yrsago Prop 22 is a scam https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#prop-22

#5yrsago What happened in Florida https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#bush-v-gore

#5yrsago Pandemic shock doctrine vs internet freedom https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#freedom-house

#5yrsago Beyond Cyberpunk https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/13/hopeful-disasters/#technologist-wizards

#5yrsago SF as intuition pump https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/13/hopeful-disasters/#narratives

#1yrago Dirty words are politically potent https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Join the Discussion at ChinWag