What is Chokepoint Capitalism?

Why copyright alone can’t unrig creative labor markets.

A middle school doorway. Three cigarette-smoking hoodlums block it from a small schoolboy, seen from behind, carrying a backpack.
Buffalo Police Department/Public Domain (modified); Erik B. Anderson/CC BY-SA 4.0 (modified)

Chokepoint Capitalism is my next book, co-written with the brilliant copyright scholar Rebecca Giblin. It’s a book about how the markets for creative labor were rigged, and how artists, fans, tinkerers, regulators and lawmakers can unrig them.

That second part is key: this isn’t just a book complaining about how tough things are for artists — it’s a book about how we can make things better.

There’s an obvious reason that our book’s focus on shovel-ready projects to put more money in artists’ pockets is important: you’d have to be a monster to prefer a world that underpays the writers, musicians, actors, and film and TV creators whose work heartens and delights you.

The cover for the Beacon Press edition of Chokepoint Capitalism.

But there’s another reason that this focus on fixing creative labor markets is so important: because copyright, the primary tool we’ve given creators to give them power over their labor, has actually made things worse.
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Pluralistic: 17 Aug 2022: Chokepoint Capitalism Kickstarter is live


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Pluralistic: 06 Jun 2022


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Pluralistic: 16 May 2022


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Pluralistic: 02 May 2022


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Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs

Algorithms and worker power

A horse-headed “reverse-centaur” whose eye has been replaced by the glowing eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. They are wearing a hi-viz vest and posed in shelving-aisles of an industrial warehouse.
Cryteria, CC BY, modified

In AI circles, a “centaur” describes a certain kind of machine/human collaboration, in which “decision-support” systems (which the field loves to call “AI”s) are paired with human beings for results that draw upon the strengths of each, such as when a human chess master and a chess-playing computer program collaborate to smash their competition.

In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the American poultry farmer. The U.S. poultry industry has been taken over by three monopolistic packers, who have divided the nation up into exclusive territories, so that each chicken farmer has only one buyer for their birds.

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Pluralistic: 07 Apr 2022


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Pluralistic: 17 Feb 2022


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Pluralistic: 06 Feb 2022


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