Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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The U.S. Copyright Office has issued a Notice of Inquiry, seeking comment on whether online services should be legally required to filter all their usersâ communications to block copyright infringement, as part of a âStay Downâ system.
The idea is that once a copyright holder notifies a service provider that a certain work canât be legally posted, the service must filter all their user communications thereafter to ensure that this notice is honored.
I think that creators and creatorsâ groups should oppose this. Hereâs why.
The âstandard measuresâ being discussed are not standard. Indeed, theyâre largely found in just two companies: Google (through its Content ID system for YouTube) and Meta/Facebook. Thereâs a reason only two companies have these filters: They are incredibly expensive. Content ID has cost $100,000,000 and counting (and it only does a tiny fraction of what is contemplated in the proposed rule).
That effectively cements Googbook as the permanent rulers of the internet, since they are the only two social media companies that can afford this stuff.
A nearly identical proposal to this one â Article 13 of the Copyright Directive, since renumbered to Article 17 â went through the EU Parliament in 2019, and both Facebook and YouTube came out in favor of it. They understand that this is a small price to pay for permanently excluding all competitors from the internet.
(Itâs worth noting that actually implementing Article 17 with automated filters is likely a violation of both the e-Commerce Directive and the GDPR, both of which ban automated judgements of user communications without explicit opt-in and consent, and thereâs every chance that Article 17 will not survive a constitutional challenge in the European Court of Justice.)
Now, some people may be thinking, why should I care if Googbook get to take over the internet, so long as theyâre forced to police my copyrights?
I think those people are going to be very disappointed, for three reasons:
Capitalismâs Shell Game: From Robert Bork to John Deere.
John Deereâs workers are done with their employerâs bullshit.
When the 10,000 workers who keep the worldâs largest agribusiness monopoly humming walked off the job last month, it was historic. As one John Deere worker put it, âEverything John Deere did to increase its stock price is now a liability.â Deereâs workforce loyalty had been eroded by decades of reduced pay, reduced benefits and increased hours, all amid skyrocketing profits, stock prices, and executive compensation,.
As the day of the strike vote drew nearer, the company put on a charm offensive, painting its workers as greedy and lazy, unhappy with $60,000 a year.
Email could be the last federated internet technologyâââbut it isnât.
It feels like only yesterday that we were living through the Substack bubble, as mailing lists enjoyed a new renaissance (rebranded as ânewslettersâ), a tangible expression of the techlash and our collective disgust with the platforms and their attempts to enclose the internet and convert it to âfive giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four.â
In the abstract, mailing lists/newsletters represent the promise of a return to a Jeffersonian internet, where each of us can garden own little patch, not subject to the whims of third parties. That, after all, is the original design brief of the internet, to be an âend-to-end networkâ where any party can connect to any other party without needing permission from anyone else.
