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<i>rC3 preroll music</i>

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Cory Doctorow: Oh, I just got...
Jinxx5: Please, I just wanted to say Hi

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Chris...no...Bye Chris and Hi Cory
<i>laughs</i> We just had a little chat before

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and, as I know, you will be reading
from your new book in a minute, as I just

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stop talking and afterwards, there will be
lots of time for all your questions. And

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we're really curious already.
C D: Great, Yeah. And I do have these

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questions from the talk earlier and I'm
going to try and get to those too. I'm

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going to do a shorter reading, so we can do
more interactive stuff. You can watch

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videos of me on YouTube if you want to.
It's more fun to interact. So the passage

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I'm going to read comes from Attack
Surface. Attack Surface is a standalone

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Little Brother novel. And it's intended
for adults. And it stars Masha who's a

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young woman, who is at the beginning and
the end of the other two books working as

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a surveillance contractor. And by this
third book, she's like a full-on cyber

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mercenary working for a company a lot
like, say, the NSO Group or Hacking Team.

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Any other kind of hack for hire
companies helping post-Soviet dictators

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crush rebellions. And the way that she
goes to sleep at night and still manages

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to, like, square up her conscience is by
helping the people, that she spies on. So

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during the day, she installs surveillance
appliances in the national data centers.

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And at night, she meets with the
protesters who are being spied on using

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this technology and tells them what
countermeasures work for it. And so, this

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is very early in the novel. And Masha and
Kriztina - who's one of these local

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protesters - are walking through the
square and the fictional, post-Soviet

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Republic of Slovstakia during the
beginnings of a protest that is shaping up

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to be a very serious one.

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<i>starts reading from book</i>
The square buzzed with good energy. There was a line

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of grannies who brought out pots and
wooden spoons and were whanging away at

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them, chanting something in Boris that
made everyone understand. Kriztina tried

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to translate it, but it was all tangled up
with some Baba-Yaga story that every

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Slovstakian learned with their mother's
borscht recipes. We stopped at a barrel

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fire and distributed the last couple of
kebabs to the people there. A girl

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I'd seen around, emerged from the crowd
and stole Kriztina away to hold a muttered

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conference that I followed by watching the
body language out of the corner of my eye.

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I decided that some of Kriztina's contacts
had someone on the inside of the neo-Nazi

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camp. And judging from her reaction, the
news was very bad. What? I asked. She

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shook her head. What? 10 p.m., she said,
they charge. Supposedly some of the cops

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will go over to their side. There's been
money changing hands. That was one of the

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problems with putting your cops on half
pay. Someone might pay the other half. The

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Slovstakian police had developed a keen
instinct for staying one jump ahead of

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purges and turnovers. The ones that didn't
develop that instinct ended up in their

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own cells or dead at their own colleagues'
hands. How many? Borises are world class

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shruggers, even adorable Pixie's like
Kriztina. If the English have 200

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words for passive aggressive and the Inuit
have 200 words for snow, then

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Borises can convey 200 gradations
of emotions with their shoulders. And I

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read this one as: Some, enough, too many.
We are fucked. No murders, Kriztina. If

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it's that bad we can come back another
night. If it's that bad, there might not

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be another night. Oh that fatalism. Fine,
I said, then we do something about it.

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Like what? Like you got me a place to sit
and keep everyone else away from me for an

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hour. The crash barricades around the
square had been long colonized by tarps

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and turned into shelters where protesters
could get away from the lines when they

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needed a break. Kriztina returned after a
few minutes to lead me to an empty corner

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of the warren. It smelled of B.O. and
cabbage farts, but it was in the lee of

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the wind and private enough. Doubling my
long coats tails under my butt for

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insulation, I sat down cross-legged and
tethered my laptop. A few minutes later, I

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was staring at Commander Litvinchuk's
email spool. I had a remote desktop on his

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computer and could have used his own
webmail interface, but it was faster to

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just slither into the mail server itself.
Thankfully, one of his first edicts after

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taking over the ministry had been to
migrate everyone off Gmail - which was

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secured by 24/7 ninja hackers who'd eat me
for breakfast - and on to a hosted mail

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server in the same datacenter that I had
spent 16 hours in, which was secured by

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wishful thinking, bubble gum, and spit.
That meant that if the US State Department

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wanted to pwn the Slovstakian government,
it would have to engage in a trivial hack

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against that machine, rather than facing
Google's notoriously vicious lawyers. The

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guiding light of Boris politics was: Trust
no one. Which meant, they had to do it all

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for themselves. Litvinchuk's cell-site
simulators all fed into a big analytics

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system, that maps social graphs and
compiled dossiers. He demanded, that the

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chiefs of police and military gather the
identifiers of all their personnels, so they

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could be white-listed in the system. It
wouldn't do to have every riot cop placed

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under suspicion, because they were present
at every riot. The file was in a saved

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email. I tabbed over to a different
interface, tunneled into the Xoth

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appliance. It quickly digested the file
and spat out all the SMS messages sent to

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or from any cops since I switched it on. I
called Kriztina over. She hunkered down

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next to me, passed me a thermos of coffee
she'd acquired somewhere. It was terrible

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and it reminded me of Marcus. Marcus and
his precious coffee. He wouldn't last 10

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minutes in a real radical uprising,
because he wouldn't be able to find

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artisanal coffee roasters in the melee.
Kriztina, help me search these texts for -

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... - help me search these for texts about
letting the Nazis get past the lines. She

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looked at my screen, the long scrolling
list of texts from cops' phones. What is

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that? It's what it looks like. Every
message sent to or from a cop's phone in

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the last ten hours or so. I can't read it,
though, which is why I need your help. She

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boggled, all cheekbones and tilted eyes
and sensuous lips. Then she started

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mousing the scroll up and down to read
through them. Holy shit, she said in

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Slovstakian, which was one of the few
phrases I knew. Then, to her credit, she

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seemed to get past her surprise and dug
into the messages themselves. How do I

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search? Here. I opened the search dialog.
Let me know if you need help with

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wildcards. Kriztina wasn't a hacker, but I
taught her a little regular expression-foo,

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to help her with an earlier project. Regex
are one of the secret weapons of

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hackerdom. Compact search strings that
pass through huge files for incredibly

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specific patterns. If you didn't fuck them
up, which most people did. She tried a few

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tentative searches. Am I looking for
names, passwords? Something that would

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freak out the interior ministry. We're
going to forward a bunch of these. She

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stopped and stared at me, all eyelashes.
It's a joke? It won't look like it came

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from us. It'll look like it came from a
source inside the ministry. She stared

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some more of the hamsters running around
on their wheels, behind her eyes. Masha,

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how do you do this? We had a deal. I'd
help you and you wouldn't ask me

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questions. I'd struck that deal with her
after our first night on the barricades

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together, when I showed her how to flash
her phone with Paranoid Android. And we

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watched the stingrays bounce off of it as
she moved around the square. She knew I

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did something for an American security
contractor and had googled my connection

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with "M1k3y", whom she worshiped
naturally. I'd read the messages she'd

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sent to her cell's chat channel sticking
up for me as a trusty sidekick..

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trustworthy sidekick to their Americanski-
Hero. A couple of the others had wisely

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and almost correctly assumed, that I was a
police informant. It looked like maybe she

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was regretting not listening to them. I
waited. Talking first would surrender the

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initiative, make me look weak. If we can't
trust you, we're already dead, she said,

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finally. That's true. Luckily, you can
trust me. Search. We worked through some

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queries together and I showed her how to
use wildcards to expand her searches

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without having them spill over the whole
mountain of short messages. It would have

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gone faster if I could have read the
Cyrillic characters, but I had to rely on

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Kriztina for that. When we had a good
representative sample - a round 100,

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enough to be convincing, not so many that
Litvinchuk wouldn't be able to digest them

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- I composed an email to him in English.
This wasn't as weird as it might seem. He

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had recruited senior staff from all over
Europe and a couple of South African

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mercs, and they all use a kind of pidgin
English among themselves with generous

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pastings from Google Translate, because
OPSEC, right? Fractured English was a lot

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easier to fake than native speech. Even
so, I wasn't going to leave this to

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chance. I grabbed a couple 1000 emails
from mid-level bureaucrat I was planning

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on impersonating and threw them in a cloud
machine where I kept a fork of Anonymouth,

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a plagiarism detector that used stylometry
to profile the grammar, syntax, and

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vocabulary from a training set, then
evaluated new text to see if they seemed

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by the same author. I trained my
Anonymouth on several thousand individual

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profiles from journalists and bloggers to
every one of my bosses, which was

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sometimes handy in figuring out when
someone was using a ghostwriter or

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delegated to a subordinate. Mainly,
though, I used it for my own

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impersonations. I'm sure that other people
have thought about using stylometry to

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fine tune impersonations, but no one's
talking about it that I can find. It

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didn't take much work for me to tweak
Anonymouth to give me a ranked order list

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of suggestions to make my forgery less
detectable to Anonymouth. Shorten this

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sentence, find a synonym for that word,
add a couple of commas. After a few passes

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through, my forgeries could fool humans
and robots every time. I had a guy in mind

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for my whistleblower: one of the South
Africans, Nicholas Van Dijk. I'd seen him

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in action in a bunch of flame wars with
his Slovstakian counterparts. Friction

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that would make him a believable rat. I
played it up. Giving Nicholas some thinly

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veiled grievances about how much dough his
enemies were raking in for their treachery

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and fishing for a little finder's fee for
his being such a straight arrow.

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Verisimilitude. Litvinchuk would go
predictably apeshit when he learned that

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his corps was riddled with traitors. But
even he'd noticed something was off of a

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dickhead like Van Dijk, who'd knock out
his teammates without trying to get

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something for himself in the deal. A
couple of passes through Anonymouth, and I

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had a candidate text along with the URL
for a pastebin that I put the SMSes into.

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No one at the Interior Ministry used PGP
for email, because no normal human being

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does. And so it was simplicity itself to
manufacture an email and in Litvinchuk's

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inbox that was indistinguishable from the
real thing. I even forged the headers for

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the same reason that a dollhouse builder
paints tiny titles on the spines of the

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books in the living room. Even though no
one will ever see them, there's a

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professional pride in getting the details
right. Also, I had a script that did it for me.

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<i>stops reading from book</i>
Well, there we go.

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J: Woohoo, I think you should...we all
think the big applause right now.

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C D: I just realized, that I found out
about Anonymouth at 25C3.

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J: Really?
C D: I completely, like when I chose the

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reading, I wasn't thinking about that. And
as I was reading, I was like, didn't I

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learn about this at a CCC? And I did.
J: And now you're writing about it.

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C D: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I write off my
trips to hacker cons.

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J: Huh. Do you actually use all those
things for your research?

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C D: Uh, many of them. I can't say, that I
use Anonymouth, because I don't have to

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forge many things, nor do I have to
puncture forgeries. But I mean, the thing

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that immediately struck me during the
Anonymouth presentation was, if you

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were like a fanfic writer, who wanted to
find all the ways that your Harry Potter

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story was not quite like a J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter story, you could then tweak

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your story to Rowling-ify it using
Anonymouth. Right. Using this

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plagiarism detectors, that are, you see,
an adversarial stylometry tool. Of course,

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today, if you just wanted to make it seem
like J.K. Rowling, you'd throw in some

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transphobic stuff. So, that would that
would be the clincher.

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J: Probably, yes.
C D: Yeah.

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J: But there's a pretty interesting
discussion of that. Because lots of

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authors and actually publishers are so
freaking out about text AIs, that can

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generate texts, that are pretty good
already. Not like human yet, but pretty

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good.
C D: Aha.

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J: Umm...
C D:Yeah.

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J: I think there's something behind that
already.

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C D: I used a GPT3 composition tool, that
some people I know built and played around

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with it. And it is really far from doing
the kind of work I do. I don't know. I

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won't say that it's really far from
automating some tasks. Obviously it

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automates some tasks. But I think, that the
state of GPT3 is such that, if you are

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worried about losing your job to GPT3, you
probably have a really boring, terrible

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job. Because it's not producing anything
that...I mean, apart from kind of text art.

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It's fun text art. I mean, I think maybe
you could, like, replace Internet trolls

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with it, you know. Every now and again,
I'll write about, like, you know,

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criticism of Modi and these huge,
like, Hindu nationalist troll armies will

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come after me and that the messages are so
self similar that they're really easy to

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identify and block. You don't even like a
second word. It's just like, you know,

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block report and away you go. But, if they
had, like, a good GPT3 package, they could

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probably make a whole series of harassing
messages that would be harder to detect.

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But again, like, I'm not worried about
those people losing their jobs. I am

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worried about, you know, the possibility
of like vast disinformation campaigns, that

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are harder to block or detect, but not
about the, you know, technology driven

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automation unemployment as a result of all
of the Internet trolls being replaced.

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<i>laughs</i>
J: Yeah, I'm totally with you at that

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point, because there will always be the
love for human generated text, for the art

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of or behind it. 
And there are somehow, yeah...

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C D: A lot of the most remarkable
GPT3 blocks, that have appeared, right,

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where people of like use GPT3 to make
something, turn out to be straight up

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copy-pastes of actual texts written by
humans, because GPT3 sometimes will just

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regurgitate, like, half paragraphs, whole
paragraphs that are part of its training

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data. And so, again, like that is a very
impressive task, right, finding the, like,

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the best paragraph from a bunch of pre-
written paragraphs by humans. That is

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impressive and it amounts to something,
but it's not the same as composing it.

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J: Yeah, that's totally right. And it was
pretty depressing I think, that when we put

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some legal texts into a Markov chain
and made a game, ok, which is the real

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legal text and which is the Markov chain,
and we made 3 or 4 rounds and

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people always failed.
C D: Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, it's

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an open secret that like it was several
months after Twitter's launch that someone

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noticed that Twitter's terms of service
represent repeatedly mentioned Flickr,

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because they copied and pasted Flickr's
terms of service to make them Twitter's

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terms of service. And, like, no one, not
even Twitter's lawyers had read the terms

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of service to notice that, it didn't
mention Twitter. So, you know, I'm not

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surprised. Like literally nobody reads
those, right? Those are like self-

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reproducing text viruses.
J: Yeah, actually they are. Shall we have

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a look into the questions we still have?
C D: Yeah

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J: So, we do have 2 parts I think!?
C:D: Right, I only have one of them.

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J: I think you have the one from the...
your previous talk.

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C D: So, I can... One of my answer, one or two of
these and then you can think about the

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rest of these. Right. So. What's the one
that I liked here, oh, was ... We can't

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use Antimonopoly. It's not like you can
dissolve Facebook overnight,

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realistically, what's the roadmap to a
more sustainable environment? So I think

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that misunderstands the benefits of a
protracted antitrust action. That, you

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know, if we were to say to Facebook,
all right, we're going to break out

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WhatsApp and Insta. Which I think we could
do even without invoking antimonopoly law.

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I think you could say that, especially in
the EU, their merger was was contingent on

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them not merging the backends of Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp. And then they

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later merged the backends of Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp. And I think if you

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are given regulatory forbearance, if
you're given an exemption to a regulation

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on promise of certain conduct, then if you
engage in that conduct, then we should

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just revoke it. Right? We should just
revoke the forbearance. I

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think that's a pretty straightforward
lift. But even if it were to take a long

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time, even if we spent a decade trying to
make Google spin out its ad tech stack,

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which I think we should do. That 10 years
would really like dramatically alter the

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way that investors and corporate
executives thought about anti-competitive

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conduct. Right? It would get all
of the the people who are currently, when

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they balance out, you know, the upside of
a monopoly and the downside of monopoly,

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it would weight the downside much more
heavily. And you would get the kind of

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forbearance you got, say from IBM, when
they didn't go after Tom Jennings,

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when he was making the Phoenix ROM. And
you would then see things like investment.

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So, you know, the thing, that market
believers say about markets is, that they

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respond very quickly and regulators
respond slowly. And that's true. The

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markets are very quick. You can
see that in the growth of technologies

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over the crisis. Right? Like think of how
quickly markets turned Zoom into the thing

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that we all use. Right. It was, you know,
if you tried to regulate a video

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conferencing system, though, by the time
the consultations were done and so on, it

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would have been years later. And markets
are actually pretty good at fighting

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monopolies, if they're well regulated.
Right. You know, the reason, that venture

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capitalists don't fund Facebook
competitors is not because they, you know,

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love Facebook and they wouldn't
want to see Facebook in trouble. It's

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because, they think that, if they tried to
fight Facebook, Facebook would destroy

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them. And so, if we were to put Facebook on
notice that everything it did from now on

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was going to be part of this ongoing
antitrust action, which I think just

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happened right just before Christmas with
the new slate of anti-trust suits against

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them. Then, if you can make that, if you
can make an investor understand that you

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could get capital to start a competitor to
Facebook. Now, in terms of what we can do

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that fits between antitrust action and
nothing, what we can do to get like jam

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today instead of jam tomorrow, there's two
courses involving interoperability. So one

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of them is is already in the Digital
Services Act. It was in the Access Act

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that was proposed in the US last year. And
the DSA and the Access Act

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both have these mandatory interoperability
components where they say, you know,

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Facebook must produce an interface that
third parties can log into. And they have

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different ways of trying to make sure that
that third party isn't Cambridge

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Analytica. And it's going to be, it's
hard, but it will open some

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regulatory space in concert with these
antitrust enforcement actions. But even

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more exciting would be an interoperator's
defense, a law or a regulation that said,

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if you devise a way to interface a new
product with an existing product for a

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legitimate purpose, including increased
consumer freedom, security auditing,

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accessibility for people with disabilities
and you know independent repair and so on,

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that notwithstanding any law, software
patents, copyrights, terms of service,

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trade secrecy, non-compete, you have an
absolute defense. And obviously passing

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that law would be really hard, but it
wouldn't have to come legislatively, like

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you could imagine bits and pieces of it
emerging. Like maybe we say to Facebook

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that the remedy for it's unlawful and
deceptive merger with Instagram and

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WhatsApp is that they have to sign a
consent decree saying they won't punish

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people who build interoperable services on
this basis. And so they have to act as

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though that were the law, even if it
wasn't the law. Or we might see things

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like a procurement guideline where you
know we might have educational

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authorities who say to Google, yeah, we're
going to buy Google classroom site

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licenses for all of our locked down kids,
but as a condition of that, you have to

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promise that you will not seek any kind of
vengeance against people who do the

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following things. Or we might say to
Apple, as a procurement matter, if we're

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going to buy fifty thousand iPads for our
school district, you have to promise not

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to sue people who produce side loading
tools, because we have apps that our

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district depends on, and we can't, you
know, we can't be dependent on you guys

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deciding that you don't want to lock that
app out. And so you get this kind of like

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multilayered stack where you have
antitrust enforcement that is like 'pour

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encourager les autres'. You know,
sometimes you have to execute an admiral

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to encourage the rest of them. And that
just ripples out through the whole sector.

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And then you have interoperability
mandates, through regulation that are slow

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moving, but not as slow moving as
lawsuits. You have new market

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opportunities that are much faster moving
that will depend on both the lawsuits and

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the regulation. And then you have
unilateral actions that governments can

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take with very little consultation
without having to get things

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through parliament where they can just
bind over technology companies to behave

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in certain ways so that, you know, they
must do it. Like imagine if the remedy for

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Dieselgate was that the German state said
to Volkswagen and other giant German

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automakers, you are no longer allowed to
block any independent auditing service,

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repair or manufacture of parts for any of
your vehicles. It's a natural remedy,

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right? Like it directly addresses the bad
conduct, but it also creates right to

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repair, interoperability, independent
security auditing, all of that stuff out

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of the gate. And like you could get it
just as part of a consent decree. You

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could get it just with the German
regulator talking to the lawyers for Audi

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and saying, if you don't want your CEO to
go to jail, you have to sign this paper.

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Right? And then then you get actual, like
fast moving action. And so I think it's

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that kind of holistic thinking about how
technology, markets, law and norms all

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work together that gets us to a solution.
And then as against this backdrop,

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remember, that there are people who are
worried about monopolies in beer who are

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going to be fighting your corner. And
there's people are going to be upset that

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all glasses are made by one company,
Luxottica in Italy, who've raised prices a

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thousand percent over the last decade, who
are also going to be fighting your corner

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on this. And so, you know, as opposed to
being a war on a thousand fronts, this is

305
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going to be a battle with a thousand
allies. And that's going to make that

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antitrust stuff move a lot faster than it
did with Microsoft, because this won't be

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just a one off assault on Microsoft, or on
Google, or on Facebook. This is going to be

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like a global movement to it to attack
monopolism itself.

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J: As I just said, markets, ecosystems.
There was another pretty interesting

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question about, by the way,
interoperability and free and open source

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ecosystems and things like probably the
fattyverse or so, that just rise and come

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00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:14,501
up as a yeah as a real alternative to the
solutions we've had over the last 10 or 15

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years? What do you see in those?
C D: So I think the thing that's missing,

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I mean, I like them. I use them. I have a
Mastodon account. I'm actually trying to

315
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stand up a Mastodon server right now. And
but the problem with Diaspora, Mastodon

316
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and other, like federated answers to
Facebook is not centralization

317
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versus decentralization or features versus
non-features. It's interoperability.

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Specifically, it's both the lack of a
standardized interoperable means of

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connecting to these services, which, to
its credit, Twitter is actually like

320
00:25:51,820 --> 00:25:56,080
trying to do something about Twitter's
Project Blue Sky. I think they have

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like, they've sat down and they've gone
like, well, having absolute control of our

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users is worth this much. Not being
responsible for moderating content is

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worth this much. The only way we get out
from not moderating content is by not

324
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owning the content, not having the
capacity to moderate the content

325
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and just being like a federator or a
central node and a federator. And so

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they're kind of moving towards it. And
they want to provide like a managed

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interface. Right. They want to have, like,
you know, a standardized API that everyone

328
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accesses. The problem with those
standardized APIs is that Twitter used to

329
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have them and then they took them away. So
you know the thing that produces an

330
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:40,630
equilibrium where those standardized APIs
are both good and durable is competitive

331
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compatibility. If you know, that the day
you withdraw the standardized API, hackers

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all over the world are going to write bots
that just replace the API with scrapers,

333
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that you're going to have to fight like
this, it's like marching on

334
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Stalingrad, right? Like you're just going
to have, like, this kind of endless

335
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grinding trench warfare with with hackers
who will be legally immunized from your

336
00:27:06,270 --> 00:27:11,660
from any legal tool you have to shut them
down. And all you'll be able to do is just

337
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tweak intrusion detection system rules and
try in a system with hundreds of millions

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of users to distinguish users who are just
weird from bots. Right. Because like, when

339
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you have, like think about Facebook, right.
Facebook's got 2.6 billion users

340
00:27:26,980 --> 00:27:30,620
and has 2.6 million, one in a
million use cases or 2.6

341
00:27:30,620 --> 00:27:35,490
thousand one in a million use cases every
single day. Right. So distinguishing the

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00:27:35,490 --> 00:27:39,500
dolphins from the tuna in your tuna net is
going to be really hard when you're

343
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operating at that scale. And so, 
you know, when you're like in the

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meeting with the head of, the CTO and the
CSO and the chief marketing officer and

345
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the CFO and the shareholders and
the board, and they're like "We need more

346
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revenue. We're going to shut down the API,
we're going to nerf the API". The

347
00:27:55,441 --> 00:27:59,331
technologists in the room can say this is
what the bill for that is going to look

348
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like and it's going to exceed the excess
capital we get from blocking the API. And

349
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so, you know, this idea that, like, we can
just like all of us, decide that next

350
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Wednesday we're going to shut down our
Twitter accounts and reopen them on

351
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Mastodon. It's crazy. It's not how
technology has ever worked, right? The way

352
00:28:18,500 --> 00:28:23,710
that we got Keynote as like a standard for
a lot of people's PowerPoint presentations

353
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or conference presentations was not by
everyone saying, like: On Thursday, the

354
00:28:28,740 --> 00:28:33,070
21st we stop using PowerPoint, we
start using Keynote. It was by iWorks

355
00:28:33,070 --> 00:28:36,870
Suite being able to read and write
PowerPoint files. And by having this kind

356
00:28:36,870 --> 00:28:41,850
of this, this kind of protracted period
where it was not binary. Right? Like

357
00:28:41,850 --> 00:28:45,570
you can have one foot in one camp, one
foot in the other, you know, I analogize it

358
00:28:45,570 --> 00:28:50,630
sometimes to my family's migration
history, where my grandmother was a Soviet

359
00:28:50,630 --> 00:28:56,110
refugee. She came to Canada and she lost
touch with her family for 15 years. Right?

360
00:28:56,110 --> 00:29:00,790
She couldn't phone them. She couldn't
write to them, like they exchanged

361
00:29:00,790 --> 00:29:04,410
messages. Sometimes if someone got a visa
to go to Leningrad, they she would tell

362
00:29:04,410 --> 00:29:08,950
them what to tell her mother if they could
find her mother. And, you know,

363
00:29:08,950 --> 00:29:13,340
obviously, like leaving the Soviet Union
was really hard for my family. It was a

364
00:29:13,340 --> 00:29:17,610
really hard choice, even though Canada was
a better place to be for them because of

365
00:29:17,610 --> 00:29:21,610
the very high costs that came with it. And
they have family members. I have family

366
00:29:21,610 --> 00:29:26,160
members in St. Petersburg who never came,
because the cost was too high. So five

367
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,090
years ago, I left London and moved to Los
Angeles. And here I am in my office in Los

368
00:29:30,090 --> 00:29:34,120
Angeles. Not only did all of my books come
with me, but let me see if I can get it in

369
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,970
the frame over there is my theremin. OK,
that's the theremin that I bought that

370
00:29:37,970 --> 00:29:42,720
runs on British voltage that has a little
mains adapter. We just got off a zoom call

371
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:47,530
with my relatives in London and we talk to
my family in Canada every week. So for us,

372
00:29:47,530 --> 00:29:50,750
the switching costs were really low
because if we changed our mind, we could

373
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go back. And in fact, this is the third
time I've moved to Los Angeles so I could

374
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I could try Los Angeles, see how it
worked, go back to London, come back. It

375
00:29:58,820 --> 00:30:03,010
was expensive, right? But it wasn't
leaving the Soviet Union in the forties

376
00:30:03,010 --> 00:30:08,220
expensive. And so, you know, by all means,
build the place that people who want to

377
00:30:08,220 --> 00:30:13,440
escape Mark Zuckerberg's Iron Curtain will
find as a happy home. But give them the

378
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:17,250
ability to have one foot in one, one foot
in the other. And, you know, the other

379
00:30:17,250 --> 00:30:22,100
piece of this is every time Zuckerberg
says, oh, I'm blocking Interop tools to

380
00:30:22,100 --> 00:30:27,270
keep my users safe. Remember that in the
DDR they said the Berlin Wall isn't to

381
00:30:27,270 --> 00:30:32,770
keep East Germans in, it's to keep West
Germans out of the workers paradise. And

382
00:30:32,770 --> 00:30:41,641
it's the same fucking excuse.
J: It always is. I just got in a message

383
00:30:41,641 --> 00:30:49,760
here and probably an interesting question,
by the way, or actually two, linking

384
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:59,480
together. Coming back to the monopolies,
you did not say much about Amazon on your

385
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:05,980
talk before. And we'll have another
question for the fireside chat here with

386
00:31:05,980 --> 00:31:14,450
your book. That the person asked why you
actually went away from publishing under

387
00:31:14,450 --> 00:31:22,230
the CC licenses and went to bigger
publishing houses. Would you like to

388
00:31:22,230 --> 00:31:25,740
explain probably why, also the Amazon part
then...

389
00:31:25,740 --> 00:31:29,750
C D: I didn't work Amazon in just because
of time pressure, but all of this stuff

390
00:31:29,750 --> 00:31:34,101
applies to Amazon. I mean, I think the
most interesting thing about Amazon is in

391
00:31:34,101 --> 00:31:38,850
terms of its worker uprising, where
there's been an explicit, so remember that

392
00:31:38,850 --> 00:31:42,830
all tech companies are split into some of
the highest paid workers on Earth and some

393
00:31:42,830 --> 00:31:46,351
of the lowest paid workers on Earth.
Right. And so in Amazon's case, that's

394
00:31:46,351 --> 00:31:50,150
like the warehouse workers who have some
of the worst working conditions and so on.

395
00:31:50,150 --> 00:31:55,700
And explicitly, the tech worker uprising
in Amazon was in solidarity with the

396
00:31:55,700 --> 00:32:00,290
warehouse workers. And that's really
interesting, right, because it's crossing

397
00:32:00,290 --> 00:32:05,420
these class boundaries and it's crossing
these divisions that the firms themselves

398
00:32:05,420 --> 00:32:10,330
deliberately created to prevent
solidarity. You know, in the same way that

399
00:32:10,330 --> 00:32:15,259
in the early days of the trade union
movement in the US, if the Italian auto

400
00:32:15,259 --> 00:32:18,720
workers were on strike, they'd bring in
German auto workers to break the strike

401
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:22,850
and they would try to make it about
Germans and Italians, not workers. In the

402
00:32:22,850 --> 00:32:27,459
same way, you have this kind of, you divide
up the workplace into contractors and non-

403
00:32:27,459 --> 00:32:32,920
contractors, green badges and blue badges.
And it it works to drive a fracture line

404
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:38,750
between different people who actually have
shared interests. In terms of publishing.

405
00:32:38,750 --> 00:32:42,230
Well, it's about monopolies. There's five
publishers left and in fact, there's about

406
00:32:42,230 --> 00:32:46,130
to be four because Bertelsmann is buying
Simon and Schuster, assuming the DOJ lets

407
00:32:46,130 --> 00:32:49,960
them do it, which, you know, this is kind
of like the first litmus test of whether

408
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:57,070
Biden's DOJ has got like any real serious
commitment to blocking monopolistic

409
00:32:57,070 --> 00:33:01,130
mergers, because the idea that we should
go from five companies to four in

410
00:33:01,130 --> 00:33:07,920
publishing is outrageous. There's just no
reason for it. So the, you know, with five

411
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:14,040
publishers, there's exactly one that lets
me go DRM free, and that's Tor. And Tor

412
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:19,900
was also the only one that would let me go
Creative Commons. And they change their

413
00:33:19,900 --> 00:33:26,490
mind. And so the choice was try and self
publish, which frankly, like I've done it,

414
00:33:26,490 --> 00:33:30,981
it's hard work. I would get one tenth as
many books written and I would go to my

415
00:33:30,981 --> 00:33:37,540
deathbed with dozens of unwritten books
but a better Creative Commons track record

416
00:33:37,540 --> 00:33:43,400
or suck it up and I sucked it up. I don't
like it and they know I don't like it. I

417
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:48,050
like Tor. They're the smallest, most,
they're owned by McMillan, which is owned

418
00:33:48,050 --> 00:33:54,910
by von Holtzbrink and you know they're the
smallest, they're most ethical. They're the

419
00:33:54,910 --> 00:34:00,450
ones that I like the best. But they didn't
like the Creative Commons licenses in the

420
00:34:00,450 --> 00:34:06,662
end. And so that was where I ended up. It
sucks now you know, I can still cc license

421
00:34:06,662 --> 00:34:09,890
the other stuff that I do. And if
anything, I've become more permissive in

422
00:34:09,890 --> 00:34:15,449
that. And I left Boing Boing almost a year
ago, a year minus a week and a half ago.

423
00:34:15,449 --> 00:34:19,990
And when I left, I started this new thing
called Pluralistic. And Boing Boing was

424
00:34:19,990 --> 00:34:25,440
licensed under a very restrictive cc
license. This is cc-by. It's as close as

425
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:30,251
you get to a public domain without going
cc-zero, it just requires attribution. And

426
00:34:30,251 --> 00:34:34,639
so pluralistic is a pretty significant
piece of writing. I am taking a break from

427
00:34:34,639 --> 00:34:39,460
it this week, but I write three or four
substantial articles every day that are

428
00:34:39,460 --> 00:34:45,990
cc-zero or cc-by and that I think like,
you know, if you're interested in my work,

429
00:34:45,990 --> 00:34:50,110
like there's a lot of it out there under
extremely generous, far more generous than

430
00:34:50,110 --> 00:34:54,109
my novels' cc licenses. I wish I could do
the cc licenses to. I mean, if nothing

431
00:34:54,109 --> 00:34:58,359
else, I mean, this is a little inside
baseball, but given that it's a German

432
00:34:58,359 --> 00:35:03,329
audience and it's relevant to Germany. So
the Germans that I meet who've read Little

433
00:35:03,329 --> 00:35:06,490
Brother and my other books inevitably
found them through Creative Commons

434
00:35:06,490 --> 00:35:11,150
licenses. In part, I think because English
works in Germany are still pretty

435
00:35:11,150 --> 00:35:14,480
expensive relative to the German
translations. And Germans have a high

436
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,589
enough literacy in English that they like
to read original English texts. And so

437
00:35:18,589 --> 00:35:23,740
before there were e-book markets that
served Germany with English language text,

438
00:35:23,740 --> 00:35:27,022
the only way to get an English language
ebook was to pirate it or get a

439
00:35:27,022 --> 00:35:30,680
cc one, and mine was the only cc one. So
what's interesting about that is now,

440
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:35,124
thanks to Tor books, I'm able to run my
own eBook store if you go to craphound.com

441
00:35:35,124 --> 00:35:40,730
slash shop, I have an eBook store, it's DRM
Free, EULA free books, and the way the

442
00:35:40,730 --> 00:35:45,180
publishing contracts work is my British
publisher has rights in British

443
00:35:45,180 --> 00:35:48,789
territories except Canada, like former
British Empire territories, except

444
00:35:48,789 --> 00:35:56,820
Canada. India, Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, the UK and so on. And my American

445
00:35:56,820 --> 00:36:03,039
publisher has rights in the US and Canada.
And then nobody has the exclusive right to

446
00:36:03,039 --> 00:36:08,900
non English speaking territories, like
Germany. And about 10 to 15 percent of my

447
00:36:08,900 --> 00:36:14,180
ebook sales come from Germany. And I get
all the money from those, right. When I

448
00:36:14,180 --> 00:36:18,799
sell an ebook in the UK, I give 70 percent
of the money to my publisher and then they

449
00:36:18,799 --> 00:36:22,750
give me twenty five percent back as my
royalty. When I sell a book in the US, I

450
00:36:22,750 --> 00:36:26,460
give seventy percent to my US publisher
and they give me back twenty five percent

451
00:36:26,460 --> 00:36:30,630
as my royalty. When I sell a book in
Germany, I keep all of it. I get twice as

452
00:36:30,630 --> 00:36:35,700
much money. And so 10 to 15 percent of my
readership are in Germany and they account

453
00:36:35,700 --> 00:36:41,210
for 30 percent of my gross receipts from
the website. And so that is like super

454
00:36:41,210 --> 00:36:45,093
cool. And you know I understand that my
publisher is not neither here nor there on

455
00:36:45,093 --> 00:36:49,080
that one because they don't get a dime
from it. But for me, my German audience is

456
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:53,400
super important. My German, English
speaking audience, is super important.

457
00:36:53,400 --> 00:37:04,579
J: And, would have self-publishing ever
be a way for you in the largest scale,

458
00:37:04,579 --> 00:37:14,240
so like Joanna Penn is doing in the UK?
C D: It's just a lot of work. I mean, it

459
00:37:14,240 --> 00:37:21,160
is like like I work at 16 to 18 hour day,
most days. Like I did the - so writing

460
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:26,250
Pluralistic, doing EFF and working on
novels during the crisis, the first day I

461
00:37:26,250 --> 00:37:33,980
took off between March 19th, after March
19th was December the 17th. So I didn't

462
00:37:33,980 --> 00:37:38,720
have a weekend off, I didn't have a day
off. So and I wrote a book. I wrote a book

463
00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:44,099
during the crisis and I self published an
audio book and I had four books come out.

464
00:37:44,099 --> 00:37:51,700
And - you know, I if - if I were doing
more, if I were doing the stuff that my

465
00:37:51,700 --> 00:37:55,339
publisher does, I wouldn't have written
that book. I would have written maybe half

466
00:37:55,339 --> 00:38:02,096
that book. And so it's just a matter
of how much time I have. And, you know, I

467
00:38:02,096 --> 00:38:05,440
have done an experiment. I did a self
publish short story collection and made a

468
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:08,530
bunch of money, like relative to how short
story - short story collections

469
00:38:08,530 --> 00:38:11,544
don't make a lot of money usually. So it
made about three times as much, four times

470
00:38:11,544 --> 00:38:17,160
as much. But the amount of the actual
gross dollars that it made was

471
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,690
significantly less than I would get for
going through a publisher. And you know

472
00:38:21,690 --> 00:38:29,700
that the amount of extra work was a
novel's worth of work. And so I just, you

473
00:38:29,700 --> 00:38:34,839
know, back to, like what I want to be
worried about on my deathbed. And I would

474
00:38:34,839 --> 00:38:43,530
much rather have published all of these
books without EULAs, without DRM and, you

475
00:38:43,530 --> 00:38:49,490
know, argued for a more robust set of fair
dealing and fair use rules that would

476
00:38:49,490 --> 00:38:53,359
allow people to use them widely than
having written half as many books, but

477
00:38:53,359 --> 00:38:55,930
gotten them all out under CC to a much
smaller audience.

478
00:38:55,930 --> 00:38:59,170
J: Yeah, it's a [balances with
hands], yeah.

479
00:38:59,170 --> 00:39:03,700
C D: It's not, I mean, I'm not thrilled
about it. It's like and maybe it's the

480
00:39:03,700 --> 00:39:09,220
wrong call - I don't know. But it's like,
you know. It's the call I made for now.

481
00:39:09,220 --> 00:39:13,250
You know, if we see massive de-
monopolization, maybe it'll get easier.

482
00:39:13,250 --> 00:39:21,550
J: Hmm. I see in the chat. We do have a
question. So, do we want to try to have

483
00:39:21,550 --> 00:39:26,910
someone free the microphone and ask the
question here in the room?

484
00:39:26,910 --> 00:39:30,109
Guest-sir#3: I think I'm now unmuted.
J: Yes, you're.

485
00:39:30,109 --> 00:39:34,421
Guest: Hi Cory, just a quick question. So
as the readers, is there anything we can

486
00:39:34,421 --> 00:39:38,779
do about this? It seems like the business
of publishing is pretty in, let's say, a

487
00:39:38,779 --> 00:39:41,660
bit of a difficult situation. Is there
anything we can do?

488
00:39:41,660 --> 00:39:46,910
C D: Yeah, I mean, I think this is the
problem with our consumerism more broadly

489
00:39:46,910 --> 00:39:51,359
is that, you know, consumerism, the value
of consumer rights movements - and there

490
00:39:51,359 --> 00:39:54,440
are some very, you know EFF, have has its
origins in consumer rights, groups like

491
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:58,750
BEUC and EDRI are fundamentally
consumer rights groups - the value

492
00:39:58,750 --> 00:40:03,609
of them is they work fast, right? Like
consumer power is fast power, but

493
00:40:03,609 --> 00:40:14,510
its limited power and citizen power is
slow. But consumers can't, by definition, can't

494
00:40:14,510 --> 00:40:20,109
shop their way out of a monopoly. Making
better consumer choices, making better

495
00:40:20,109 --> 00:40:25,640
individual choices will not solve
monopolism because the whole point of

496
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:29,849
monopolism is that the meaningful choices
have been taken off the table. That's

497
00:40:29,849 --> 00:40:33,720
- that's the real problem of monopolism is
the way that it distorts our public

498
00:40:33,720 --> 00:40:38,750
policy. And so for that, you need to be
involved in democracy. And so to be

499
00:40:38,750 --> 00:40:45,090
involved in democracy is to not think of
yourself primarily as an actor whose voice

500
00:40:45,090 --> 00:40:51,099
is felt through purchase decisions, but
rather through someone who's part of a

501
00:40:51,099 --> 00:41:00,002
movement. And, you know, the good news is
that there's a wide political spectrum of

502
00:41:00,002 --> 00:41:05,510
mainstream political movements that are
concerned with monopoly right now. And

503
00:41:05,510 --> 00:41:10,230
it's not the exclusive purview of the
left. I mean, the right for a long time,

504
00:41:10,230 --> 00:41:15,500
we're universally cheerleaders for
monopoly. But increasingly, you

505
00:41:15,500 --> 00:41:21,510
know,they're like: Well, I was fine when
Facebook was de platforming anti-pipeline

506
00:41:21,510 --> 00:41:27,050
activists and trans-rights activists. But
now that Alex Jones is gone, I'm you know,

507
00:41:27,050 --> 00:41:31,819
where will AfD meet if not on Facebook?
And so now suddenly they're all worried

508
00:41:31,819 --> 00:41:38,079
about monopoly. And, you know, the risk is
that they will structure their anti-

509
00:41:38,079 --> 00:41:41,950
monopoly remedies in ways that actually
just make the monopoly stronger. The big

510
00:41:41,950 --> 00:41:50,819
one of those is arguing for more intense,
more fine grained accountability for

511
00:41:50,819 --> 00:41:55,630
moderation decisions. And the thing about
that is, the reason that Facebook makes bad

512
00:41:55,630 --> 00:42:01,090
moderation decisions is not merely because
Mark Zuckerberg is not well suited to

513
00:42:01,090 --> 00:42:04,631
being in charge of the lives of 2.6
billion people. It's because, like no

514
00:42:04,631 --> 00:42:09,720
one on Earth should have that job. And, if
we say, all right, you've got to moderate

515
00:42:09,720 --> 00:42:13,849
all the bad stuff or moderate better or
not have more false positives or

516
00:42:13,849 --> 00:42:18,609
whatever, stop harassment or anything
else, all we do is we create this like

517
00:42:18,609 --> 00:42:23,599
floor underneath which no one can afford
to participate as an alternative to

518
00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:28,200
Facebook. And that just makes Facebook the
endless monopoly. And I fear that both the

519
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:34,180
right and the left - for their own reasons
- are in their anti-monopoly energy going

520
00:42:34,180 --> 00:42:38,900
down the wrong path here. And so this is
where we need people in movements who are

521
00:42:38,900 --> 00:42:43,390
technologists and understand the
technology and can say - in the same way

522
00:42:43,390 --> 00:42:48,420
that we've said now for decades,
whenever someone says: Oh, we need to get

523
00:42:48,420 --> 00:42:53,890
rid of cryptography and replace it with
cryptography-with-lawful-access-back-doors

524
00:42:53,890 --> 00:42:58,440
and that will only let the good guys in
and won't let the bad guys in - and we say

525
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:03,200
to them, look, you know, I am here as your
constituent, as a technologist, as someone

526
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:06,960
who works in the field and I'm going to
explain to you what's at risk and why that

527
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:10,680
doesn't work. You know, in words that you
can understand. We need to go in and have

528
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:16,960
those same conversations about moderation
and about this idea that, like, it's not

529
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:23,700
too late for a dynamic Internet. That we
can we can aspire to something better than

530
00:43:23,700 --> 00:43:28,980
a slightly more responsible Facebook. That
we can aspire to a more self determining

531
00:43:28,980 --> 00:43:34,009
more pluralistic Internet where you don't
have to hope that Facebook cleans up its

532
00:43:34,009 --> 00:43:40,030
act. You can just go somewhere else. Whose
policies you like better and still talk to

533
00:43:40,030 --> 00:43:45,759
your Facebook friends.
J: Hmm. And as you just said activists and

534
00:43:45,759 --> 00:43:51,319
all the bad stuff. We have some more
questions here. You also said

535
00:43:51,319 --> 00:43:59,364
something about that dividing and fracture
line before where workers were divided.

536
00:43:59,364 --> 00:44:10,058
And I have a question: Why do all those,
or most, or many left-wing communities

537
00:44:10,058 --> 00:44:16,680
split up about fundamental discussions
while right wing people just stick

538
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:22,970
together and, yeah, try to to work
together for benefits?

539
00:44:22,970 --> 00:44:27,660
C D: Well, I think that I mean, it's
multifaceted and that characterization is

540
00:44:27,660 --> 00:44:32,730
not entirely true, right? You know, the
right wing movements do have really

541
00:44:32,730 --> 00:44:38,920
serious fracture lines. In Canada, our
conservative party was like many

542
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:42,579
conservative parties. One of these
chimeras where you have, you know,

543
00:44:42,579 --> 00:44:47,349
wealthy people and social conservatives
and wealthy people say you vote for our

544
00:44:47,349 --> 00:44:51,780
tax breaks and we'll punish women who have
abortions and they fused this

545
00:44:51,780 --> 00:44:57,749
coalition. And in Canada, after the
Mulroney years - he was our Helmut Kohl

546
00:44:57,749 --> 00:45:03,559
equivalent - the conservatives were in
such bad odour that they pulled less than

547
00:45:03,559 --> 00:45:08,310
12 percent in the election, didn't qualify
for free office space on Parliament Hill.

548
00:45:08,310 --> 00:45:12,172
And the party broke up and became two
parties, the Conservative Party and the

549
00:45:12,172 --> 00:45:18,731
Reform Party. And hilariously, later on,
they reformed and they were at this all

550
00:45:18,731 --> 00:45:23,420
party conference and the naming committee
went into a closed room to figure out what

551
00:45:23,420 --> 00:45:26,069
they were going to call the new party. And
they came up with the Canadian

552
00:45:26,069 --> 00:45:31,660
Conservative Reform Alliance Party - which
is CRAP. And no one noticed until after

553
00:45:31,660 --> 00:45:37,400
the press release. But conservative
parties fracture all the time. They have

554
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:41,750
really serious, grotesque fracture lines.
The Republican Party is in major

555
00:45:41,750 --> 00:45:45,970
disarray at the moment and will probably
be in worse disarray after the election.

556
00:45:45,970 --> 00:45:52,416
The run off in Georgia in January if they
lose control of the Senate because money

557
00:45:52,416 --> 00:45:55,339
talks and bullshit walks. If you don't
deliver, if your program doesn't deliver

558
00:45:55,339 --> 00:46:00,369
the majority that allows you to enact the
wider program, then you are discredited

559
00:46:00,369 --> 00:46:04,619
and you lose your seat. I mean, the
British Tories have undergone the same

560
00:46:04,619 --> 00:46:08,240
thing. That's what Brexit was. It was a
split in the British Tories. In terms of

561
00:46:08,240 --> 00:46:12,150
the left, there are lots of reasons the
left splinters. Some of it is what Freud

562
00:46:12,150 --> 00:46:15,549
called the narcissism of small
differences. You know, you call it free

563
00:46:15,549 --> 00:46:21,650
software, i call it open source. We can't
be friends anymore. Some of it is

564
00:46:21,650 --> 00:46:27,820
legitimate differences, which, you know,
there are real meaningful differences

565
00:46:27,820 --> 00:46:32,779
between, say, liberals in the left. And
there are lots of places where they agree.

566
00:46:32,779 --> 00:46:36,240
But there are irreconcilable differences.
And when it comes to those breaking

567
00:46:36,240 --> 00:46:41,577
points, you just, the alliance is going to
fall apart, right? It may, it may -

568
00:46:41,577 --> 00:46:46,430
personal friendships may endure, but the
wider questions are going to drive it

569
00:46:46,430 --> 00:46:52,349
apart. And then I just watched a video
with Boots Riley, you know, who is the guy

570
00:46:52,349 --> 00:46:58,009
who made "Sorry to disturb you", he's a
revolutionary rapper. And he talked about

571
00:46:58,009 --> 00:47:03,550
the history of the protest movement in the
US and the trade union movement. And one

572
00:47:03,550 --> 00:47:07,289
thing that is really under reported,
including to my shame by me in the last

573
00:47:07,289 --> 00:47:11,540
nine months, is that the US had more
wildcat strikes than at any time since

574
00:47:11,540 --> 00:47:16,170
the 1940s. Strikes where there wasn't a
union, that it was unsanctioned and they

575
00:47:16,170 --> 00:47:21,600
were in support of the same issues as the
protests that got all the coverage, Black

576
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:28,319
Lives Matter and so on. But they didn't
draw the coverage. And Riley was on the

577
00:47:28,319 --> 00:47:35,609
show talking about the way that the left -
including the radical left in the US -

578
00:47:35,609 --> 00:47:41,739
moved from strikes to protests. Where the
primary mechanism for enacting a program

579
00:47:41,739 --> 00:47:45,630
of change was protests and not strikes.
And he said that it came from the anti-

580
00:47:45,630 --> 00:47:51,380
communist witch hunts of the 1950s and 60s
and that the trade union movement - to

581
00:47:51,380 --> 00:47:58,249
avoid the penalty of being tarred as
communists by the witch hunters, by the

582
00:47:58,249 --> 00:48:04,359
McCarthy hearings, they backed away from
radical political agendas and they became

583
00:48:04,359 --> 00:48:10,440
effectively part of the establishment. And
that the radical left split off and they

584
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:17,329
declared that student movements were the
future of political, radical political

585
00:48:17,329 --> 00:48:22,140
change. And student movements, they can
have symbolic strikes, but a student

586
00:48:22,140 --> 00:48:26,750
strike is not a strike in the way that
workers strike is, right? A worker strike

587
00:48:26,750 --> 00:48:30,859
is really fundamental. Like at its core, a
worker strike is the argument that who

588
00:48:30,859 --> 00:48:38,960
gets to decide how things get made and who
gets to own those things should be in a

589
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:43,400
different set of hands, should be
differently organized. It is a

590
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:50,079
foundationally different project than a
protest. A protest is about what the

591
00:48:50,079 --> 00:48:57,609
people in charge should do and a strike is
about who should be in charge. And he says

592
00:48:57,609 --> 00:49:04,779
that the legacy of that today is that we
focus our energies on the outcomes of our

593
00:49:04,779 --> 00:49:10,589
political arrangements, which are
structural racism, sexism, inequality and

594
00:49:10,589 --> 00:49:15,349
so on. But we don't talk about the
underlying structure anymore. We don't

595
00:49:15,349 --> 00:49:19,220
address the underlying structure. We may
talk about it in our protest, but we don't

596
00:49:19,220 --> 00:49:26,510
address it with the most tried and true
direct action tool we have for changing

597
00:49:26,510 --> 00:49:30,950
those structural arrangements, which is
striking. And I, you know, I just listened

598
00:49:30,950 --> 00:49:34,400
to that yesterday and I've been thinking
about it ever since. And I think that it

599
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:40,559
does reveal a really like, non-trivial
distinction between different ways of

600
00:49:40,559 --> 00:49:45,859
looking at theories of change. And it's
not that kind of cartoony, like Marxist

601
00:49:45,859 --> 00:49:49,319
can't care about class and everyone else,
and they're all white dudes. And then

602
00:49:49,319 --> 00:49:55,570
everyone else cares about gender and race.
It's about understanding how anti-

603
00:49:55,570 --> 00:49:59,869
communist witch hunts and how like a
deliberate, like normative and political

604
00:49:59,869 --> 00:50:05,520
project to discredit a certain kind of - a
certain ideology, changed the way that we

605
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:12,640
talk about what our political aspirations
might be. And it's a really important

606
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:17,829
distinction. It really matters. I'm still
trying to digest it. But, you know, I'm

607
00:50:17,829 --> 00:50:27,749
thinking about it ever since.
J: Hmm, we have, as we said just before we

608
00:50:27,749 --> 00:50:35,119
went online with the fireside chat here,
by the way. And I'm really happy that

609
00:50:35,119 --> 00:50:45,509
we're exploring this, yeah, for us new
format of a talk/chat. I'm really happy to

610
00:50:45,509 --> 00:50:51,779
have people here in the room with us. So
this will be for all the other fireside

611
00:50:51,779 --> 00:50:59,700
chat, another invitation to pop in and ask
your questions directly and be here with

612
00:50:59,700 --> 00:51:07,970
us in the room. And we have people in the
audience who have a really big question

613
00:51:07,970 --> 00:51:19,317
that probably all of us have. It's 2020
for all of us and 2020 is somewhat

614
00:51:19,317 --> 00:51:31,400
demanding. And how do you manage? To not
get depressive over activism, so how can

615
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:39,039
you stay positive with all the stuff
happening and all the opponents we face in

616
00:51:39,039 --> 00:51:43,119
activism?
C D: Yeah, you know, I would lie if I said

617
00:51:43,119 --> 00:51:50,170
I hadn't felt a lot of despair this year.
I mean, lucky for me, the way that I cope

618
00:51:50,170 --> 00:51:56,329
with stress is by working. So, you know,
it's not entirely great because when I

619
00:51:56,329 --> 00:52:02,170
work without balance, you know, when when
all you do is stick your face in your

620
00:52:02,170 --> 00:52:07,380
computer and work, then your emotional
health suffers and your physical health. I

621
00:52:07,380 --> 00:52:11,249
have a chronic pain problem. And I hurt
myself so badly a couple of weeks ago that

622
00:52:11,249 --> 00:52:15,519
I was actually walking around on a cane.
Literally just from sitting too much and

623
00:52:15,519 --> 00:52:20,119
neglecting my physical welfare, not doing
the self care that I need to manage my

624
00:52:20,119 --> 00:52:27,089
disability. So, you know, it's
not been great for anyone. I, you know,

625
00:52:27,089 --> 00:52:32,220
I'm working on this utopian novel right
now, "The Lost Cause", which is a novel

626
00:52:32,220 --> 00:52:40,619
set after "Green New Deal" in which people
have oriented themselves to the long

627
00:52:40,619 --> 00:52:46,180
project of dealing with climate change.
And so that includes things like a

628
00:52:46,180 --> 00:52:51,930
300 year project to relocate all the
world's cities 20 kilometers inland and

629
00:52:51,930 --> 00:52:56,010
really big structural changes to cope with
hundreds of millions of refugees that we

630
00:52:56,010 --> 00:53:02,569
know will come and orienting our work
around contingency plans for months at a

631
00:53:02,569 --> 00:53:08,759
time when you can't leave your house
because of wildfires. And it is

632
00:53:08,759 --> 00:53:13,609
indistinguishable from an environmental
dystopian novel, except for the fact that

633
00:53:13,609 --> 00:53:18,020
the people in the book don't feel
helpless. They know what's coming. They

634
00:53:18,020 --> 00:53:21,809
know they can't stop it, but they know
that they can prepare for it. They can do

635
00:53:21,809 --> 00:53:27,200
stuff that will manage it. And so for me,
that's like, you know, back to the theme

636
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:31,240
of my talk I just gave: Self-
determination, right. The ability to have

637
00:53:31,240 --> 00:53:39,059
like a say in how this stuff works out to
know which parts are parameterized and

638
00:53:39,059 --> 00:53:45,489
which parts are set in stone. That is, I
think, the thing that keeps at least some

639
00:53:45,489 --> 00:53:51,780
people sane and dedicated and acting. And
so this is the upside of activism, right?

640
00:53:51,780 --> 00:53:56,830
Is like doing something to try and make a
difference may feel hopeless and

641
00:53:56,830 --> 00:54:03,230
exhausting, but try doing nothing to make
a difference and to just be like tempest

642
00:54:03,230 --> 00:54:11,440
tossed, smashed around by the breaking
down system, that's for me anyway, much,

643
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:17,720
much harder and more stressful. And, you
know, ultimately, like my view of the

644
00:54:17,720 --> 00:54:24,670
world is that we cannot operate a theory
of change like a novelist, we have to

645
00:54:24,670 --> 00:54:29,651
operate a theory of change, like a
programmer. So novelists, you know, posit

646
00:54:29,651 --> 00:54:35,980
this like reductionist, simplified way of
getting from A to Z where you have an

647
00:54:35,980 --> 00:54:38,890
ending, you have a beginning, and you work
out the steps to take you up a dramatic

648
00:54:38,890 --> 00:54:44,510
curve and then down and through your
denouement, right? And programers, when

649
00:54:44,510 --> 00:54:51,289
they work with, like, non-trivial data
sets, they know that the terrain is

650
00:54:51,289 --> 00:54:55,829
unknowably complex, that if you try to
enumerate the whole terrain and find an

651
00:54:55,829 --> 00:55:02,010
optimal path through it, the terrain would
have like altered by the time you'd

652
00:55:02,010 --> 00:55:07,650
finished. And also the moment during which
you want to do the job would have passed.

653
00:55:07,650 --> 00:55:13,349
So you can't figure out how to get from A
to Z if you're writing code that you can't

654
00:55:13,349 --> 00:55:17,470
find the optimal way, the one true way,
the best way. Instead, what you have to do

655
00:55:17,470 --> 00:55:24,950
is hill climb, right. You have to like
ascend a gradient towards a better future,

656
00:55:24,950 --> 00:55:28,230
like the victory condition you're looking
for. And you might end up stuck in a local

657
00:55:28,230 --> 00:55:31,980
maximum. You might have to do something
like hill descent in order to do more hill

658
00:55:31,980 --> 00:55:38,450
climbing. But in order to get from from A
to Z in software, you assume that if you

659
00:55:38,450 --> 00:55:46,700
can ascend the gradient to a new area of
the terrain, that from that new area, new

660
00:55:46,700 --> 00:55:51,859
terrain will be revealed that you can't
see from where you are now and that the

661
00:55:51,859 --> 00:55:56,279
best way to map the territory is to
traverse it, and that even if you have

662
00:55:56,279 --> 00:55:59,360
some reversals, even if you have to double
back on yourself to get all the way

663
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:06,220
through it, you will still have done a
better job than if you had tried to do it

664
00:56:06,220 --> 00:56:11,030
perfectly all at once the way a novelist
does. And so whatever things look shitty

665
00:56:11,030 --> 00:56:17,190
and scary I just say, like, if I can think
of one thing that I can do that improves

666
00:56:17,190 --> 00:56:24,480
my situation, that I will find myself in a
new zone from which I might have new

667
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:28,569
courses of action that I can't even
imagine now. And that's what keeps me

668
00:56:28,569 --> 00:56:32,690
going. It may not make me happy, but it's
a reason to put one foot in front of the

669
00:56:32,690 --> 00:56:37,830
other.
J: Yeah, I think we all need that. We do

670
00:56:37,830 --> 00:56:44,599
have two more questions in the chat or two
and a half, and we have like three minutes

671
00:56:44,599 --> 00:56:52,630
left. So can I can I get two short ones,
probably? Ian you're first of them.

672
00:56:52,630 --> 00:57:01,421
Ian: Hi - Hi, Cory. Thanks for your work.
Amazing. I love it so much and I read all

673
00:57:01,421 --> 00:57:09,499
of it whenever you post something new. I
want to ask about the book "For the Win".

674
00:57:09,499 --> 00:57:14,249
And I love that much and it showed the
world that games are actually a market, a

675
00:57:14,249 --> 00:57:19,319
big financial market, and the environment,
the setting of the scene feels a bit like

676
00:57:19,319 --> 00:57:23,099
there could be more stuff happening at the
end of the book, so it's a bit open. I

677
00:57:23,099 --> 00:57:28,090
don't want to spoil it to anyone, but it
felt a bit like there could be more. What

678
00:57:28,090 --> 00:57:31,460
would it take for you to write a sequel to
"For the Win"?

679
00:57:31,460 --> 00:57:36,609
C D: Well, you know, I wrote "For the Win"
when I was - as part of my reckoning with

680
00:57:36,609 --> 00:57:42,599
great financial crisis and also as part of
my marriage; because I'm married to a

681
00:57:42,599 --> 00:57:50,410
former professional Quake player. And so I
- she was at GDC when the first gold farmer came

682
00:57:50,410 --> 00:57:53,799
forward. And so gold farming was like a
thing that I was really interested in. I

683
00:57:53,799 --> 00:57:58,269
was really interested in that burgeoning,
you know, games economics world. Yanis

684
00:57:58,269 --> 00:58:05,380
Varoufakis working for that Icelandic game
company and so on. But today, I'm far more

685
00:58:05,380 --> 00:58:10,680
interested in heterodox economics and
particularly in modern monetary theory.

686
00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:14,569
And I think that if I were ever to revisit
this, I don't know that I would. But it

687
00:58:14,569 --> 00:58:18,239
would be - what would be a really
interesting way to revisit this would be

688
00:58:18,239 --> 00:58:24,349
to to do an "MMT lens gold farming" novel.
Ian: Yes, please. Sounds great.

689
00:58:24,349 --> 00:58:31,410
J: OK, so we see a next novel coming up
there. And we have one last question from

690
00:58:31,410 --> 00:58:36,750
Caige please.
Caige: Hi Cory, thank you for the talk,

691
00:58:36,750 --> 00:58:41,390
really great to have you here.
So, given everything that you've

692
00:58:41,390 --> 00:58:47,069
said about monopolies, massive unchecked
corporate power and so forth: What is one

693
00:58:47,069 --> 00:58:51,400
realistic thing that we could all do to
combat this that would actually have a

694
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:56,310
significant impact and actually have a
second quick follow up on that: What's the

695
00:58:56,310 --> 00:58:58,900
one thing that truly brings you hope in
all of this?

696
00:58:58,900 --> 00:59:03,970
C D: Well, so the one realistic thing is
you can't do anything individually. You

697
00:59:03,970 --> 00:59:07,940
have to do it collectively. Right. So you
have to find a political movement. And

698
00:59:07,940 --> 00:59:10,730
this is this is my point about the right
and the left and different kinds of

699
00:59:10,730 --> 00:59:13,769
parties and so on. You have to find a
political movement that is orienting

700
00:59:13,769 --> 00:59:19,869
itself towards monopoly and towards
dealing with monopoly. You know, our

701
00:59:19,869 --> 00:59:24,460
policymakers are even the ones that
perceive a problem with monopoly, don't

702
00:59:24,460 --> 00:59:28,989
perceive the political will to do anything
about it yet. You know, I debated Vestager

703
00:59:28,989 --> 00:59:35,540
from the audience last year at Reboot and
in or not reboot - at re:publica in

704
00:59:35,540 --> 00:59:40,030
Berlin, and she was like: "Oh, we can't do
breakup's. They take 15 years and cost too

705
00:59:40,030 --> 00:59:47,329
much money". She needs to have political
and social movements who have her back,

706
00:59:47,329 --> 00:59:51,789
who say: 15 years to break up Facebook
sounds good to me! Let's spend the money

707
00:59:51,789 --> 00:59:56,930
right and to get there, it's not an
individual thing. It's a social thing. You

708
00:59:56,930 --> 01:00:02,279
know, it's being involved in a political
party, in a political movement that is

709
01:00:02,279 --> 01:00:07,009
engaged with this. Larry Lessig talks
about the world being regulated by code,

710
01:00:07,009 --> 01:00:10,380
norms, markets and law, right? So, you
know, you can have this normative

711
01:00:10,380 --> 01:00:15,089
discussion with your friends. You can you
can bring them along to the idea that, you

712
01:00:15,089 --> 01:00:19,499
know, all of their problems have a common
origin, that it's monopolies. If you have

713
01:00:19,499 --> 01:00:22,520
a British friend who's local government
collapsed last year because of

714
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:25,910
"Carillion", you can say, oh, yeah, the
big four accounting firms which were

715
01:00:25,910 --> 01:00:29,549
allowed to buy all of their competitors
and merged with a bunch of consulting

716
01:00:29,549 --> 01:00:34,640
services, they audit the books of all
these companies, including Wirecard. They

717
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:38,479
forged the books for their customers and
allowed them to steal from us, right? So,

718
01:00:38,479 --> 01:00:42,180
that's not a problem of corruption in the
accounting industry. That's a problem of

719
01:00:42,180 --> 01:00:46,900
monopoly. And then you can get involved
with your party, with your social

720
01:00:46,900 --> 01:00:52,150
movement, if you're involved with, you
know, with "netzpolitik" or if you're

721
01:00:52,150 --> 01:00:57,401
involved with "EFF" or if you're involved
with "Quadrature", you can say, look: This

722
01:00:57,401 --> 01:01:01,430
is my priority too. You know, at EFF we
have an anti-monopoly group now that's

723
01:01:01,430 --> 01:01:06,000
been working for the last year and now
that Anti-monopoly has come to Tech, you

724
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:10,700
know, EEFs job is gonna be for the next
years to come, it's gonna be making sure

725
01:01:10,700 --> 01:01:14,809
that anti-monopolists understand the
technical dimension, that they don't

726
01:01:14,809 --> 01:01:18,079
inadvertently create more durable
monopolies by fighting it. We need those

727
01:01:18,079 --> 01:01:24,069
technical experts. So, you know, like in
the same way that the one thing that you

728
01:01:24,069 --> 01:01:28,309
can do about climate change is to find a
political party that cares about climate

729
01:01:28,309 --> 01:01:32,019
change and then demand that they take
meaningful action. The one thing you can

730
01:01:32,019 --> 01:01:37,500
do about monopoly is to get involved with
anti-monopoly movements because your

731
01:01:37,500 --> 01:01:43,059
individual action isn't going to do enough
there. It's it's too little. As to what

732
01:01:43,059 --> 01:01:48,700
gives me hope? I mean, the thing that
gives me hope is we have gone from anti-

733
01:01:48,700 --> 01:01:56,450
monopolism being like a fringe thing that
nobody cared about, and that was just

734
01:01:56,450 --> 01:02:02,349
laughable to it being central in like
literally less than a year. Like a year

735
01:02:02,349 --> 01:02:09,400
ago, a year and a half ago, March 2019, I
stood on a stage in Berlin and argued with

736
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:13,410
Europe's top anti-trust enforcer about
whether we would ever break up Facebook.

737
01:02:13,410 --> 01:02:18,599
And she said we wouldn't. And she's the
most powerful, most active, most take no-

738
01:02:18,599 --> 01:02:24,299
prisoners anti-trust enforcer in the world
today. We're ready to break up Facebook.

739
01:02:24,299 --> 01:02:29,579
It might take a decade, but we went from
this is impossible to let's get doing it

740
01:02:29,579 --> 01:02:33,660
in less than a year or just over a year,
right? That is remarkable progress. It

741
01:02:33,660 --> 01:02:39,480
might seem slow, but like it's a doubling
curve. You know, it's got momentum. Like,

742
01:02:39,480 --> 01:02:44,890
get behind it and push with whatever
group, with whatever organization you're

743
01:02:44,890 --> 01:02:49,930
involved with, push and push and push.
What gives me hope? That's what gives me

744
01:02:49,930 --> 01:02:55,380
hope.
J: And this is a wonderful ending where

745
01:02:55,380 --> 01:03:01,549
unfortunately out of time. People saying
they like this format. And I think we'll

746
01:03:01,549 --> 01:03:08,759
see a bit more of that over the rC3. And
I'm really, really happy, Cory, that you

747
01:03:08,759 --> 01:03:16,289
were the first of our authors doing a
fireside chat and probably we'll have some

748
01:03:16,289 --> 01:03:20,849
progress on turning over publishing
industry at some point.

749
01:03:20,849 --> 01:03:26,640
C D: So, for sure, and I have to say it is
an honor and a privilege, as always, to

750
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:32,329
speak at CCC. And I'm really indebted
to you volunteers and the people who make

751
01:03:32,329 --> 01:03:38,270
it happen every year. It's a remarkable
event and I'm looking forward to actually

752
01:03:38,270 --> 01:03:44,359
seeing you folks in person again soon. I
hope I can come to Leipzig for an in-

753
01:03:44,359 --> 01:03:47,690
person one next year.
J: Yes, please. That would be really

754
01:03:47,690 --> 01:03:49,793
great. Thank you very much, Cory.

755
01:03:49,793 --> 01:03:53,510
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756
01:03:53,510 --> 01:04:28,500
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