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Herald: All right, our next talk is Cory
Doctorow, who I think needs very little
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introduction in this situation. But for
those who don't know him: he's an
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activist, he's a science fiction
author, and I think he can be
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described as the King of Bloggers.
I remember him appearing on XKCD
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with a cape back in the good old days.
So, Cory, please take it away.
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Cory Doctorow: I don't know how I
feel about being a king, given
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given that I'm wearing a guillotine badge.
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Perhaps, like, party secretary.
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You have my permission to take my picture.
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So I'm going to I'm going to talk today
about technology and optimism
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and where it comes from
and where it needs to go.
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And I want to start by…
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well, I want to start by putting
on my slides. So let's do that.
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I want to start by busting a myth,
the myth of the blind techno optimist.
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You've probably encountered the story,
the story that, you know, once upon a time,
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there were a bunch o' nerds
who had discovered the Internet,
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and thought that if we just gave everyone
the Internet, everything would be fine.
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And that the only thing
that they needed to work on
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was making sure everyone got connected
and everything else would
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take care of itself. And now those idiots
have led us into this crazy, terrible,
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dystopian world. And why didn't they
foresee all this trouble? And the way that
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you know that this blind technological
optimism is a myth is that people don't go
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out and start organizations like the
Electronic Frontier Foundation because
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they think that everything is going to be
fine in the end. You know, if there's a
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motto that characterizes those early
technological optimists, it's not that
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everything is going to be great. It's that
everything will be great if we don't screw
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it up. And if we do screw it up, it's
going to be really, really terrible. Now,
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before computing was the source of regular
stock bubbles, it was just a passion. It
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was driven not by dreams of riches, but by
programmers who are able to make stuff
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happen. If you think about what the the
journey of a programmer is, it's that
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first you figure out how to express your
will with sufficient precision that your
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computer then enacts your will,
and enacts it tirelessly, perfectly…
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[stream lost]
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…computer is connected to a network, you
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can project your will around the world.
You can take the thing
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that you've built, this self executing
recipe, and you can give it to
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someone else, and they can execute it as
well. It's, and… But it's better than a
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recipe, right? You might have a recipe for
your grandmother's brownies. And when you
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send it to someone else, they still have
to follow the recipe. But a program is
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like a self executing recipe. It's like a
machine that just makes your grandmother's
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brownies appear in every household in the
world if they just download your code and
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run it. And of course, as you get on the
network and you find these people to share
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your code with, you're finding the people
as well. You're finding community…
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[stream lost]
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chimes
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Herald 2: But, well…
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chimes
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But not in, yeah,
that large scale, to be honest.
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Tried around quite a few things,
and had a little
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little online session for the Towel Day
and for all these things. We had the
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Easterhegg, the DiVOC, and yeah. We're
working on it to get the connection back.
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So, yeah.
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CD: …giant, fat, phonebook-sized…
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H2: OK, I can hear the voice
CD: …bill that they would get
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every month for all the things
that they did, and so they they
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they ran this whole system in the shadows.
And the last thing they wanted was for
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for what they were doing to come to
the attention of their bosses.
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And so they had a whole bunch of rules
about what you could and couldn't create.
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They especially didn't want any sex,
and they didn't want anyone
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explaining how to make bombs on Usenet.
And so there would be votes about
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what news, new newsgroup could be created.
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But every now & again, the backbone cabal,
which is what they called themselves…
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H2: So we do have a sound
of Mr. Doctorow here
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So I think it shouldn't, shouldn't
be too much of a of time until we get the
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stream back.
CD: …about cooking should go under the
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talk hierarchy, and
not under the rec hierarchy.
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And John Gilmore and other people who
were in his company decided to set up
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their own alternative version of Usenet
called the alt. hierarchy specifically
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to allow for a discussion of cooking
wherever the hell they wanted it.
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To exercise that little quantum of
self-determination. And very quickly,
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the alt. hierarchy grew until it was
larger than all of Usenet put together.
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So the worst nightmares of those early
digital activists have come to pass.
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We have total penetration of technology.
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There is centralization, surveillance, and
manipulation of all of our technology,
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everywhere. And the question that I think
is a valid one to ask is how were we dealt
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such a stinging defeat? How did it come to
pass that people who foresaw this danger,
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and worked to make things great and not
screw them up, still arrived at this
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moment where the Internet consists of five
giant websites filled with screenshots of
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text from the other four. That's a phrase
from Tom Eastman, a software developer
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in in New Zealand. And this is where I get
to my thesis about about what's just
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happened and what needs to happen next,
because there is a story about
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technologists that says that the blind
spot was dystopia, that technologists just
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failed to understand that all of this
stuff could go horribly wrong.
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And they really understood how
–whoops–
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They really understood
how wrong it could go. The
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The thing that technologists failed to
understand was the relationship of
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monopolism to technology and the economy
as it was emerging in the early days of
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the technology revolution. So if you think
about the early days of the commercial
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Internet and commercial technology,
personal computing and so on, it was very
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dynamic. Companies that were giants one
day ended up being acquired by upstarts
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the next day. And that dynamism was not
driven solely by technology, but also by
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US antitrust or anti-monopoly enforcers.
So I want you to think about what the
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experience of a kid in the United States
in the 1980s would have been like if
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you were using technology. So you might
have gotten your Apple II+ in say, 1980 or
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1981. In 1982 the modem that came with it
could suddenly dial all kinds of services
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all around America at a fraction of the
cost that it used to run that because AT&T
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had been broken up, and long distance
charges fell through the floor. And then
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in 1984, you might have replaced that
Apple II+ with an IBM PC, but it's more
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likely that you might have replaced it
with an IBM PC clone. Whichever one you
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replaced it with, it was probably running
an operating system from this guy, the guy
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who wrote this letter. Bill Gates. The guy
who started this tiny little company
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called Microsoft. And the reason that the
IBM PC was running code from this little
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startup and not from IBM itself was not
because IBM didn't know how to write code.
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IBM was really good at writing code. They
were arguably too good at writing code.
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And for 12 years prior to the creation of
the PC, IBM had been in antitrust hell
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with the Department of Justice in which
they were sued and sued and sued. And
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every year of that 12 year lawsuit, IBM
spent more on its lawyers than the entire
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US Department of Justice spent on all the
lawyers pursuing all antitrust action. And
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one of the things that the Department of
Justice was really adamant about was that
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if you made hardware, you shouldn't try to
monopolize the software for it. And so
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even though eventually IBM prevailed–the
case was dropped against it–the last thing
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they wanted was to get in trouble with the
DOJ again. And so after this 12 year
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process, when they made their first PC,
they decided not to try and make the
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operating system for it. Instead, they
tapped Bill Gates to make an operating
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system for it. And then Tom Jennings, the
guy who created FidoNet, which was the
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biggest competitor we had to Usenet. It
was a non-Internet-based distributed
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message board system. Tom Jennings, who is
a virtuoso hardware engineer who lives a
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few kilometers from my home here in Los
Angeles, he was tapped by a company called
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Phoenix that asked him to reverse engineer
IBM's ROMs, and he reverse engineered the
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PC ROM, produced a specification that was
used as the basis for a new clone ROM, and
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that clone ROM was sold to PC vendors all
over the world. And it's how we got
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Gateway, Dell, Compaq and all of the other
PC vendors that might have sold you that
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IBM PC clone in 1984 running an operating
system that IBM hadn't made, on phone
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lines that had been broken up from AT&T.
And then in 1992, you might have noticed
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that that little company, Microsoft, had
grown to be a monopolist itself with 95%
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of the operating system market. And so in
came the Department of Justice, and the
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Department of Justice spent the next 7
years dragging Microsoft up and down that
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same gravel road that they had dragged IBM
up and down for 12 years. And even though
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Microsoft got away, the way IBM had, their
behavior was tamed, too, because when a
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couple of guys in a Stanford lab, Larry
and Sergei, named their new search engine
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after the largest number they could think
of, a one followed by 100 zeros, a google,
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Microsoft decided not to do to them what
they had done to Netscape because they had
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seen what the Department of Justice does
to you if you do that to your nascent
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competitors. And so it felt in those days
like maybe we'd found some kind of perfect
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market, a market where you could make your
products with low capital, just with the
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sweat of your own mind, by writing code.
That you could access the global audience
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of everyone who might want to run that
code over a low cost universal network.
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And that that audience could switch to
your product at a very low cost, because
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you could always write the code that it
would take to to port the old data formats
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and to connect the old services to your
new product. It was a market where the
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best ideas would turn into companies that
would find customers and change the world.
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But what we didn't realize, what we were
naive about in those halcyon days of the
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early Internet, was that antimonopoly law,
the antimonopoly law that had made things
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so robust and dynamic that had given
everyone who who had access to a computer
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a chance to try and make a dent in the
universe, that that antitrust law had been
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shot in the guts in 1982, and was bleeding
out. And it's all thanks to this guy,
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Robert Bork. Robert Bork is kind of an
obscure figure for for most people these
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days. Although I said that on Twitter the
other day and a bunch of people in their
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50s said, "Oh, I know who Robert Bork
is." But I think if you're not an American
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in your 50s or a certain kind of weirdo
conservative activist, you've probably
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never heard of this guy. Robert Bork was
Richard Nixon's solicitor general and he
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committed crimes for Richard Nixon. And
they were so egregious that when Ronald
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Reagan tried to appoint him to the US
Supreme Court, the Senate decided not to
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confirm him because he was too grimy for
the US Supreme Court. And so instead, he
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became a kind of court sorcerer to Ronald
Reagan and he created a new theory about
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when monopoly laws should be enforced, a
theory he called the consumer harm theory.
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The consumer harm theory says that we
don't hate monopolies because monopolies
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are bad. We only hate monopolies because
they sometimes raise prices, and so long
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as a company that has a monopoly isn't
immediately raising prices after they
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acquire that monopoly, it's OK to let the
monopoly form and to let the monopoly
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fester. And this idea was incredibly
popular, and not just with Ronald Reagan.
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Every one of the neoliberal leaders of the
Reagan era, from Helmut Kohl to Margaret
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Thatcher to Brian Mulroney to Augusto
Pinochet, took up the ideas of Robert Bork
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and said that, from now on, we are not
going to get rid of our monopolies. From
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now on, we're going to encourage the
growth of monopolies on the grounds that
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they are efficient and only shut them down
if we can prove that they've used their
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monopoly to raise prices. Now, this idea
is a stupid idea, but it's incredibly
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popular for rich people, because rich
people like the idea that they could buy
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shares in companies that could establish
monopolies. And those rich people funded
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Robert Bork. They created, among
other things, a series of junkets called
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The Manne Seminars. M-A-N-N-E
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The Manne seminars are continuing
educational seminars for US
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federal judges in Florida, where you fly
to Florida, stay in a luxury hotel, and
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get lectured on the brilliance of Robert
Bork. 40% of US federal judges have been
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through the Manne seminars.
Unsurprisingly, those judges are far less
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likely to punish monopolistic conduct. The
people who like Robert Bork funded law
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schools and economics departments and
journals. And they they turned the idea of
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consumer harm into a kind of global
doctrine that has now taken over every
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single regulator in the West. China has a
slightly different vision of it, as does
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Russia. But the European Union, Canada,
the US, most of Central and South America
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have all adopted these rules. I don't know
to what extent these rules have penetrated
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the African markets. And so, and and and
consumer harm, this idea that monopolies
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should only be shut down if you can show
that they're using monopolism to raise
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prices, is incredibly hard to prove. In
fact, you could basically call it
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impossible to prove. And as a result,
anti-competitive conduct became so
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routine, that we no longer think of it as
unusual. Until the Bork era, here are some
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of the things that were considered
violations of antitrust law and that would
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have attracted scrutiny from a regulator:
merging with a major competitor, acquiring
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a small competitor, or creating a vertical
monopoly where you own different parts of
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the supply chain, like Google buying an ad
tech company. Now, the story of how tech
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got monopolized leans hard not on Robert
Bork, but on all these exotic ideas like
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network effects. The idea that if you if
you have one fax machine, it's useless and
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two are very useful and three are twice as
useful and four is twice as useful again,
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and that once a tech company starts to
become successful, the network effects
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snowball and you will never dethrone it.
Despite the fact that we no longer have
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Friendster or AltaVista or Amigas or any
of these other potential purveyors of
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network effects. A close look at how tech
companies grew does not show that network
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effects is what led to that growth.
Instead, you see predatory conduct.
00:17:53.254 --> 00:17:58.470
Moneyball. Using access to the capital
markets to raise gigantic amounts of money
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and buy or merge with all of your
competitors as the means by which they
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grew. And as an example of this, I want
you to think about Google for a minute. So
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Google is a company that has made exactly
one and a half successful in-house
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products. They made a really good search
engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone.
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Everything else that they've made in-house
died. This is just a small sample of the
00:18:20.100 --> 00:18:23.135
Google product graveyard. And everything
that they've done that's
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successful–Android, ad tech, YouTube, and
so on–all of these are companies that they
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acquired from someone else. So this is not
a company that has a natural monopoly due
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to a network effect. This is a company
that has an unnatural monopoly due to
00:18:43.290 --> 00:18:48.913
predatory conduct. Now, network effects
are indeed real. They are a thing. And you
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can see them exemplified pretty well with
the Bell System. This was what we called
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AT&T in the US before it was broken up in
the 1980's. But with with net with tech,
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network effects are very different from
other kinds of industries. You think of
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the railroad industry where once you have
rails that run from one place to another,
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it doesn't make any sense to to put in a
second set of rails. And so the custom
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accrues to the rail vendor, which can add
more rails to more destinations. And
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before long, you have these natural
monopolies emerging in rail. But that's
00:19:21.246 --> 00:19:25.550
not how it works with technology. And the
reason is that technology has
00:19:25.550 --> 00:19:31.410
interoperability. So built into our
general purpose computers and our general
00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:36.350
purpose network is the ability to run any
program provided you can express it in
00:19:36.350 --> 00:19:41.610
symbolic logic and to interface any new
network service with any existing network
00:19:41.610 --> 00:19:45.299
service. Now, oftentimes that
interoperability is deliberate and
00:19:45.299 --> 00:19:50.240
engineered. Someone will go to a standards
body like the W3C and decide on what an
00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:55.972
HTTP header looks like. But just as often,
that interoperability is adversarial. That
00:19:55.972 --> 00:20:01.360
interoperability is a form of competitive
compatibility, where a new company makes a
00:20:01.360 --> 00:20:05.602
product that plugs into an existing
product or service without permission,
00:20:05.602 --> 00:20:09.604
against the wishes of the people who made
the existing product or service. Like Tom
00:20:09.604 --> 00:20:15.350
Jennings making his IBM PC ROMs. And what
happens then is that the walled garden of
00:20:15.350 --> 00:20:19.690
the company that came before becomes a
feedlot in which all of the customers have
00:20:19.690 --> 00:20:24.917
been handily penned in, so that the new
market entrant can go over and choose
00:20:24.917 --> 00:20:30.190
whichever ones they want and devour them
in a smorgasbord. So to think about how
00:20:30.190 --> 00:20:36.440
this worked with the Bell System, the Bell
System originally had not just a monopoly
00:20:36.440 --> 00:20:41.156
over the wires, but a monopoly over the
things that connected to the wires. It was
00:20:41.156 --> 00:20:47.720
against the law to connect a phone, or a
phone-like device, or even a thing that
00:20:47.720 --> 00:20:52.940
clicked on to a phone, to a phone that
came from the Bell System or to a jack
00:20:52.940 --> 00:20:57.636
that the Bell System had installed. And
they argued that because they were a
00:20:57.636 --> 00:21:01.758
monopolist, they were part of America's
national security and safety apparatus,
00:21:01.758 --> 00:21:06.150
and that allowing third parties to connect
things to their network would result in
00:21:06.150 --> 00:21:10.217
the network being made unreliable and
therefore America being made insecure and
00:21:10.217 --> 00:21:15.915
unsafe. But they didn't use this power
just to keep the network operational. They
00:21:15.915 --> 00:21:20.420
used this power to extract monopoly rents,
to make money by screwing over their
00:21:20.420 --> 00:21:25.460
customers, by preventing new market
entrants. So, for example, to see where
00:21:25.460 --> 00:21:30.030
how bad this got, you can look at where it
broke down. The first time that this
00:21:30.030 --> 00:21:34.971
system broke down was when AT&T sued a
competitor called Hush-A-Phone.
00:21:34.971 --> 00:21:39.937
And Hush-A-Phone was a plastic cup that
snapped over the mouthpiece of your Bell
00:21:39.937 --> 00:21:44.969
phone so that, when you were speaking,
your voice would be muffled, and people
00:21:44.969 --> 00:21:49.249
who are in the same room as you would find
it hard to listen in on your conversation.
00:21:49.249 --> 00:21:54.699
And AT&T argued that the Hush-A-Phone,
because it was mechanically coupled to the
00:21:54.699 --> 00:21:59.170
Bell System, endangered the integrity of
the Bell System. And their regulator told
00:21:59.170 --> 00:22:03.833
them to go pound sand. They said, no, this
doesn't endanger the system, get used to
00:22:03.833 --> 00:22:06.860
it, people can connect things to their
phones. And that's when they lost
00:22:06.860 --> 00:22:10.961
mechanical coupling prohibitions. And then
they went after another company called
00:22:10.961 --> 00:22:16.980
Carterfone. And Carterfone made a walkie
talkie that plugged into a regular RJ11
00:22:16.980 --> 00:22:21.790
jack that you could connect your phone to.
And it was for people who worked on
00:22:21.790 --> 00:22:26.235
ranches and farms so that they could they
could clip a walkie talkie onto their belt
00:22:26.235 --> 00:22:29.852
and go out and work in the barn or ride
out on the range, and still take their
00:22:29.852 --> 00:22:35.930
phone calls. And AT&T argued that by
electrically coupling devices to the Bell
00:22:35.930 --> 00:22:41.350
System that they were violating AT&T's
monopoly and endangering America. And
00:22:41.350 --> 00:22:46.320
again, their regulator told them that that
was not a valid reason, and they lost the
00:22:46.320 --> 00:22:49.820
ability to block electrical electrical
coupling. And this is where we see the
00:22:49.820 --> 00:22:53.570
growth of everything from modems to
answering machines and all of the other
00:22:53.570 --> 00:22:58.750
devices that eventually plugged into the
Bell System. So interoperability can turn
00:22:58.750 --> 00:23:03.580
network effects on their head. And
interoperability was really key to the
00:23:03.580 --> 00:23:05.667
growth of the tech monopolists today.
00:23:05.667 --> 00:23:08.847
So think about the iWork suite
and its history
00:23:08.847 --> 00:23:13.590
Before the iWork suite came about,
Apple was in really serious trouble
00:23:13.590 --> 00:23:18.272
in enterprise networks. If you ran a
business, chances are most of the
00:23:18.272 --> 00:23:23.336
computers in your network were PCs, but
maybe the designer or an executive who had
00:23:23.336 --> 00:23:27.646
the right to decide what kind of computer
they would use was would be running a Mac.
00:23:27.646 --> 00:23:33.650
And the way that that Microsoft punished
you for running that Macintosh in the
00:23:33.650 --> 00:23:38.870
Microsoft environment was by dragging
their heels on updating the Microsoft
00:23:38.870 --> 00:23:44.140
Office suite for the Mac. And so Macs
became this kind of cursed zone, where if
00:23:44.140 --> 00:23:49.100
someone were to send a Word file or an
Excel file to a Mac, and that file was
00:23:49.100 --> 00:23:53.240
then opened and saved again, it would
never be openable again on any computer
00:23:53.240 --> 00:23:57.701
anywhere in the world. It would be
irretrievably corrupted. And Bill Gates
00:23:57.701 --> 00:24:03.050
did not fix this because Steve Jobs went
to him and asked him pretty please to make
00:24:03.050 --> 00:24:07.480
a better Microsoft Office suite for the
Mac. Instead, Steve Jobs got a bunch of
00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:12.740
engineers to reverse engineer the the file
formats. And then they produced iWork,
00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:18.571
whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are used
to read and write Office files perfectly.
00:24:18.571 --> 00:24:23.496
And very quickly, they were able to
colonize the Microsoft Office environment,
00:24:23.496 --> 00:24:28.785
running ads like the Switch ads, where
they said, well, you may have hesitated to
00:24:28.785 --> 00:24:33.589
give up your Windows PC because all of
your files are stuck in there.
00:24:33.589 --> 00:24:37.255
But what if I told you that you could
read and write all the files ever
00:24:37.255 --> 00:24:40.757
created with a Windows system,
and you could do it from a Mac
00:24:40.757 --> 00:24:44.676
by running one piece of competitive
compatibility software, of software
00:24:44.676 --> 00:24:48.463
that was adversarially interoperable
with the Microsoft ecosystem?
00:24:48.463 --> 00:24:52.329
And that is what rescued the Mac
from the scrap heap of history.
00:24:52.329 --> 00:24:57.160
And it wasn't just software, it
was also hardware. In the early 1990's
00:24:57.160 --> 00:25:03.120
Lexmark was the–or rather the
late 1990s–Lexmark was the printer
00:25:03.120 --> 00:25:09.310
division of IBM, the not very well
reformed monopolist, and Lexmark used
00:25:09.310 --> 00:25:13.970
little microchips to stop people from
refilling their laser toner cartridges.
00:25:13.970 --> 00:25:17.483
And a company called Static Controls, a
little Taiwanese company, reverse
00:25:17.483 --> 00:25:21.834
engineered that microchip. It only held a
12 byte program, so it wasn't hard.
00:25:21.834 --> 00:25:26.442
And they made new chips that would allow
you to refill your cartridge. Lexmark lost
00:25:26.442 --> 00:25:30.710
their lawsuit against Static Controls. And
so now Static Controls had this huge
00:25:30.710 --> 00:25:35.526
installed user base of people who are
desperate for cheap toner cartridges. And
00:25:35.526 --> 00:25:39.790
instead of having a network advantage,
Lexmark now had a network disadvantage.
00:25:39.790 --> 00:25:46.073
Today, Lexmark is a division of the
company that owns Static Controls.
00:25:46.073 --> 00:25:51.990
And it's not, of course, hardware also. It's
also network services. When Facebook first
00:25:51.990 --> 00:25:55.850
got off the ground, Mark Zuckerberg had a
really serious problem, which is that
00:25:55.850 --> 00:26:00.304
everyone who wanted to use social media
already was on the dominant social media
00:26:00.304 --> 00:26:04.469
platform, a company called MySpace that
was owned by the world's most rapacious,
00:26:04.469 --> 00:26:09.652
vicious billionaire, Rupert Murdoch. And
again, Zuck did not go to Rupert and say,
00:26:09.652 --> 00:26:14.042
please allow your users to talk to my
users because people want to use Facebook,
00:26:14.042 --> 00:26:17.520
but they don't want to leave their friends
behind. Instead, what they did was they
00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:22.285
made a bot and you give that bought your
login credentials, and it would go to
00:26:22.285 --> 00:26:26.690
MySpace and scrape the waiting messages
that were there for you and put them in
00:26:26.690 --> 00:26:28.884
your Facebook inbox,
and you could reply to them, and
00:26:28.884 --> 00:26:32.124
it would pilot them back out to MySpace.
00:26:32.124 --> 00:26:38.272
Now, all of this led to a very dynamic
system that completely changed the
00:26:38.272 --> 00:26:42.540
way that we interacted with technology.
But all of this has gone the way of the
00:26:42.540 --> 00:26:47.738
dodo. And the reason for that is that as
these companies acquired new monopolies,
00:26:47.738 --> 00:26:54.505
they diverted their monopoly rents to
foreclosing on competitive compatibility.
00:26:54.505 --> 00:27:01.322
So you may remember the urgent fight over
software patents. The growth of software
00:27:01.322 --> 00:27:06.420
copyrights. The ongoing problem of anti-
circumvention rules that make it illegal
00:27:06.420 --> 00:27:11.378
to break DRM, most recently seen in the
shutdown of youtube-dl.
00:27:11.378 --> 00:27:13.794
Enforceable terms of service.
00:27:13.794 --> 00:27:17.029
Facebook has just used its terms of
service to try and shut down
00:27:17.029 --> 00:27:21.970
Ad Observatory, an academic project that
tracks Facebook's compliance with its own
00:27:21.970 --> 00:27:27.230
policies on political paid disinformation.
And they've said that because this service
00:27:27.230 --> 00:27:31.210
violates their terms of service, it's
illegal. Never mind that Facebook had to
00:27:31.210 --> 00:27:34.550
violate MySpace's terms of service to gain
its ascendancy.
00:27:34.550 --> 00:27:39.496
And then new rights that are purchased
with very expensive lawsuits.
00:27:39.496 --> 00:27:42.782
So today we have the Google-Oracle lawsuit
00:27:42.782 --> 00:27:46.050
going through the Supreme Court
in the United States. That might
00:27:46.050 --> 00:27:52.394
create a new copyright over APIs. Now, all
of these things–patents, copyrights,
00:27:52.394 --> 00:27:56.463
anti-circumvention, terms of service,
novel copyrights–they trade under the
00:27:56.463 --> 00:28:02.311
name intellectual property. And if you're
familiar with the phrase intellectual
00:28:02.311 --> 00:28:07.179
property, you'll know that free culture
activists hate this term. In fact, when
00:28:07.179 --> 00:28:09.160
you ask them what we should call these
things…
00:28:09.160 --> 00:28:12.327
Sorry, there's my software patents slide,
I knew I had one in there somewhere.
00:28:12.327 --> 00:28:13.771
When you when you call it…
00:28:13.771 --> 00:28:16.410
When you ask them what we should call
intellectual property, they say, oh, you
00:28:16.410 --> 00:28:19.730
should call it the author's monopoly,
because that's what they called it in the
00:28:19.730 --> 00:28:24.213
days of the Statute of Anne. That's what
they called it in the founding in the
00:28:24.213 --> 00:28:29.960
United States, authors' monopolies. And
authors get really pissy when you say that
00:28:29.960 --> 00:28:34.020
they have a monopoly. And they do for good
reason, because although formally the fact
00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:37.950
that I wrote this speech and therefore I
have the monopoly over reading it to you
00:28:37.950 --> 00:28:42.510
on my microphone means that I am a
monopolist, I don't have a market power
00:28:42.510 --> 00:28:47.486
monopoly. Right? I can't use this monopoly
to extract monopoly rents from the
00:28:47.486 --> 00:28:52.808
marketplace. Writers who go to the five
remaining publishers–soon to be four
00:28:52.808 --> 00:28:56.395
if Bertelsmann buys out Simon and
Schuster–don't get to use the fact that
00:28:56.395 --> 00:29:02.250
they have a monopoly to negotiate crazy
supermarket prices that go beyond what
00:29:02.250 --> 00:29:07.400
what would happen in a competitive market.
Unlike, say, the the monopolists
00:29:07.400 --> 00:29:11.030
themselves, the actual monopolists we have
who get to charge very high prices for
00:29:11.030 --> 00:29:19.153
their services. And so it's it's not a bad
point that an author's monopoly is not a
00:29:19.153 --> 00:29:22.502
monopoly in the way that we talk about it
when we talk about monopolism in the tech
00:29:22.502 --> 00:29:29.435
sector. But IP does have a very precise
meaning, a meaning that is not…
00:29:29.435 --> 00:29:35.280
has nothing to do with intellectualism or
property. IP in the sense of software
00:29:35.280 --> 00:29:39.890
patents, copyrights, anti-circumvention,
terms of service, API copyrights, and so on
00:29:39.890 --> 00:29:45.360
it has the precise meaning of any law
or rule that lets me decide who can
00:29:45.360 --> 00:29:50.105
criticize me, who can compete with me, and
who and how my customers must behave
00:29:50.105 --> 00:29:54.911
themselves. And when you fuse a market
power monopoly with an author's monopoly,
00:29:54.911 --> 00:29:59.908
when you have a market power monopoly that
has IP behind it, you get something far
00:29:59.908 --> 00:30:05.063
more durable than either a regular
monopoly or an author's monopoly,
00:30:05.063 --> 00:30:09.389
a copyright monopoly. You get a monopoly
that the government will defend rather
00:30:09.389 --> 00:30:15.452
than dismantling. So, for example, if you
have a monopoly that you can defend with a
00:30:15.452 --> 00:30:20.787
patent, right, like today, you have HP
monopolizing it's ink cartridge market and
00:30:20.787 --> 00:30:24.778
they have patents over the security chips
and their ink cartridges. The government
00:30:24.778 --> 00:30:30.741
will seize compatible ink cartridges at
the border on your behalf for because they
00:30:30.741 --> 00:30:35.740
violate your patents. And so instead of
punishing you for creating a monopoly, the
00:30:35.740 --> 00:30:41.288
government will reward you by doing your
enforcement work for you. And not only
00:30:41.288 --> 00:30:45.071
that, but once you have a monopoly
that's backed by some kinds of IP like
00:30:45.071 --> 00:30:49.846
anti-circumvention, the government will
punish people who report defects in your
00:30:49.846 --> 00:30:55.702
products. So if you have a monopoly over
printers or if you have a monopoly over
00:30:55.702 --> 00:31:03.070
phones, and someone finds a defect that
allows third parties to install their own
00:31:03.070 --> 00:31:08.690
ink or their own app stores, the
circumvention of your DRM becomes a crime
00:31:08.690 --> 00:31:12.810
under Article 6 of the European Copyright
Directive, and under Section 1201 of the
00:31:12.810 --> 00:31:16.711
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and
under similar laws all around the world.
00:31:16.711 --> 00:31:20.766
And the government will both fine and
potentially imprison the security
00:31:20.766 --> 00:31:24.770
researchers who point out that your
products have a defect in them.
00:31:24.770 --> 00:31:26.950
Now, I started this talk by saying that
00:31:26.950 --> 00:31:30.625
early Internet boosters were not
blind to the perils of technology.
00:31:30.625 --> 00:31:33.451
But some of them them were, a little.
00:31:33.451 --> 00:31:36.203
After all, once all that
money started sloshing around,
00:31:36.203 --> 00:31:38.560
then if you could convince yourself
that tech was an unforced
00:31:38.560 --> 00:31:42.345
an unchecked force for good, then
you could also convince yourself
00:31:42.345 --> 00:31:45.629
that getting all of that money
that the tech industry was generating
00:31:45.629 --> 00:31:48.444
would make you on the side of good.
00:31:48.444 --> 00:31:51.928
The myth of two guys in a garage
who could top a billion dollar giants
00:31:51.928 --> 00:31:56.169
and become billionaires themselves,
fired a lot of techies' imaginations
00:31:56.169 --> 00:31:59.092
and sidelined a lot of their conscience.
00:31:59.092 --> 00:32:03.356
But those days are behind us,
thanks to monopolies.
00:32:03.356 --> 00:32:08.220
Thanks to monopolies, founders
who want to start businesses that compete
00:32:08.220 --> 00:32:14.230
with the monopolists, monopolists who have
double-digit growth every year, and who
00:32:14.230 --> 00:32:19.333
realize tens, if not hundreds of billions
of dollars in profit collectively.
00:32:19.333 --> 00:32:23.600
Those founders, when they go to a venture
capitalist or another funder, are told
00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:28.340
that the funders aren't interested in
funding these direct competitors.
00:32:28.340 --> 00:32:33.186
Funders call the lines of business that
big tech is in the kill zone, and they
00:32:33.186 --> 00:32:37.240
understand that any attempt to fund a
business that operates in the kill zone
00:32:37.240 --> 00:32:39.699
will result in your company being crushed
00:32:39.699 --> 00:32:42.737
by the monopolistic power of
the entrenched company.
00:32:42.737 --> 00:32:47.448
And so instead, if you are a
technologist headed to Silicon Valley,
00:32:47.448 --> 00:32:52.300
you don't dream of changing the world. You
dream of like having a mini kitchen with
00:32:52.300 --> 00:32:57.930
free kombucha and maybe getting massages
on Wednesday on the on behalf of the
00:32:57.930 --> 00:33:03.430
company. And liberated from the fear of
losing customers to competitors, tech has
00:33:03.430 --> 00:33:08.960
pivoted from liberating customers to
manipulating, locking in, and abusing
00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:14.932
their users. And the code that does that
manipulation, that abuse and that lock-in?
00:33:14.932 --> 00:33:18.713
It's all written by technologists.
Technologists who discovered their passion
00:33:18.713 --> 00:33:23.190
for the field when they felt the thrill of
self-determination through writing code
00:33:23.190 --> 00:33:27.624
and projecting it over networks. And this
is a really important fracture line.
00:33:27.624 --> 00:33:31.670
I think this is a way to understand things
like the Googler Walkout and Tech Won't
00:33:31.670 --> 00:33:35.970
Build It. No Tech for ICE. The solidarity
movements against facial recognition and
00:33:35.970 --> 00:33:43.520
other surveillance technologies. That
technologists are no longer able to delude
00:33:43.520 --> 00:33:49.130
themselves with the thrill of billions
into thinking that it's OK to do what
00:33:49.130 --> 00:33:52.930
they've been doing. And one by one and in
increasing numbers, they're starting to
00:33:52.930 --> 00:33:57.540
wake up to the fact that it's time to do
better. It's time to realize the
00:33:57.540 --> 00:34:01.880
liberatory power of technology and step
back from the power of technology to
00:34:01.880 --> 00:34:06.240
control us. That this will all be so great
if we don't screw it up and if we do screw
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:10.314
it up, it's going to be really, really
terrible. And there are precedents for
00:34:10.314 --> 00:34:13.658
this. And unfortunately, the precedents
are pretty incomplete. So,
00:34:13.658 --> 00:34:18.409
Robert Oppenheimer very famously was one
of the few people in the world who is both
00:34:18.409 --> 00:34:22.000
brilliant enough at being a manager and
brilliant enough at being a nuclear
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:25.859
physicist that he could lead the creation
of the first nuclear bomb and the
00:34:25.859 --> 00:34:31.179
Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in the
United States. And legendarily, as that
00:34:31.179 --> 00:34:35.950
first nuclear bomb test went off, he
turned away from the mushroom cloud and
00:34:35.950 --> 00:34:40.290
said, "I am become death destroyer of
worlds," and embarked on a lifelong
00:34:40.290 --> 00:34:46.470
project to demilitarize the atom to to put
back in the bottle the genie that he had
00:34:46.470 --> 00:34:53.940
made. And my hope is that we can arrive at
a world in which our Oppenheimers decide
00:34:53.940 --> 00:34:59.289
to put down their tools before they make
their atom bombs instead of after. That,
00:34:59.289 --> 00:35:04.100
that we are at this crossroads now where
not only are the harms so visible that
00:35:04.100 --> 00:35:10.069
they're undeniable, but also that
rewards for building the digital
00:35:10.069 --> 00:35:17.829
equivalent of these A-bombs have dwindled
from a star in technology's hall of fame
00:35:17.829 --> 00:35:24.330
to a really well funded pension plan. And
surely that is not enough to sell out for.
00:35:24.330 --> 00:35:29.332
So many of you listening today probably
read my novel Little Brother and its
00:35:29.332 --> 00:35:34.410
sequel Homeland. I know that because I
often hear from you, especially at events
00:35:34.410 --> 00:35:41.700
like CCC and DEFCON and at SchmooCon and
at THOTCON and so on. People come up to me
00:35:41.700 --> 00:35:47.559
and they say, you know, I read your book
and I, I understood both how powerful
00:35:47.559 --> 00:35:52.420
technology could be and how terrifying it
would be if that power was not harnessed
00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:57.500
for the people and instead was harnessed
to oppress people. And it made me embark
00:35:57.500 --> 00:36:01.670
on my career as a technologist, as a
security researcher, a human rights
00:36:01.670 --> 00:36:06.490
activist, a cyber lawyer. And, you know,
that's the best thing in my life, really.
00:36:06.490 --> 00:36:11.660
I mean, apart from my kid and my family.
The fact that there are people out there
00:36:11.660 --> 00:36:15.000
who have devoted their lives to doing
something better because of something
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:18.099
I wrote, that's that's really important to
me. And frankly, you know, if my kid has
00:36:18.099 --> 00:36:23.087
got a chance of growing up in a world that
doesn't make Orwell look like an optimist,
00:36:23.087 --> 00:36:26.027
it's going to be in part
because of that stuff.
00:36:26.027 --> 00:36:28.769
But I've written a new Little Brother book.
00:36:28.769 --> 00:36:32.115
I wrote this book that came out
this year called Attack Surface.
00:36:32.115 --> 00:36:36.052
And this is genuinely not an ad. You don't
have to read it. And in fact, if you're
00:36:36.052 --> 00:36:39.906
watching this, you probably don't need to,
although you might enjoy it. Because this
00:36:39.906 --> 00:36:45.559
is aimed at a different kind of
technologist. This is a story about the
00:36:45.559 --> 00:36:51.410
kind of technologist who spends their
whole life kidding themselves that working
00:36:51.410 --> 00:36:55.550
on systems of control and oppression are
not that big a deal, because if they
00:36:55.550 --> 00:36:58.930
didn't do it, someone else would do it.
There's an endless supply of
00:36:58.930 --> 00:37:03.390
Oppenheimers, and if I turn my back,
someone else will be there to to finish my
00:37:03.390 --> 00:37:10.259
work. Who come to a realization, maybe
belated, that they've spent their whole
00:37:10.259 --> 00:37:14.711
life building a dystopia that they don't
want to live in. And who redeem
00:37:14.711 --> 00:37:20.539
themselves, who come back from the brink.
And the reason I wrote this story now is
00:37:20.539 --> 00:37:26.950
because I really wanted to reach the
technologists who are waking up every day
00:37:26.950 --> 00:37:31.530
and saying I fell in love with this stuff
because it liberated me. And I spend my
00:37:31.530 --> 00:37:35.920
days figuring out how to take away the
future of people who might be liberated by
00:37:35.920 --> 00:37:41.390
it themselves. And that's an urgent
message, because author's
00:37:41.390 --> 00:37:47.493
monopolies–IP–are available to everyone
thanks to the Internet of Things,
00:37:47.493 --> 00:37:49.808
thanks to our embedded systems.
00:37:49.808 --> 00:37:53.186
I'm going to break here
and editorialize very briefly.
00:37:53.186 --> 00:37:58.599
This is the slide I'm most proud of, not
not for any kind of intellectual heft, but
00:37:58.599 --> 00:38:02.670
I'm really bad at the GIMP, and I think I
did a really good job. So I just want to,
00:38:02.670 --> 00:38:05.670
if you're if you're looking away from your
screen, if you're like peeling vegetables
00:38:05.670 --> 00:38:10.059
or something, spare a glance at this
slide. I'm very happy with this slide.
00:38:10.059 --> 00:38:18.229
So the IoT means that every device in our
world has access to an author's monopoly,
00:38:18.229 --> 00:38:25.956
has IP in it. And that governments will
enforce the strictures that the designers
00:38:25.956 --> 00:38:31.055
and manufacturers of these devices put
into them by punishing people who try to
00:38:31.055 --> 00:38:37.461
use competitive compatibility to undo
those strictures. And not only that, but
00:38:37.461 --> 00:38:44.670
IoT devices are not merely smart as a
convenience to invoke the law.
00:38:44.670 --> 00:38:49.654
They're also smart as a way to enforce the
manufacturer's desires, as a way to
00:38:49.654 --> 00:38:57.790
control the the actions of users, of
competitors, and of critics. That
00:38:57.790 --> 00:39:03.645
these devices have a kind of unblinking eye
that watches you whenever you use them.
00:39:03.645 --> 00:39:05.614
And if it catches you
trying to do something
00:39:05.614 --> 00:39:08.140
that might displease
the manufacturer's shareholders,
00:39:08.140 --> 00:39:11.458
it can stop you,
and it can rat you out to the authorities.
00:39:11.458 --> 00:39:14.757
And so, you know, speaking in my
professional capacity
00:39:14.757 --> 00:39:18.701
as a dystopian science fiction writer,
this scares the shit out of me.
00:39:18.701 --> 00:39:22.349
Now, that is all a kind of grim way to end.
00:39:22.349 --> 00:39:27.684
And so I'm going to finish this off with a
couple of words on what gives me hope. And
00:39:27.684 --> 00:39:33.189
this comes from my colleague James Boyle
at the Duke Center for the Public Domain.
00:39:33.189 --> 00:39:37.683
And Jamie, when he talks about
the computer liberation movement,
00:39:37.683 --> 00:39:40.497
he compares it to the ecology movement.
00:39:40.497 --> 00:39:44.958
And before the term ecology was coined,
we didn't have a movement.
00:39:44.958 --> 00:39:48.812
We just had a bunch of issues.
Some people cared about whales,
00:39:48.812 --> 00:39:52.372
some people cared about owls,
some people cared about the ozone layer.
00:39:52.372 --> 00:39:55.021
And maybe they thought that the people
who cared about another issue
00:39:55.021 --> 00:39:57.900
were doing important work,
but it wasn't their work.
00:39:57.900 --> 00:40:01.734
And they weren't really on the same side.
They weren't part of the same cause.
00:40:01.734 --> 00:40:06.440
But the term ecology changed all of that.
The term ecology took a thousand issues
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:12.339
and turned it into one movement;
one movement that everyone had
00:40:12.339 --> 00:40:16.601
each other's back on. Even if the reason
you were in the movement was owls,
00:40:16.601 --> 00:40:20.060
you were there to fight the corner of the
people who cared about the ozone layer.
00:40:20.060 --> 00:40:24.373
And you began to understand that these
were all facets of the same problem.
00:40:24.373 --> 00:40:26.559
Well, today, monopolies have taken over
00:40:26.559 --> 00:40:30.195
and destroyed the lives of people
in a million ways.
00:40:30.195 --> 00:40:30.746
Right?
00:40:30.746 --> 00:40:34.570
Whether you're a professional wrestling
fan, a beer drinker, a whiskey drinker,
00:40:34.570 --> 00:40:40.470
an eyeglass-wearer, a plane-flyer-in,
someone who relies on energy or
00:40:40.470 --> 00:40:45.420
financial services or whose money was
stolen by a company whose auditors were
00:40:45.420 --> 00:40:49.809
one of the big four accounting firms.
Whether you are someone who is upset
00:40:49.809 --> 00:40:56.009
because there's four movie studios left or
three record labels or because there's
00:40:56.009 --> 00:40:59.680
only one movie theater left in the United
States… one movie theater chain of any
00:40:59.680 --> 00:41:02.961
size left in the United States. Or whether
you're pissed off that you're not going to
00:41:02.961 --> 00:41:07.706
get the vaccine, because in the US there's
only one company that makes glass bottles
00:41:07.706 --> 00:41:14.009
of any size. All of these people don't
know it, but they're in the same side.
00:41:14.009 --> 00:41:18.261
They're on the same fight. And that fight
is the fight against monopolies.
00:41:18.261 --> 00:41:23.454
Now, people talk about big tech
as though they're super geniuses.
00:41:23.454 --> 00:41:27.213
But when we rip off the mask,
we discover that
00:41:27.213 --> 00:41:31.322
these are not titans who built monopolies
through their special genius.
00:41:31.322 --> 00:41:33.931
They're just three
sociopaths in a trench coat.
00:41:33.931 --> 00:41:37.318
They're just the latest version
of the kind of monopolist
00:41:37.318 --> 00:41:40.757
that we have been fighting
since time immemorial,
00:41:40.757 --> 00:41:43.572
since the Rockefellers,
since the Mellons,
00:41:43.572 --> 00:41:47.797
since every monopolistic family that
tried to establish a dynasty
00:41:47.797 --> 00:41:50.503
that would allow them to rule
as though they were kings
00:41:50.503 --> 00:41:55.088
was broken up and relegated to just having
their names on a couple of buildings.
00:41:55.088 --> 00:41:58.391
We know how to deal with these people,
and it's time that we dealt with them
00:41:58.391 --> 00:42:03.391
for what they are, which is
just plain, old fashioned sociopaths
00:42:03.391 --> 00:42:07.397
and not as super geniuses who
stand astride the world like colossi.
00:42:07.397 --> 00:42:11.809
Thank you.
00:42:11.809 --> 00:42:19.430
H: Thank, thank you. I think I'm back now.
All right, well, thanks for this talk. We
00:42:19.430 --> 00:42:23.540
are basically out of time, so we're moving
the Q&A to the fireside chat, which will
00:42:23.540 --> 00:42:28.520
happen in, I think, 20 minutes or so. And
then all the questions that have already
00:42:28.520 --> 00:42:31.000
been asked for this talk
will also be answered then.
00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:36.411
But Cory, I think we had a short
stream outage around minute 5.
00:42:36.411 --> 00:42:37.282
CD: OK.
00:42:37.282 --> 00:42:41.047
H: So if you know what you said at minute 5
CD: Oh that was the full frontal nudity!
00:42:41.047 --> 00:42:43.027
CD: laughter
H: You can maybe try to,
00:42:43.027 --> 00:42:45.959
H: try to recapitulate it.
CD: I don't know what I said…
00:42:45.959 --> 00:42:48.380
CD: minute 5…
H: History of networks apparently.
00:42:48.380 --> 00:42:51.579
Unfortunately, it was not visible for us.
So I don't know myself, but I think
00:42:51.579 --> 00:42:53.886
H: it was the history of networks.
CD: Probably it was my story about, it
00:42:53.886 --> 00:42:57.809
it might have been my story about the
alt. hierarchy. That's probably it.
00:42:57.809 --> 00:43:01.740
And and if you if you go to
your favorite search engine,
00:43:01.740 --> 00:43:04.467
whether it's like,
AltaVista or Ask Jeeves or Yahoo,
00:43:04.467 --> 00:43:08.327
and type in:
alt.interoperability.adversarial
00:43:08.327 --> 00:43:11.335
you'll find an article I wrote for
the Electronic Frontier Foundation
00:43:11.335 --> 00:43:13.761
about the history of the alt. hierarchy.
00:43:13.761 --> 00:43:16.549
So I think that's probably
what got cut out.
00:43:16.549 --> 00:43:18.852
H: OK, wonderful. Thank you.
00:43:18.852 --> 00:43:22.061
H: I think people know how to use Google.
CD: I think Lycos has also indexed it.
00:43:22.061 --> 00:43:25.809
H: Yes. They'll try to they'll try to figure it out.
00:43:25.809 --> 00:43:28.999
H: All right. Well, thank you very much.
CD: Thank you!
00:43:28.999 --> 00:43:30.999
H: Good luck & see you soon
CD: I'll see you guys in the fireside chat.
00:43:30.999 --> 00:43:31.999
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