Call me optimistic, but I truly believe there’s going to be such a tech boom once the market outside the US is insightful enough to look backwards and point their finger at the things that worked well and that people actually wanted and iterate off that instead of this failed path, dead end.
Whilst I have no evidence for it (it’s not like we have an alternate timeline to compare to), I believe that the changes to Intellectual Property legislation in the last couple of decades have actually slowed down innovation, probably severely so.
Certainly in Tech it feels like there’s less of a culture of tinkering and hacking (in the original sense of the word) nowadays than back in the 80s and 90s, even though with the Internet and the easy access to information on it one would expect the very opposite.
Instead of countless crazy ideas like in the age of the generalisation of computing, open source and the birth of the Internet, we instead have closed environments gatekept by large companies for the purposed of extracting rents from everybody, all of which made possible by bought for legislation to stop users from breaking out and competitors from breaking in.
I mean, outside the natural process of moving everything done before from analog to digital-online (i.e. a natural over time migration to the new environments made available by the inventions of computing and the global open network from the late part of the XX Century) the greatest “innovations” in Tech of the last 30 years were making computers small enough to fit in your pocket (i.e. smartphones) - a natural consequence of the Moore Law - and a digital parrot/mediocre content generator.
Now wonder that China, with their “we don’t give a shit about IP” posture has powered through from Tech backwater to taking the lead from the West on various technologies (first solar, now EVs) even though (from what I’ve heard) their educational systems doesn’t reward innovative thinking.
So in my view only if Europe ditches the IP legislation pushed by the US in Trade Treaties does it have a chance to be part of any upcoming Tech revolutions rather than stagnating right alongside in the US whilst trying to extract ever diminishing rents from the tail ends of the adoption phases of last century’s technologies.
I agree. The problem is complex and layered, I don’t claim to fully understand it myself, but the problem is that innovation came to mean “innovation on creating capital” and not “innovation on serving the customer”. If you haven’t read Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shosana Zuboff, I highly recommend it. It lays a lot of the groundwork for what Cory Doctorow would go on to call enshittification.
On top of that, or maybe underneath it, is the idea of disruption. It has long been joked as “ignoring regulations” which has very much become true. When you can’t exploit the current systems you create parallel systems where you are in control of the playing field. Disruption to innovation, innovation to disruption. To the consumer it’s just disruption.
What we’ve ended up with as a result over the past decade and a half or so is a market that is not beholden to the consumer at all. We’ve long known that boycotts are fairly ineffective aside from some occasional groundswell on “culture war” issues, but it doesn’t feel like we’re the market anymore. Look at Nvidia’s recent presentation at the CES which wasn’t even about consumers at all, it was about AI and datacenters mostly. They fully dictate the market at us now and we’re just along for the ride.
BUT to my hopefulness above, there are still a few ways to break free of this, I don’t believe things are so bad as that yet. There does seem to be a real choking point for the consumer, Microsoft is another good example. They continue to leverage their market position but people are rapidly exploring options away from them wherever possible. I don’t think we’ll ever truly see a “year of the Linux desktop” the way some people expect, but the slow erosion is real. Another article I think about a lot is the breaching the trust thermocline which theorizes that customer trust is not a linear system. Executives like to believe that once things begin to sour they can simply make a change to correct course when the course was already lost some time ago.
If we can convince the ignorant masses to stop buying based on consumerism and purchase based on well informed decisions instead then we would see a shift in enshittification or at least have alternatives. But that’s very unlikely since it’s easier to conform and fall in line and accept your fate.
It also expects that people are content to actually fix things, or sew tears in clothing, or whatever, and that often requires a little research and initiative in a world where it’s been made abundantly cheap and convenient to just replace almost everything.
I don’t think it’s necessarily ignorance so much as a combination of laziness and incredible convenience.
A few years ago I taught myself to fix my laptop screen via Youtube and saved myself a $400 repair, but most people would just chuck it and buy a new one.
The issue is not whether people are willing to do it, but whether they should be allowed to.
I can’t think of any situation where disallowing people from repairing their own property makes any sense. The only ones it makes sense to are the ones who profit from it.
I can’t think of any situation where disallowing people from repairing their own property makes any sense.
I can think of one, but the issue is largely a thing of the past: old CRT TV’s or monitors. If you attempt to repair one without knowing what you’re doing, you literally could get yourself killed.
That said, I still agree with you wholeheartedly. I’d much rather mandate dangerous to repair products be labeled as such, but the design and construction of consumer products should never prohibit the end user from being able to repair their own property.
It’s also super easy to die when your car falls off a jack and you’re working underneath, but we don’t forbid homemade oil changes nonetheless.
And the when we had CRTs maintenance was actually encouraged, one of the oldest TVs I remember using had circuit schematics in the manuals.
Also, it won’t always be them. It will be a repair shop. If things were built to be repaired, it would be quicker and cheaper to repair them.
We need to mandate interoperability and open protocols (as we did with all our other communication media prior) to avoid the siloing of users in captured commercial ecosystems.
Think of how much people whine about printer ink without A) looking for alternatives and B) questioning why their printer was fucking free (with rebate).
I got off the inkjet bandwagon almost 30 years ago now. All it takes is doing the math; most print jobs can be done on a compact laser printer, and the ones that can’t can be sent to a print shop for same-day printing, and I still come out ahead, even with binding included.
I thought this for a long time. However currently I am no longer convinced. The production is so far decoupled from the consumer and often investor (or otherwise) dependant. So the consumer doesn’t really necessarily have the chance to support a good company nor do good things need to be offered.
I short: eat the rich and reform the stock market.
It’s long time propaganda pushing the fault to the consumer (e. G. Footprint invented. By oil companies)
Yes, yes, yes.
And drastically reform or reimagine all the IP laws.
Copyright: 5 years, one optional 5 year extension.
Patents: 5 years, no extensions. No business methods, no algorithms, no gene expressions.
Owned only by the individual humans and groups of humans. Cannot be owned by trusts, funds, corporations, estates. Cannot outlive the last human owner in a group.
All licensing is non-exclusive only! All licensing is irreversible (once you license out the patent non-exclusively, no way to halt midway through the licensing term).
That way pattents cannot be hoarded by the patent troll entities. Since all exclusive agreements are forbidden, no way to corner the market! Inventors are free to license their inventions all over and cannot be strong armed into an exclusive deal.
In other words, ownerships, paywalls, and corporate control must be severely curtailed.
The European Commission claims to promote open source and freedom from foreign tech abuses, etc. It now seeks feedbacks from communities: “Towards European open digital ecosystems”.
It seems to be perfect timing for getting rid of that article 6 which turns
turns what?
around
Right round?
Like a record, baby.
Right? Round. Round round.
The suspense is killing me
Oops . It’s the EU’s anti-circumvention law.
Source:
At first I thought the title said, “Let’s end Anti-Circumcision”. I was like, “why?”.
This was on my feed right after the ‘UK to consider circumcision is abuse’ article, I got very confused for a second
This is a tricky debate, with mostly religious and traditionalist people on one side, and people against unnecessary surgical procedures on the other. Either way, I think once the foreskin is removed, it should be treated as medical waste.
Nono, you’re thinking of circumcision. This is about a big meeting where furries celebrate their favorite animes or something
Nono, you’re thinking of a convention. This is about a psychological treatment that makes gay men like women.
No no, that’s conversion therapy. This is about the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea.
Nono, you’re thinking of circumlocution. This is about building a wall around a besieged city.
No no, you’re thinking of circumvallation. This is about sailing a ship all around the Earth.
No no, that’s circumnavigation. This is about the length of the perimeter around a circle
Nono, you’re thinking of circumference. This is about a semi-precious gemstone in the shape of a small, domesticated mustelid.
ETA: Maybe it’s too hard. I am thinking of a …
spoiler
zircon ferret
No no, you’re thinking of circumvallation. This is about traveling around the entire globe by ship.
Okay, now you have to tell me how you plan to circumcise locusts. Don’t be ridiculous.
The other user’s was better, so I’m hiding this one
spoiler
Nono, you’re thinking of conversion therapy. This is about going to a priest to tell them about your sins
Ah yes, I think we all remember the moment back in 2016 when Apple famously announced the removal of the foreskin from the iPhone 7.
to be fair, wireless headphones are handy. the wire itself is an annoyance. i’m glad its gone, for the most part. But physical media being gone and evertything being replaced with someones computer in the cloud… its stupid. and more expensive. i don’t like it.
I believe credit for the first occurrence goes back to Ferdinand Magellan. Although he himself did not have the procedure, his crew did after his death in 1521.
I think you accidentally posted this on the wrong thread, but it’s fine because I know exactly the thread you meant, and the word circumvention didn’t help the situation :D
If you didn’t already hear it, Cory Doctorow recently gave a talk about this at 39C3, the Chaos Computer Club conference. Search “A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet” in your frontend of choice
The total abolition of capitalism is the only thing that will end enshittification and fascism. Everything else is just cope and/or baby steps.
Bosch is coming out with modular devices that are DMCA locked. I think a a coffee machine from the recent ces
Government officials are really scared of changing the status quo. They’re really afraid that if they get rid of anti-circumvention laws, that they’ll become a pariah state. In the past that probably would have been true. The US would have thrown its weight around, and Europe would have fallen in line and boycotted whoever it was. Many countries also have a lot of Hollywood productions made there. The major Hollywood studios care about anti-circumvention because they think it guarantees their profits. So, if these countries scaled back anti-circumvention, Hollywood would probably throw a fit and cut them off too. Even if the economic impact of getting rid of anti-circumvention were a huge positive, Hollywood has a big cultural impact worldwide.
I’d like to see it happen, but I think the most likely scenario is that a country that already doesn’t fully respect US copyright laws, like Switzerland or Singapore, might take an additional step and stop respecting anti-circumvention.
