Read this book! Really.
It’s short. It’s succinct. And you will understand Big Tech (big anything actually) and the sine wave history of it fcking over Little You followed by Big Tech getting spanked. Actually that hasn’t happened yet but it will. It did happen with Gould’s railroad price gouging of the little farmers then Rockefeller’s Standard oil bust up, then Microsoft’s dos-isn’t-done-til-Lotus-can’t-run shellacking …..
The author Cory Ephram Doctorow has more electronic/computer/internet pedigree than you can shake a stick at. Just google that second name….says it all. Besides. He was born in Toronto, so any biased Ontarian like ME has a biased soft spot for the guy. The whole book is under 200 pages. Any half assed anesthesiologist should be able to mau this thing down in a day.
His basic thesis is real straight forward. It has two fundamental points. A computer (as envisioned/proven by Alan Turing and Johnny Von Neumann) is a UNIVERSAL machine meaning it (whether made out of domino chips or silicon wafers) can run ANY program. This means everything in the computer world is INTEROPERABLE (Cory’s first point). So why can’t I just run my own fully self programmed html-5 website to send private messages to my buddies who use facebook (small f) even though I don’t have facebook on my computer? Well it’s because facebook won’t make as much freekin’ money. Big Tech legally prevents you from doing this by HIGH SWITCHING COSTS (Cory’s second main point).
Doctorow then gives a nice little business history of how this happened along with the laws’ fancy sounding epigrams like DCMA and WIPO and even our own quite pathetic Canadian C-11. He starts with a nice story about the famous Betamax case which carries right through to the famous Grokster court case [the shenanigans of which would make “CSF drip from your nostrils” (actually that’s a pretty good medical line from the book)] and winding up at section 1201 of the DCMA (made it possible for Epson to make a million percent markup on ink cartridges).
Historically each established industry tries to legally screw the new technology saying it is breaking the law/ruining young people. The sheet music business said radio was destroying young people’s minds (evolving their vocal chords out of existence actually), then the radio business said the same about TV (ruining the young), then the TV business said cable was stealing, then cable said streaming was doing the same and now Big Tech is sorta running the same playbook. It is making a lot of money though.
You will learn about the skullduggery around standards and the gaming that goes on that eventually winds up with regulatory capture of said standards organizations. Oh. In case you didn’t know. That’s also about more money being made inside a big regulatory financial moat. Cory voices real concerns that the toning down of Big Tech will take a much longer time than in previous cycles. AT&T took 69 years.
You will learn that there is a difference between copyright/patent law and trademark law AND how this is used to get more money from (jerk around) customers. Hint. Apple is pretty ruthless with its microscopic trademark branding of each little tiny component of its phones. But what the hell! It is sold as good for shareholders. D-Day is coming, shareholders.
Very impressive Mr. Doctorow. One can only hope you wind up where real power in the western world is wielded (ie-elected office) to do something about this.