This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:
https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr
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https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/
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Cory Doctorow: Breaking In
Locus OnlineCory Doctorow
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https://www.helencaldicott.com/
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844
I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I *think* it was probably @Marc_Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs.
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O'Reilly Reports That First Ever Peer-to-Peer Conference Unites 1,026 Programmers
www.oreilly.comCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ
But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before.
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Theme From "Star Trek" - YouTube Music
YouTube MusicCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could.
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Cory Doctorow
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I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF
That was the initial prompt for my novel *Walkaway*, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"
https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/
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Coase’s Spectre
Crooked TimberCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making eyes at each other across the table at the MPA. They were two giant companies, and any differences were irrelevancies and marketing myths:
https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/
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Cory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability
Locus OnlineCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification
Microsoft is a company founded and run by *colossal* assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html
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Microsoft and the Commoditization of Software
web.archive.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk
My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by @mathowie and @anildash:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html
For people who needed a hardcopy, there was @pberry's printer-friendly stylesheet:
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Audio version of Cory Doctorow’s DRM talk
kottke.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php
Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure.
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EFF: Deep Links
web.archive.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/
And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
And my most recent work, on enshittification:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/
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Adversarial Interoperability
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated - Coase style - on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/32
https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/
And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the @internetarchive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):
https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3
And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:
https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
https://laist.com/events/go-fact-yourself-live-with-aida-rodriguez
On June 21, I'm doing an online reading for the @Locusmag Awards at 16hPT.
On June 22, I'll be in Oakland, CA for a panel and a keynote at the Locus Awards:
https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/
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Go Fact Yourself LIVE with Cory Doctorow and Aida Rodriguez
LAistChairman Meow ᓚᘏᗢ 🐿️🍉
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
Okay, I'll bite. Why exactly is it such a huge mistake?
Companies have behaviors, in the "coherent response to external stimulus" sense, and also have telos. Their behaviors reflect structure and history, tend to persist across changes in leadership, can often be predicted, and are typically consistent w/r/t similar *kinds* of stimuli. What requirement for "personality" are they missing?
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/
Cory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability
Locus OnlineChairman Meow ᓚᘏᗢ 🐿️🍉
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
It's not worth a deep dive, but I'm trying to gently discourage you from reserving the word "personality" for individual agents. The connection between Individual and collective agency is what I study, and IMO "personality" is a useful word for an attribute that companies - and human institutions generally - definitely have.