[Plura-list] How Big Oil lied about "recyclable" plastics; Levels of Interoperability; Podcasting "IP"

Mon Sep 14 12:06:25 EDT 2020

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All the high-dollar rewards in the Kickstarter for the audio edition of
Attack Surface (the third Little Brother novel) are gone, but really,
the point is to sell a TON of $15 pre-orders of the book itself. Doing
so will radically transform the way publishers think about the necessity
of capitulating to Amazon's unfair audiobook policies. If you haven't
backed it yet, please consider doing so! If you have, thank you! And
please consider telling a friend (or two, or three).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/attack-surface-audiobook-for-the-third-little-brother-book

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Today's links

* How Big Oil lied about "recyclable" plastics: Who killed the world?

* Levels of Interoperability: More clarity from Ian Brown.

* Podcasting "IP": My latest and most substantial Locus column.

* This day in history: 2015, 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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⛽️ How Big Oil lied about "recyclable" plastics

Exxon knew.

They knew, 50 years ago, that they were going to murder the planet and
our species with their oil.

And they acted.

Oh, how they acted!

They created a campaign of lies to distort the public perception of
climate change.

https://exxonknew.org/

Exxon knew.

They knew in '73, when their researchers told them: plastics would never
be recycled. There would not be a cost effective way to recycle plastic.

And they acted.

They created a disinformation campaign to convince us plastic *could* be
recycled.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

That campaign - the little recycling logos on our plastics, the upbeat
videos about a future where plastic was part of a circular economy of
use and recycling - convinced us to buy, wash, and sort plastic.

90% of that plastic was never recycled. It never will be.

NONE of those splashy campaigns - the announcement that all NYC school
plastics would be recycled, the recycling in national parks - ever
worked. They all lasted long enough to get some upbeat press, and then
they quietly shut down.

This week's NPR/Planet Money investigation by Laura Sullivan doesn't
just talk to the ex-chief lobbyists, now serving as belated
Oppenheimers, lamenting the impending destruction of our planet.

It also talks to the current round of executives who have announced a
fresh round of plans to recycle plastics - completely disingenuous,
insultingly obvious distraction tactics to convince us that their
projections of *tripling* production by 2050 isn't a form of mass murder.

Then Sullivan circles back to those retired executives, the ones who
oversaw the first disinformation campaign, and they confirm that this
latest round of promises are literally the same tactic, barely updated
for a world on fire.

The world is on fire. My sky has been orange all week. Our family's
socially distanced meetings with friends in parks or back yards have
been cancelled because we cannot breathe outside.

Exxon - and Chevron, and the rest of Big Oil - knows.

In a secret recording released to the New York Times, oil execs meet to
cheerfully discuss how they will burn the world and murder us all but
make a buck in the process.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/climate/methane-natural-gas-flaring.html

Their plans for climate change don't involve reducing emissions -
they're building bunkers and hiring mercenaries to keep us at bay when
we come for them. They know what they've done.

Exxon knows.

When I searched for the "Exxon Knew" campaign to find a link for this
piece, the top of Google's search results included a blisteringly
expensive ad for a disinformation site, paid for by Exxon.

The sky is orange. The oceans are choking. The air is unbreathable. Your
body is full of microplastics.

Exxon.

Fucking.

Knows.

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⛽️ Levels of Interoperability

Big Tech concentration is commonly attributed to "network effects" and
"data advantage," but there's a simpler explanation, one that is much
more in line with historic precedent and political conditions:

Big Tech is concentrated because it formed monopolies whose excess
revenues were spent on anti-competitive policies (generating more excess
revenues). Notably, the Big Tech monopolies have spent decades
destroying interoperability.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

After all, an examination of the history of tech shows that, time and
again, when tech grew concentrated, new companies, products and services
broke up that power by creating interoperable products.

https://eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Interoperability turns "network effects" on their head by treating
established walled gardens as corrals full of conveniently organized
potential customers for new, competing products and services.

The reinvigorated pro-competition discussion has triggered a very
welcome interest in interoperability as well, with some of the best work
being done by Oxford computer scientist Ian Brown.

Back in July, Brown released a preprint of a magesterial new paper on
how interoperability can be a tool for promoting competition policy.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/30/roto-en-mexico/#interop-competition

Now he's released a followup, "The technical components of
interoperability as a tool for competition regulation," which really
digs into the technical aspects of interop - what do we talk about when
we talk about interoperability?

https://osf.io/6er3p/

The basis for the paper is a literature review, augmented by "10
semi-structured interviews with software developers, platform operators,
technical standards experts, current and former government officials,
and academic and civil society experts working in this field."

And its headline finding is a short, excellent taxonomy of five
different degrees of interop:

0. Platform-permissioned vertical interoperability - stuff like "Sign in
with [Facebook/Twitter/Apple/Google]"

I. Open vertical interoperability - stuff like "data portability" where
you can take your data to a rival service

II. Public interaction - public messages mirrored between different
services (like embedding a Tweet in a Facebook post)

III. Private interaction - friending or messaging someone on a rival
service, locating friends from one service who're using another one

IV. Horizontal interoperability - replacing components of one service
with a rival's versions, seamlessly interacting with users of rival services

Brown's paper has a wealth of thoughtful detail and real-world technical
examples.

And he's promised a third instalment in the series, on interop,
disinformation and privacy - this is the white whale of interop, and I'm
working on a paper about it myself right now and eagerly looking forward
to cribbing from Brown on it!

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⛽️ Podcasting "IP"

I've just posted the latest instalment in my podcast: it's a reading of
the first half of my new Locus column, "IP," the most substantial and
significant work I've done in 14 years on Locus's masthead:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

It's a sweeping history of the way that a grab bag of mismatched laws -
trademark, copyright, patent, etc - were seized upon by budding
oligarchs, repurposed to mean "any law that I can invoke that allows me
to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers."

The column runs over 5,000 words. I read a little more than half of it
in a 30-minute podcast:

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/09/14/ip/

Here's a direct MP3 link (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive,
they'll host your stuff for free, forever, too!):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_359/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_359_-_IP.mp3

And here's the feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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⛽️ This day in history

#5yrsago Australian PM Tony Abbot ousted in own-party coup
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/14/malcolm-turnbull-to-be-australias-new-pm-after-ousting-tony-abbott-in-party-vote

#5yrsago "Crisis actors": a conspiracy theory that re-victimizes
shooting survivors
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-do-you-say-to-a-roanoke-truther

#5yrsago Harpo-Deetoo and Chicopio in "A Day at the Pod Races"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfdaNw0bLP4

#5yrsago Vivienne Westwood drives a tank to David Cameron's house
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/sep/11/vivienne-westwood-tank-protest-fracking-david-cameron-chadlington

#1yrago New York AG finds a billion dollars that the Sacklers funneled
through a single bank
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/461362-ny-ag-uncovers-1-billion-in-sackler-family-wire-transfers-report

#1yrago A quarter of NYC's post-2013 luxury condos are unsold
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/realestate/new-development-new-york.html

#1yrago Majority of Americans want free college and student debt
cancellation
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/09/majority-in-us-back-free-college-tuition-and-student-debt-cancellation-new-poll-finds.html

#1yrago This is your smartphone on feminism
https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/

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⛽️ Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism
(https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Ian Brown (https://twitter.com/1Br0wn).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Friday's progress: 534 words (60528 total).

Currently reading: Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

Latest podcast: Chapter 1 of Attack Surface, the third Little Brother
novel
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/09/08/attack-surface-kickstarter-promo-excerpt/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote for Law Via the Internet conference, Sept 22,
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/LVI2020/register

* Writing into an Uncertain Future, Afterwords Festival, Oct 1,
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/writing-into-an-uncertain-future-tickets-115378329690

Latest book:

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
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