[Plura-list] It was all downhill after the Cuecat

Thu Oct 20 13:11:09 EDT 2022

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/

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Catch me today (10/20) online at Library Journal's Day of Dialog:
https://www.libraryjournal.com/event/library-journal-day-of-dialog-2022-fall#program

Montrealers! On 10/23, I'm at Argo Bookshop:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-argo-bookshop-tickets-430453747747

And the Ottawa Writers Festival on 10/24
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2022-in-person-events/surviving-apocalyptic-economics

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Today's links

* It was all downhill after the Cuecat: On the origins of "user manipulation and surveillance."

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021

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

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🧑🏿‍🔬 It was all downhill after the Cuecat

Sometime in 2001, I walked into a Radio Shack on San Francisco's Market Street and asked for a Cuecat: a handheld barcode scanner that looked a bit like a cat and a bit like a sex toy. The clerk handed one over to me and I left, feeling a little giddy. I didn't have to pay a cent.

The Cuecat was a good idea and a terrible idea. The good idea was to widely distribute barcode scanners to computer owners, along with software that could read and decode barcodes; the company's marketing plan called for magazines and newspapers to print barcodes alongside ads and articles, so readers could scan them and be taken to the digital edition. To get the Cuecat into widespread use, the company raised millions in the capital markets, then mass-manufactured these things and gave them away for free at Radio Shacks around the country. Every *Wired* and *Forbes* subscriber got one in the mail!

That was the good idea (it's basically a prototype for today's QR-codes). The terrible idea was that this gadget would spy on you. Also, it would only work with special barcodes that had to be licensed from the manufacturer. Also, it would only work on Windows.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001017162623/http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2000/nf20000928_029.htm

But the manufacturer didn't have the last word! Not at all. A couple of enterprising hardware hackers - Pierre-Philippe Coupard and Michael Rothwell - tore down a Cuecat, dumped its ROM, and produced their own driver for it - a surveillance-free driver that worked with *any* barcode. You could use it to scan the UPCs on your books or CDs or DVDs to create a catalog of your media; you could use it to scan UPCs on your groceries to make a shopping list. You could do any and every one of these things, because the Cuecat was yours.

Cuecat's manufacturer, Digital Convergence, did *not* like this *at all*. They sent out legal demand letters and even shut down some of the repositories that were hosting alternative Cuecat firmware. They changed the license agreement that came with the Cuecat software CD to prohibit reverse-engineering.

http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm

It didn't matter, both as a practical matter and as a matter of law. As a practical matter, the (ahem) cat was out of the bag: there were so many web-hosting companies back then, and people mirrored the code to so many of them, the company would have its hands full chasing them all down and intimidating them into removing the code.

Then there was the law: how could you impose license terms on a gift? How could someone be bound by license terms on a CD that they simply threw away without ever opening it, much less putting it in their computer?

https://slashdot.org/story/00/09/18/1129226/digital-convergence-changes-eula-and-gets-cracked

In the end, Cuecat folded and sold off its remaining inventory. The early 2000s were not a good time to be a tech company, much less a tech company whose business model required millions of people to meekly accept a bad bargain.

Back then, tech users didn't feel any obligation to please tech companies' shareholders: if they backed a stupid business, that was their problem, not ours. Venture capitalists were *capitalists* - if they wanted us give to them according to their need and take from them according to their ability, they should be venture *communists*.

Last August, philosopher and Centre for Technomoral Futures director Shannon Vallor tweeted, "The saddest thing for me about modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance is how it has just slowly killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech. Every product Meta or Amazon announces makes the future seem bleaker and grayer."

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559659655097376768

She went on: "I don’t think it’s just my nostalgia, is it? There’s no longer anything  being promised to us by tech companies that we actually need or asked for. Just more monitoring, more nudging, more draining of our data, our time, our joy."

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559663985821106177

Today on Tumblr, Wil Wheaton responded: "[T]here is very much no longer a feeling of 'How can this change/improve my life?' and a constant dread of 'How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate.'"

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/698603648058556416/cory-doctorow-if-you-see-this-and-have-thoughts

Wil finished with, "Cory Doctorow, if you see this and have thoughts, I would LOVE to hear them."

I've got thoughts. I think this all comes back to the Cuecat.

When the Cuecat launched, it was a mixed bag. That's generally true of technology - or, indeed, any product or service. No matter how many variations a corporation offers, they can never anticipate all the ways that you will want or need to use their technology. This is especially true for the users the company values the least - poor people, people in the global south, women, sex workers, etc.

That's what makes the phrase "So easy your mom can use it" particularly awful "Moms" are the kinds of people whose priorities and difficulties are absent from the room when tech designers gather to plan their next product. The needs of "moms" are mostly met by *mastering*, *configuring* and *adapting* technology, because tech doesn't work out of the box for them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjas

(As an alternative, I advocate for "so easy your boss can use it," because your boss gets to call up the IT department and shout, "I don't care what it takes, just make it work!" Your boss can solve problems through raw exercise of authority, without recourse to ingenuity.)

Technology can't be understood separately from technology *users*. This is the key insight in Donald Norman's 2004 book *Emotional Design*, which argued that the ground state of all technology is broken, and the overarching task of tech users is to troubleshoot the things they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg

Troubleshooting is both an art and a science: it requires both a methodical approach and creative leaps. The great crisis of troubleshooting is that the more frustrated and angry you are, the harder it is to be methodical *or* creative. Anger turns attention into a narrow tunnel of brittle movements and thinking.

In *Emotional Design*, Norman argues that technology should be *beautiful* and *charming*, because when you *like* a technology that has stopped working, you are able to troubleshoot it in an expansive, creative, way. *Emotional Design* was not merely remarkable for what it said, but for who said it.

Donald Norman, after all, was the author of the hugely influential 1998 classic *The Design of Everyday Things*, which counseled engineers and designers to put function over form - to design things that *work* well, even if that meant stripping away ornament and sidelining aesthetics.

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/don-norman/the-design-of-everyday-things/9780465050659/

With *Emotional Design*, Norman argued that aesthetics *were* functional, because aesthetics primed users to fix the oversights and errors and blind spots of designers. It was a manifesto for competence *and* humility.

And yet, as digital technology has permeated deeper into our lives, it has grown *less* configurable, not more. Companies today succeed where Cuecat failed. Consolidation in the online world means that if you remove a link from one search engine and four social media sites, the material in question vanishes for 99% of internet users.

It's even worse for apps: anyone who succeeds in removing an app from two app stores essentially banishes it from the world. One mobile platform uses technological and legal countermeasures to make it virtually impossible to sideload an app; the other one relies on strong-arm tactics and deceptive warnings to do so.

That means that when a modern Coupard and Rothwell decides to unfuck some piece of technology - to excise the surveillance and proprietary media requirements, leaving behind the welcome functionality - they can only do so with the sufferance of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer doesn't like an add-on, mod, plug-in or overlay, they can use copyright takedowns, anticircumvention law, patent threats, trademark threats, cybersecurity law, contract law and other "IP" to simply banish the offending code:

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

Many of these laws carry dire penalties. For example, distributing a tool that bypasses an "access control" so that you can change the software on a gadget (say, to make your printer accept third-party ink) is a *felony* under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a $500k fine and a 5-year prison sentence.

If Cuecat's manufacturers had simply skinned their firmware with a thin scrim of DRM, they could have threatened Coupard and Rothwell with *prison sentences*. The developments in "IP" over the two decades since the Cuecat have conjured up a new body of *de facto* law that Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."

Once we gave companies the power to literally criminalize the reconfiguration of their products, everything changed. In the Cuecat era, a corporate meeting to plan a product that acted against its users' interests had to ask, "How will we sweeten the pot and/or obfuscate our code so that our users don't remove the anti-features we're planning to harm them with?"

But in a world of Felony Contempt of Business Model, that discussion changes to "Given that we can literally imprison anyone who helps our users get more out of this product, how can we punish *users* who are disloyal enough to simply quit our service or switch away from our product?"

That is, "how can we raise the switching costs of our products so that users who are angry at us keep using our products?" When Facebook was planning its photos product, they deliberately designed it to tempt users into making it the sole repository of their family photos, in order to hold those photos ransom to keep Facebook users from quitting for G+:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Companies claim that their lock-in strategies are about protecting their users: "Move into our walled garden, for it is a fortress, whose battlements bristle with fearsome warriors who will defend you from the bandits who roam the countryside":

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

But this "feudal security" offers a terrible temptation to the lords of these fortresses, because once you are inside those walls, the fortress can easily be converted to a prison: these companies can abuse you with impunity, for so long as the cost of the abuse is less than the cost of the things you must give up when you leave.

The tale that companies block you from overriding their decisions is for your own good was always dubious, because companies simply can't anticipate all the ways their products will fail you. No design team knows as much about your moment-to-moment struggles as you do.

But even where companies are sincere in their desire to be the most benevolent of dictators, the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I is destined to go off by Act III: eventually, the temptation to profit by hurting you will overpower whatever "corporate ethics" once stayed the hand of the techno-feudalist who rules over your fortress. Under feudal security, you are one lapse in corporate leadership from your protector turning into your tormentor.

When Apple launched the Ipad 12 years ago, I published an editorial entitled "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)," in which I predicted that app stores would inevitable be turned against users:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Today, Apple bans apps if they "use...a third-party service" unless they "are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use." In other words, Apple specifically *prohibits* developers from offering tools that displease other companies' shareholders, no matter whether this pleases Apple *customers*:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#intellectual-property

Note that clause 5.2.2 of Apple's developer agreement doesn't say "You mustn't violate a *legally enforceable* term of service." It just says, "Thou shalt not violate a EULA." EULAs are garbage-novellas of impenetrable legalese, larded with unenforceable and unconscionable terms.

Apple *sometimes* will displease other companies on your behalf. For example, it instituted a one-click anti-tracking setting for Ios that cost Facebook $10 billion in a matter of months:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

But Apple also has big plans to expand its margins by growing its own advertising network. When Apple customers choose ad-blockers that block Apple's ads, will Apple permit it?

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

The problem with app stores isn't whether your computing experience is "curated" - that is, whether entities you trust can produce collections of software they vouch for. The problem is when *you can't choose someone else* - when leaving a platform involves high switching costs, whether that's having to replace hardware, buy new media, or say goodbye to your friends, customers, community or family.

When a company can leverage its claims to protecting you to protect itself *from* you - from choices you might make that ultimately undermine its shareholders interests, even if they protect your own interests - it would be pretty goddamned naive to expect it to do otherwise.

More and more of our tools are now *digital* tools, whether we're talking about social media or cars, tractors or games consoles, toothbrushes or ovens:

https://www.hln.be/economie/gentse-foodboxleverancier-mealhero-failliet-klanten-weten-van-niets~a3139f52/

And more and more, those digital tools look more like apps than Cuecats, with companies leveraging "IP" to let them control who can compete with them - and how. Indeed, *browsers* are becoming more app-like, rather than the other way around.

Back in 2017, the W3C took the unprecedented step of publishing a DRM standard despite this standard not having anything like the consensus that is the norm for W3C publications, and the W3C rejected a proposal to protect people who reverse-engineered that standard to add accessibility features or correct privacy defects:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

And while we're seeing remarkable progress on Right to Repair and other policies that allow the users of technology to override the choices of vendors, there's another strong regulatory current that embraces companies' ability to control their users, in the hopes that these big companies will police their users to prevent bad stuff, from controversial measures like filtering for copyright infringement to more widely supported ideas like blocking child sex abuse material (CSAM, AKA "child porn").

There are two problems with this. First, if we tell companies they *must* control their users (that is, block them from running plugins, mods, skins, filters, etc) then we can't tell them that they must *not* control their users. It comes down to whether you want to make Mark Zuckerberg better at his job, or whether you want to abolish the job of "Mark Zuckerberg."

https://doctorow.medium.com/unspeakable-8c7bbd4974bc

Then there's the other problem - the gun on the mantelpiece problem. If we give big companies the power to control their users, they will face enormous internal pressure to abuse that power. This isn't a hypothetical risk: Facebook's top executives stand accused of accepting bribes from Onlyfans in exchange for adding performers left Onlyfans to a terrorist watchlist, which meant they couldn't use other platforms:

https://gizmodo.com/clegg-meta-executives-identified-in-onlyfans-bribery-su-1849649270

I'm not a fan of terrorist watchlists, for obvious reasons. But letting *Facebook* manage the terrorist watchlist was clearly a mistake. But Facebook's status as a "trusted reporter" grows directly out of Facebook's *good* work on moderation. The lesson is the same as the one with Apple and the ads - just because the company *sometimes* acts in our interests, it doesn't follow that we should *always* trust them to do so.

Back to Shannon Vallor's question about the origins of "modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance" and how that "killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech"; and Wil Wheaton's "constant dread of 'How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity."

Tech leaders didn't get stupider or crueler since those halcyon days. The tech industry was and is filled with people who made their bones building weapons of mass destruction for the military-industrial complex; IBM, the company that gave us the PC, built the tabulating machines for Nazi concentration camps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

We didn't replace tech investors and leaders with worse people - we have the same kinds of people but we let them get away with more. We let them buy up all their competitors. We let them use the law to lock out competitors they couldn't buy, including those who would offer their customers tools to lower their switching costs and block abusive anti-features.

We decided to create "Felony Contempt of Business Model," and let the creators of the next Cuecat reach beyond the walls of their corporate headquarters and into the homes of their customers, the offices of their competitors, and the handful of giant tech sites that control our online discourse, to reach into those places and strangle anything that interfered with their commercial desires.

That's why plans to impose interoperability on tech giants are so exciting - because the problem with Facebook isn't "the people I want to speak to are all gathered in one convenient place," no more than the problem with app stores is "these companies generally have good judgment about which apps I want to use."

The problem is that when those companies *don't* have your back, you have to pay a blisteringly high price to leave their walled gardens. That's where interop comes in. Think of how an interoperable Facebook could let you leave behind Zuckerberg's dominion without forswearing access to the people who matter to you:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Cuecats were *cool*. The people who made them were *assholes*. Interop meant that you could get the cool gadget and tell the assholes to fuck off. We have lost the ability to do so, little by little, for decades, and that's why a new technology that seems cool no longer excites. That's why we feel dread - because we know that a cool technology is just bait to lure us into a prison that masquerades as a fortress.

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🧑🏿‍🔬 Hey look at this

* Creepy Ant Face Close-Up Haunts Nikon Small World Photo Contest https://www.cnet.com/science/creepy-ant-face-close-up-haunts-nikon-small-world-photo-contest/

*  How Ticketmaster Destroyed Live Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfPiqgLPro8

*  Teddy Roosevelt's Application to the Explorers Club https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/52439078337/in/feed-22706-1666196517-1-72157721641476748

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🧑🏿‍🔬 This day in history

#15yrsago Radio show about gaming in China: propaganda, paranoia and gold-farming https://web.archive.org/web/20110920201659/http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/searchengine_20071018_3639.mp3

#15yrsago Baseball players’ stats aren’t property https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=3066565

#15yrsago William Gibson on futurism, terrorism and other isms https://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/10/18/WillGibson/

#15yrsago The Counterfeiters: superb concentration camp movie about the prisoners’ dilemma https://memex.craphound.com/2007/10/20/the-counterfeiters-superb-concentration-camp-movie-about-the-prisoners-dilemma/

#15yrsago How the AP busted Comcast for blocking BitTorrent https://web.archive.org/web/20140421164853/https://newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=BUSINESS&ID=565106942100767897

#15yrsago Snitch-chips embedded in UK school’s uniforms https://archrights.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/chipping-children/

#10yrsago Groucho meets Bradbury https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3B1lYtTJQI

#10yrsago Identity thief’s amazing disguise fails to fool bank, toddlers https://web.archive.org/web/20121020231314/http://desmoines.komonews.com/news/crime/792583-mans-identity-theft-attempt-falls-flat-des-moines-bank

#10yrsago Coming to America: Six copyright accusations, lose your Internet https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/six-strikes-system-goes-live-this-fall-appeals-to-cost-35/

#10yrsago Researcher claims feasibility of writing lethal wireless pacemaker viruses https://web.archive.org/web/20121019053142/http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/319508,hacked-terminals-capable-of-causing-pacemaker-mass-murder.aspx

#10yrsago Dutch government gives itself the right to break into your computer and destroy it https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2012/10/18/dutch-proposal-to-search-and-destroy-foreign-computers/

#10yrsago Why casual sexism in science matters https://web.archive.org/web/20121021024830/https://scientopia.org/blogs/ethicsandscience/2012/10/17/the-point-of-calling-out-bad-behavior/

#10yrsago Corruption in Arizona National Guard, from “bum-hunts” to sexual harassment https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national-guard-recruiters-hunted-homeless-paintball-guns-arizona_n_1970664

#5yrsago NYPD has no backup for its seized property database, recording millions in annual seizures https://www.courthousenews.com/no-forfeiture-database-backup-millions-line-nypd-admits/

#5yrsago Leaked ICE forfeiture manual instructs agents to seize houses if they contain a phone implicated in crime https://theintercept.com/2017/10/13/ice-hsi-asset-forfeiture-handbook/

#5yrsago Mobile ad technique allows stalkers to follow you around a city for less than $1000 https://adint.cs.washington.edu/ADINT.pdf

#5yrsago Troubles loom for patent trolls who rent sovereign immunity from Native American tribes https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/judge-throws-out-allergan-patent-slams-companys-native-american-deal/

#5yrsago IRS to America: you were probably already doxed before the Equifaxpocalype, so don’t worry about it https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/355862-irs-significant-number-of-equifax-victims-already-had-info-accessed-by/

#5yrsago Two of the Chicago airport cops who beat up Dr David Dao got fired for lying about it (but not for the beating) https://consumerist.com/2017/10/18/two-chicago-aviation-officers-fired-for-role-in-dragging-united-passenger-from-flight/

#5yrsago The Tories replaced benefits with “universal credit” and left a town to starve https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/17/we-went-days-without-eating-properly-universal-credit-misery-inverness

#5yrsago Viral Chinese mobile game requires players to “applaud” a speech by President Xi Jinping https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2116076/game-give-most-applause-xi-speech-smash-hit-china

#5yrsago Quaker Apples & Cinnamon has “35% less sugar” because they’ve cut the portion size by 35%, while the price remains 100% https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/77j1c1/quaker_oatmeal_advertises_35_less_sugar_but_in/

#5yrsago Apple brought back Braun design, but Google is bringing back Olivetti https://medium.com/s/story/google-and-the-resurgence-of-italian-design-e9234cf3d073

#5yrsago Facebook’s security is like a “college campus,” but they face threats like a “defense contractor” https://www.zdnet.com/article/leaked-audio-facebook-security-boss-says-network-is-like-a-college-campus/

#5yrsago Quinn Norton on sexual assault, community response, and restorative justice https://quinnnorton.medium.com/robert-scoble-and-me-9b14ee92fffb

#5yrsago Trump’s war on leakers has neutered the intelligence community’s whistleblower program, which diverts leakers https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/18/turf-war-intelligence-community-watchdog-falling-apart/

#5yrsago Detailed anatomy of Wisconsin’s election-rigging, racist voter suppression https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppression-wisconsin-election-2016/

#1yrago The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#capital-as-power

#1yrago Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#dumbcast

#1yrago The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/19/moist-von-lipwig/#gimmick-v-gimmick

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🧑🏿‍🔬 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. Yesterday's progress: 508 words (51914 words total)

* The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a nonfiction book about interoperability for Verso. Yesterday's progress: 523 words (48255 words total)

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. (92849 words total) - ON PAUSE

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EXPERT REVIEW

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FINAL DRAFT COMPLETE

* A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause."  FINISHED

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues."  FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Sound Money https://craphound.com/news/2022/09/11/sound-money/

Upcoming appearances:

* The Global Governance of Online Harms - McGill (Montreal), Oct 20
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-global-governance-of-online-harms-tickets-424203352647

* Library Journal Day of Dialog (Zoom), Oct 20
https://www.libraryjournal.com/event/library-journal-day-of-dialog-2022-fall#program

* Chokepoint Capitalism Event, Argo Bookshop (Montreal), Oct 23
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-argo-bookshop-tickets-430453747747

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics, with Douglas Rushkoff and Rebecca Giblin, Ottawa Writers Festival, Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2022-in-person-events/surviving-apocalyptic-economics

* Launch for Chelsea Manning's "Readme.txt: A Memoir" (Bookshop.org), Oct 26:
https://xychelsea.tv/#event-bookshop-org

* World Ethical Data Forum, Oct 26-28
https://worldethicaldataforum.org/

* Radical Book Fair/Lighthouse Bookshop (Edinburgh), Nov 10
https://lighthousebookshop.com/events/chokepoint-capitalism-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), Nov 16
https://www.clarkefoundation.org/2022-awards-event/

* Big Ideas Live (London), Nov 19
https://news.sky.com/bigideaslive

Recent appearances:

* The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan (Lithub)
https://lithub.com/cory-doctorow-why-our-current-tech-monopolies-is-all-thanks-to-ronald-reagan-and-robert-bork/

* Sex and Politics with Dan Savage (use coupon code "Doctorow" for a free month):
https://index.supportingcast.fm/subscription/type/podcast#c3f7380e-441b-11ed-8f80-1f06b0646875

* Regulating the Online Public Sphere (Columbia Global Freedom of Expression)
https://youtu.be/0YsnGkFG7o8?t=8412

Latest books:

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "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 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "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/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* Red Team Blues: "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books, April 2023

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