Latest news with #CoryDoctorow
CBC
15-06-2025
- Business
- CBC
How the trade war with the U.S. could fix Canada's internet
When life hands you tariffs, fix the internet. At least, that's what Cory Doctorow hopes might happen. Because, he says, Canada's internet is in desperate need of saving. "We created a policy environment that rewards companies and executives who do things that are bad for the internet and bad for internet users, and that does not punish them when they do things that harm us," said Doctorow, a tech journalist, activist, and host of the CBC podcast Understood: Who Broke the Internet?. He believes that the current trade troubles could actually free Canada to fix how it polices the internet — more in line with the rest of the world, but less restrictive than the U.S. That's because the current state of Canada's internet policy is directly connected to trade pressure — specifically tariff threats — surrounding internet and copyright law from the United States decades ago. But since free trade with our southern neighbours is already in turmoil, Doctorow says it's time to unlock our internet by removing laws that benefit big tech companies, and opening up access for users. The start of internet laws Like many countries, Canada's internet laws can be traced back to two treaties from the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It asked signatories to protect copyrights online. Canada signed the two treaties, but wouldn't ratify them until over a decade later. But the U.S. moved quickly and ratified its version of copyright laws in 1999, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce, says the American act heavily favoured copyright holders, but held few protections for users. And the U.S. wanted other countries to follow their lead. "They then oftentimes either use direct bilateral trade pressure or trade agreements to try to take that U.S. position and make it the standard for how you implement a treaty that was otherwise very flexible in nature," said Geist. In 2007, Stephen Harper's Conservative government introduced a bill that Geist says was basically a Canadian version of the DMCA. Geist said that for decades, copyright laws in Canada protected the copyright holder, without limiting how a person could use a product. But the new bill allowed for digital locks on software, which are technologies used to protect copyrighted content and prevent people from tinkering with the program. "This idea that you could use technology, now aided by legislation, to effectively remove or lock users out of what is their rights struck me as enormously problematic," said Geist. What are digital locks, and why do they matter? One example of a digital lock, says Doctorow, is how Apple prevents iPhone users from downloading third-party apps onto the device. Apple says it's for your protection, as it vets the apps in its store to prevent you from downloading anything harmful. But because of the digital lock, Apple is also able to take 30 per cent of the cost of every purchase made on its app store without any competition. And Doctorow says its argument of security doesn't exactly check out. "This is no longer about you trusting Apple and choosing Apple. This is about Apple requiring you to trust them," said Doctorow. "Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you and doesn't give you the key, that lock isn't there for your benefit." Following pushback from Geist and others on the initial proposed bill, the government introduced a new version. But much to Geist's disappointment, it still had those digital locks he was concerned about. The reason? The U.S. threatened that if locks weren't included, Canada could say goodbye to tariff-free trade with the United States. "The U.S. had been clear that it wanted copyright reform, but even more than just any old copyright reform, it wanted U.S.-style legal protections for these digital locks," said Geist. "If there was one thing this legislation was going to do, it was going to remove this ongoing trade irritant with the United States." The bill was pushed through and labelled Bill C-11. And its impact was felt quickly. Doctorow says people working on accessibility software to programs they didn't own, such as screen readers for ebooks, had to stop, because they were worried about what digital locks might be waiting for them. A group that was building tools to access public government data had to halt their work because their lawyers advised them it could get them in trouble. "What happened was you saw a procession of extremely abusive technologies creating the opportunities for extremely high margins at the expense of Canadian consumers. And no Canadian company stepped up to bypass or correct these market failures," said Doctorow. That's because, thanks to digital locks, they legally couldn't. James Moore, the heritage minister at the time, told CBC in an email that he still agrees and supports the bill, saying "Canada has obligations to our trading partners to protect [intellectual property]." What can be done Canada's trade relationship with the U.S. is now more uncertain than ever, thanks to President Donald Trump's unpredictable regime of tariffs. But even though it's a bad situation, Doctorow says, it's an opportunity for Canada to do something it should've done before. Since it was trade pressure that pushed Canada to go above and beyond what the WIPO treaties required, and that trade situation is in flux, Doctorow says Canada has the chance to change its digital copyright laws to something more in line with the rest of the world, and isn't as restrictive as the U.S.'s laws. "We could change our law so that it was only illegal to break a digital lock if you also infringed someone's copyright. You don't have to infringe anyone's copyright to install your own app store on your iPhone," said Doctorow. The European Union moved in this direction in April, by fining Apple 500 million euro ($788-million Cdn) for not allowing third-party app stores on its phones. The fine was issued under the EU's Digital Markets Act, designed to give consumers and businesses more choice and prevent big tech companies from cornering digital markets. This wouldn't just give you more freedom on your phone, says Doctorow. It also means a company like Apple would have to compete with other companies to earn your business. Tinkerers and innovators in Canada could build ways to improve all aspects of how we use the internet, says Doctorow, converting the internet from a walled garden to a public space. But Geist isn't so confident it will happen. "I fear that … in our zeal to deal with the very real threats that we see from Trump on tariffs and on a number of other things with respect to Canada, we'll give on some issues simply because the hope will be that that will be enough to address some of these other concerns that are ultimately seen as even more significant," said Geist.
Indian Express
29-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Prime Video, now with ads: Today's digital citizen is paying more for less
Written by Mrinalini Naik The rapid growth of India's digital ecosystem over the last two decades has transformed how millions of people communicate, shop, learn, and entertain themselves. As India continues its digital surge, a growing number of users are facing a strange irony: The more dominant a platform becomes, the worse the experience gets. E-platforms once promised access, speed, convenience, control, a diverse selection and affordability. For a while, they delivered. But somewhere along the way, the user became less of a priority and more of a target. What we're witnessing now is the decay of digital platforms, a process that has earned a fitting name: 'Enshitification'. Coined by Canadian-British journalist Cory Doctorow, the term refers to how online platforms degrade over time: First serving users, then business clients, and eventually just themselves. For instance, recently, Amazon Prime notified its members that starting June 17, 2025, Prime Video will include advertisements, and if the members want to have an 'ad-free experience' on the OTT platform, they'll have to pay an additional fee on top of the standard Prime membership charges. Similarly, a few days back, both Zomato Gold and Swiggy One updated their terms to include 'rain-surge fees' even for premium subscribers. What began as loyalty programs offering free delivery and priority service now resemble subscription traps that add cost while subtracting value. These are not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate business model shift. As user growth plateaus, platforms turn inward, optimising for revenue per user, not user experience. Loyalty is no longer rewarded, it's priced. Coupons dry up for returning customers, free delivery becomes elusive, and core features are throttled behind new paywalls. Customer care has become bot-driven, and live human support is hidden behind multiple steps or unavailable. This phenomenon is plainly visible across India's digital ecosystem. Platforms like Spotify and YouTube constantly flood users with unskippable ads to push premium plans. From e-commerce to grocery and food delivery apps, users are now confronted with an escalating mix of non-negotiable 'platform fees' or 'handling charges' on every order. Multiple layers of fees, like delivery charges for smaller baskets, packaging fees, and surge pricing during peak hours, are added, and membership terms shrink in value over time. If this sounds like paying more to get less, that's because it is. The logic behind this model is simple: Once platforms scale to achieve market dominance and user dependence to become indispensable, monetisation intensifies. Charges once optional become default. However, 'enshitification' is not just limited to fees or the push for paid subscriptions; it's about all the systemic processes that degrade user experience. One such process is device-based price discrimination done by platforms. In 2025, a storm of user complaints and reports revealed that many platforms, specifically quick commerce and ride-hailing apps, were charging more to iPhone users than to Android users for the same route and time, based solely on device data. This profiling, based purely on perceived purchasing power, occurs without consent, transparency, or recourse. From the consumer perspective, it raises serious concerns about fairness, especially in the absence of clear disclosure by platforms. Another issue is that platforms are increasingly relying on dark patterns, that is, manipulative UI/UX to trick users into unwanted choices. Some of these patterns are: Creating 'false urgency', where fake limited stock countdowns push users into hasty decisions; 'basket sneaking', which involves adding unwanted items to the cart or auto-ticking donation boxes without consent; 'drip pricing', where hidden charges appear only at checkout; 'search bias', when platforms prioritise paid listings or ads over more relevant results burying small or local businesses that may offer better value or service; 'nagging', where platforms send continuous notifications or requests to purchase unintended goods or services; and 'subscription trap', making cancellation of paid membership difficult and complex. These patterns are inherently opaque, designed to mislead and extract more without the user actively realising it. To address this issue in 2023, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issued guidelines under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, identifying a range of such manipulative practices (dark patterns) for prevention and regulation of those. However, the non-binding nature of Annexure-I (which provides specified dark patterns illustrations) offers guidance and not interpretation of the law. This grants the CCPA scope to offer new explanations of the mentioned practices, creating uncertainty and ambiguity in enforcement procedures. This provides a loophole for the digital platforms to continue indulging in dark patterns. Currently, India's legal framework for digital platforms addresses several important areas through the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and E-Commerce Rules, 2020. These mandate transparency in pricing and prohibit unfair trade practices; the Information Technology Rules, 2021 requires platforms to publish terms of use and establish grievance redress mechanisms; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ensures user consent and privacy; and the Competition Act,2002, prohibits practices like predatory pricing or market dominance abuse. However, none of these laws directly regulate user experience or interface design. Additionally, all these regulations are reactive, addressing harm after it occurs. What India needs right now is a forward-looking, ex-ante regulatory approach, inspired by global standards for governing user experience on digital platforms. Much like the EU's Digital Markets Act, the proposed Digital Competition Bill in India, if passed, will be an ex-ante regulation addressing some issues like self-preferencing of products by platforms, restricting users from using third-party applications on their core digital services or tying-bundling of non-essential services to those demanded by users. Though it's a welcome move to improve user experience to some extent, to truly address 'enshitification', India still needs legal frameworks on design and algorithm transparency standards, clearer definitions and binding regulations on dark patterns and mandatory UX audits for large platforms. The writer is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India
The Spinoff
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 9
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 'Believe the hype,' said Unity Bookseller Eden Denyer in their review of this latest instalment of the Hunger Games. 2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Samantha Harvey is touching down on Aotearoa soil any day now as the Booker Prize winner is starring in this year's Auckland Writers Festival. 3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40) From surviving shark attacks to surviving Meta, this is the exposé of the year. Read Julie Hill's review of Wynn-Williams' words on her previous place of work on The Spinoff. 4 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30) A mother-son story like no other. 5 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Asako Yuzuki is also winging her way to Aotearoa for the Auckland Writers Festival and we hope she has a delicious time! 6 Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, $38) Auckland Writers Festival's digital event with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been cancelled ('due to unforeseen circumstances') and replaced by this one, which looks extremely different but extremely interesting. 7 Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra, $37) Doctorow did a whirlwind tour of Aotearoa over the weekend and brought hordes of fans to Unity's doors. Red Team Blues is a novel about a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley and crypto and crime. 8 Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin (Scribe Publications, $37) A huge deal when it came out in 2022, this nonfiction book is about what exactly chokepoint capitalism is and why it's choking us. Here's the blurb: 'In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of 'chokepoint capitalism', with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well illustrated by the plight of creative workers. By analysing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio, and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct 'anti-competitive flywheels' designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices. In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.' 9 Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $27) Brilliantly done crime novel from an Aotearoa king of crime (and guest curator at Auckland Writers Festival). Here's the blurb: 'Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman is a tenacious Māori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland's Central Investigation Branch. When she's led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a hidden room. With little to go on, Hana knows one thing: the killer is sending her a message. As a Māori officer, there has always been a clash between duty and culture for Hana, but it is something that she's found a way to live with. Until now. When more murders follow, Hana realises that her heritage and past are the keys to finding the perpetrator.' 10 Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden (Viking Penguin, $38) A terrific, terrific novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and whose author is … you guessed it, appearing at next week's Auckland Writers Festiva l. Here's the blurb: 'It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… Eva is Isabel's antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel' suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel's paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.' WELLINGTON 1 The Art and Making of Arcane: League of Legends by Elizabeth Vincentelli (Titan Books, $99) 'The Art and Making of Arcane is an immersive journey behind the scenes of the Emmy Award-winning Animated Series!' 2 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40) 4 Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Lothian Children's Books, $25) The fourth instalment in the absolutely brilliant fantasy series set in the world of Nevermoor. In this novel Morrigan Crow is about to turn 14 and her life is only getting more complicated: this hefty adventure includes finding lost family, a whole new part of Nevermoor we've never seen before, new friends as well as new enemies, and murder! A must-read series for ages seven to those who feel at least 700. 5 Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38) Welcome back The Spinoff's best book of 2024 according to our readers! 6 The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa (Picador, $25) Another cosy, bookish, cat-filled novel to comfort you during the long, chilly months of winter. 7 The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (Picador, $28) Welcome back! This beautiful book marries memoir with research into the why and the what of gardens. Laing details the making and breaking of her own garden alongside research into what gardens and gardening means to humanity at large. 8 How to Be Enough: Seven Life-Changing Steps for Self-critics, Overthinkers and Perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen (Bonnier, $40) Phwoar. Attacked. 9 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $39) Whoa! Double punch. 10 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $40) 'In 38 Londres Street, Philippe Sands blends personal memoir, historical detective work and gripping courtroom drama to probe a secret double story of mass murder, one that reveals a shocking thread that links the horrors of the 1940s with those of our own times,' reads the publisher's blurb. 'The house at 38 Londres Street is home to the legacies of two men whose personal stories span continents, nationalities and decades of atrocity: Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, and Walther Rauff, a Nazi SS officer responsible for the use of gas vans.' The Spinoff Books section is proudly brought to you by Unity Books and Creative New Zealand. Visit Unity Books online today.
RNZ News
30-04-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Feature interview: how Meta and X will eat themselves
This is how huge tech platforms like Google and Meta roll; first, they're good to their users; then they abuse them to make things better for business customers, then they exploit their business customers to squeeze out every last bit of value for themselves. Then, they die. That's how author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow sees tech's slow-motion collapse. He's in New Zealand to meet readers and talk about his latest book about Silicon Valley's big bet on AI called Picks and Shovels. [picture id="4K855YK_thumbnail_image001_jpg" crop="16x10" layout="full"] Photo: Jonathan Worth
CBC
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Cory Doctorow writes science fiction to come to terms with his tech anxiety
Canadian writer Cory Doctorow has written six books in the past three years — and his work, both fiction and nonfiction, often grapples with the way we use the Internet, the need for conversation around digital rights and the changing world of corporate technology. Doctorow's latest title is Picks & Shovels, the third book in his crime series about Martin Hench, which examines the early days of the PC and the possibilities for both exciting innovation and dangerous fraud it presented. Picks & Shovels takes us back to the 1980s, the start of Hench's career as a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley, where he exposes the finance crimes and shady dealings of tech bros. In this novel, he teams up with three brilliant young women to take down a pyramid scheme masquerading as a computer company. Doctorow is a Toronto-born author, activist and journalist living in Burbank. His writing, spanning nonfiction, fiction, and adult, YA and childhood audiences, has seen him inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and earned him the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award for lifetime achievement. On Bookends with Mattea Roach, he discussed why technology is such an important subject in his writing. Mattea Roach: You're constantly writing and speaking about technology and policy, but at the same time, you're also crafting these fun adventure crime novels. I tend to think of these as two very different types of work, but how do they work together for you, the fiction and the nonfiction and analysis? Cory Doctorow: Well, the first thing I should say is that writing novels is an artistic activity. The point of art, irrespective of what medium, is to take a big, numinous, irreducible feeling that is in a creative person's head and embody it in some intermediary medium. [Artists] hope that when an audience experiences the dance or the song or the painting or the photo or the book, that some facsimile of that big numinous, irreducible thing appears in their head. The big, numinous, irreducible ideas that are mostly occupying my head are about how we relate to technology — both the promise and peril of ubiquitous technology. It's not necessarily that the fiction is didactic, although admittedly sometimes it is. It's just that the feeling, the structure of the feeling is the same. MR: You've also talked before about writing being a therapeutic practice, that it's a way of processing your anxieties on the page. What are you anxious about that you feel like you need to process in fiction? CD: Well, how long have you got? We are standing on the brink of incipient fascism and climate collapse and xenophobia, genocide, a pogrom against trans people, like you name it, it's happening. Technology is very intimately interwoven into all of this. Technology is the medium through which these pathogenic views transmit themselves. It is the medium through which it traverses. Technology is also the medium through which we fight it. -Cory Doctorow It's also the medium through which we fight it, I think. I can't tell you how many long nights I spent riding a bicycle around the streets of Toronto with a bucket of wheat paste and a stack of flyers trying to get people out to protest marches. I don't ever want to organize a demonstration with wheat paste and flyers again. So, if this is our future, and I think it is, we better figure out how to make this digital nervous system fit for purpose, for human civilization, which involves necessarily creating some kind of response to the spread of these very dangerous currents through our technology. MR: I want to talk about the character Martin Hench. We meet him in your first novel in the series, Red Team Blues, as this grizzled and hard-hitting forensic accountant who's got one job left before he retires. Can you tell us a bit more about him as a character? And what is forensic accounting? CD: If you've watched CSI or whatever, forensics is figuring out what happened from the evidence available. So forensic accounting is figuring out where the money went — and there are a lot of people who make the money go places it's not supposed to go. Marty Hench's origin story is that at the moment where a sizable fraction of the people who are first encountering a spreadsheet in the 1980s were thinking, "I can steal a lot of money with this," he was one of the very few people who are like, "Boy, I'm going to find a lot of money stolen by people dumber than me using this thing." That is his story. 40 years in Silicon Valley being the Zelig of finance crime, unwinding every baroque scam that every self-important tech bro who thinks that they can design a system so fiendish that no one can ever unravel it. MR: How do you see the role of fiction in helping us address some of these policy or moral, ethical, philosophical issues that we've been talking about? CD: The reason I do this stuff is because I'm really worried about a world where technology is not under the control of the people who use it. What that world is going to look like. Recently, I was at the University of Toronto to give an Ursula Franklin lecture. Ursula Franklin's jam was that the important thing about technology isn't the technical specifications of the gadget. It's who gets to use it and who gets it used upon them? What does it do and who does it do it to? And those social arrangements are up for grabs. They are not determined with the technology. I write a lot of stories set in the future and what it can do is expose you to just how malleable the things we think of as eternal are. - Cory Doctorow I write a lot of stories set in the future. Writing a science fiction novel set in the 1980s in 2025, like Picks & Shovels, is admittedly a little weird. But I write a lot of stories set in the future and what it can do is expose you to just how malleable the things we think of as eternal are. This idea that the configuration we landed on in this first blush of the Internet is the last one we should have. The people who won the last round of this game should be declared the eternal champions and allowed to reign supreme for all time this is a mind zap. It's a thing that traps people.
