Another way to encourage interoperability is to use the government to hold out a carrot in addition to the stick. Through government procurement laws, governments could require any company providing a product or service to the government to not interfere with interoperability. President Lincoln required standard tooling for bullets and rifles during the Civil War, so there’s a long history of requiring this already. If companies don’t want to play nice, they’ll lose out on some lucrative contracts, “but no one forces a tech company to do business with the federal government.”
That’s actually a very interesting idea. This benefits the govt as much as anyone else too. It reduces switching costs for govt tech.
Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.
Except the tech companies are among the politicians’ biggest “donors”.
Except the tech companies are among the politicians’ biggest “donors”.
Public cloud computing companies that want to host government IT workloads still have to be Fedramp compliant. Doesn’t matter how much their donors pay, if they aren’t Fedramp compliant they can’t bid for the work.
Yeah but donations can help make procurement tenders slightly in favour of donors. Or get inside scoop so they have time to be ready.
I like Doctorow, and these point are valid. I just don’t see the American government doing anything to benefit the people, regardless of left or right orientation. Most Americans want abortion access and reasonable restrictions on gun sales; I can’t imagine any candidates, local or federal doing little more than making empty promises on these subjects. Even Obama care is a hugely compromised husk of reasonable healthcare for all, and you still have republicans clamoring to dismantle it.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.
I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.
That’s the feature
This is nice and all but any solution requires a government captured by capital to work against capital feels as likely to work as thoughts and prayers.
Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.
Yup. All of these “solutions” that sound original are known. The reason we don’t apply them isn’t because we don’t know how to solve these issues, it’s because capital has pulled the handbrake. This is the problem we have to solve. All the other problems fall downstream and will magically start getting solved if we can release the handbrake. If we’re not talking about how to reduce regulatory capture, we’re not taking about real solutions.
Friendly reminder: Dotorow’s wife is a director of a Disney subsidiary highly likely to be involved with DRM.
Ms Taylor is now the Director, StudioLab at The Walt Disney Studios. In that role she is responsible for ensuring that Disney continues to invest in the intersection between online tech and content distribution.
EDIT: You all are reading way too far into me bringing this up. Didn’t say this to invalidate his point, mostly wanted to highlight something that I find most people don’t know about him. It’s something I think is important considering how much he styles himself as an idealogue/icon for technological freedom. He still makes good points, but the position he’s doing it from should be known is all.
Does that invalidate his point regarding enshittification?
I think it might matter if Cory came out and said, I am starting an org with the resources to fix it. But I don’t see how this tidbit is relevant for a guy who coined the term about what’s happening here and has been beating the drum about the problem.
Yeah this feels like a “no true Scot” fallacy to me, where anything he says should be invalid because of his wife’s position, which is false
Only if you take it that way. I’ve said nothing about his point being questionable, and it wasn’t my intent.
For me this is more about that his status as a free software/internet icon for well over a decade should be tempered, if only slightly, by knowledge of what pays his bills.
Cory has self styled and been treated as a free software icon for well over a decade. The whole enshittification thing is just the latest thing to bring him back into the public eye.
It doesn’t invalidate his point whatsoever, but it’s important to know that what pays his bills is all.
Her running MakieLab (which might indeed utilise DRM, idk) doesn’t invalidate her husband’s point.
It’s no longer Makielab, as it was acquied by Disney. What they actually do now ias a subsidiary is unclear beyond the quote from her Wikipedia page, especially as her personal site linked to by Wikipedia is down.
I spent a good chunk of my teen years on 4chan, I’m normally the one pushing the idea that a good point is valid regardless of the source.
Anyway, I edited my comment and I’ll copy that here: Didn’t say this to invalidate his point, mostly wanted to highlight something that I find most people don’t know about him. It’s something I think is important considering how much he styles himself as an idealogue/icon for technological freedom. He still makes good points, but the position he’s doing it from should be known is all.
Is he, or has he ever been, a communist or associated with communists! We demand an answer!
Lol, no. Also, big diff between associating with and being actively married to.
Anyway I’ve edited my comment and I’ll repeat tye edit here: You all are reading way too far into me bringing this up. Didn’t say this to invalidate his point, mostly wanted to highlight something that I find most people don’t know about him. It’s something I think is important considering how much he styles himself as an idealogue/icon for technological freedom. He still makes good points, but the position he’s doing it from should be known is all.
See Kelly Ann Conway and George Conway.
