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44

Happy Meal Toys versus Copyright

How America chose Hollywood and Wal-Mart, and why it's doomed us, and how we might survive anyway

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(Originally published as "How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy," InformationWeek, June 11, 2007)

on how the US used international trade as a weapon to get poor countries to enforce copyright laws (when ofc they'd rather just allow unrestricted copying). in 1995, the US signed the WTO & the associated IP agreement (the Trips Agreement), meaning that fellow signatories can export manufactured goods to the US sans tariffs. (this is part of what destroyed US manufacturing).

ends with an explanation of what the information economy really is (NOT selling information, but using information to improve everything else in the economy)

Doctorow, C. (2008). Happy Meal Toys versus Copyright. In Doctorow, C. Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future. Tachyon Publications, pp. 44-48

46

The futurists were just plain wrong. An "information economy"
can't be based on selling information. Information technology
makes copying information easier and easier. The more
IT you have, the less control you have over the bits you send
out into the world. It will never, ever, EVER get any harder to
copy information from here on in. The information economy is
about selling everything except information.

good thing to cite as a supreme misunderstanding (or at least incomplete understanding) of how good capitalism is at adapting lmao.

—p.46 by Cory Doctorow 6 years, 8 months ago

The futurists were just plain wrong. An "information economy"
can't be based on selling information. Information technology
makes copying information easier and easier. The more
IT you have, the less control you have over the bits you send
out into the world. It will never, ever, EVER get any harder to
copy information from here on in. The information economy is
about selling everything except information.

good thing to cite as a supreme misunderstanding (or at least incomplete understanding) of how good capitalism is at adapting lmao.

—p.46 by Cory Doctorow 6 years, 8 months ago
47

The US traded its manufacturing sector's health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The US bet wrong.

But like a losing gambler who keeps on doubling down, the US doesn't know when to quit. It keeps meeting with its entertainment giants, asking how US foreign and domestic policy can preserve its business-model. Criminalize 70 million American file-sharers? Check. Turn the world's copyright laws upside down? Check. Cream the IT industry by criminalizing attempted infringement? Check.

It'll never work. It can never work. [...]

—p.47 by Cory Doctorow 6 years, 8 months ago

The US traded its manufacturing sector's health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The US bet wrong.

But like a losing gambler who keeps on doubling down, the US doesn't know when to quit. It keeps meeting with its entertainment giants, asking how US foreign and domestic policy can preserve its business-model. Criminalize 70 million American file-sharers? Check. Turn the world's copyright laws upside down? Check. Cream the IT industry by criminalizing attempted infringement? Check.

It'll never work. It can never work. [...]

—p.47 by Cory Doctorow 6 years, 8 months ago