❝Story02:17
How a grad student's encryption program made code legally count as speech
Doctorow recounts the EFF's early Bernstein litigation, when the NSA classified encryption as a munition and insisted civilians make do with a fifty-bit standard. EFF co-founder John Gilmore built a machine that brute-forced that standard in two and a half hours and nobody cared. The organisation then represented Berkeley cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein, arguing his source code was expressive speech protected by the First Amendment.
- The NSA treated strong encryption as a weapon civilians should not have
- A quarter-million-dollar machine cracked the approved standard in under three hours
- EFF won at district and appellate level; the NSA declined to risk the Supreme Court
- The result underpins the encryption protecting bank transactions, pacemakers and anti-lock brakes
“And we argued that he had a First Amendment right to publish his source code, that source code was a form of expressive speed each…”
#encryption#eff#first-amendment#digital-rights
❝Story10:36
The tariff threat that kept thirty countries from fixing their tech policy
Over two decades visiting more than thirty countries for the EFF, Doctorow says policymakers consistently agreed that interoperability rules, a right to reverse-engineer, and stronger privacy law made sense — then explained that the US Trade Representative would answer with tariffs. With tariffs now arriving anyway, he argues the bargain has collapsed and former trading partners are being treated as rivals to be pressured through American tech giants.
- Trade retaliation was the standing reason countries declined sensible tech reform
- Once tariffs land regardless, compliance buys nothing
- Doctorow cites the ICC losing its Microsoft accounts, email, calendar and working files
- Dependence on US platforms is now read as a geopolitical exposure
“we'd love to do that. It sounds very sensible, but the US Trade Representative has made it very clear that if we don't have policies…”
“when the International Criminal Court swore out a complaining against Benjamin and Yahoo for genocide, Trump denounced this and then Microsoft terminated his online accounts.”
#trade-policy#geopolitics#cloud-dependency#eff
❝Story14:20
The HP update that sat dormant until parents bought back-to-school ink
Doctorow calls inkjet ink the most expensive fluid a civilian can buy without a licence, and says the only reason generic cartridges fail is that modifying printer firmware is unlawful. He describes an HP security update pushed in March that behaved like a sleeper agent — doing nothing until September, after families had stocked up on generic ink at Costco, then disabling it.
- Generic ink is blocked by law, not by technical necessity
- Manufacturers push non-consensual firmware updates to enforce it
- The March-to-September delay maximised the financial damage to buyers
- Doctorow reads the timing as a deterrent message rather than a security measure
“In jet ink is the most expensive fluid you can buy as a civilian without taking a special license.”
“HP pushed an update in March that was a security update that was like a Manchurian candidate, a sleeper agent. It sat there until September,…”
#right-to-repair#printers#firmware#consumer-harm
❝Story25:18
Teenagers rebuilt Instagram without ads and lasted one night
Doctorow tells the story of the OG App, built by two teenagers who reverse-engineered Instagram. It logged in on your behalf, discarded the ads, recommendations, boosted posts and resurfaced clickbait, and showed only the accounts you followed in reverse chronological order. It hit the top ten on both app stores within a day, and Apple and Google removed it that night at Meta's request.
- The product was Instagram minus everything users did not ask for
- Top-ten ranking on both stores inside twenty-four hours
- Removed the same night at the incumbent's request
- Doctorow notes it was the same tactic Facebook once used against MySpace
“In the book, I tell the story of an app called og app was created last year by a couple of teenagers. They just reverse…”
“And so within twenty four hours it was in the top ten on both app stores.”
#instagram#chokepoints#app-stores#reverse-engineering
❝Story35:51
Indonesian riders built clubhouses, then co-ops, then software that raises their pay
Gig motorbike riders in Indonesia set up clubhouses for shelter and tea, which became co-operatives that commissioned software to modify their dispatch apps. It started with making the tiny grey type readable in traffic and progressed to apps that automatically calculate mileage and per-minute rates and collectively decline low-ball offers, forcing wages up. Doctorow notes American drivers cannot do this — not because it is technically hard, but because it is illegal.
- Physical mutual aid preceded technical collective action
- First mods were accessibility fixes; later ones were bargaining tools
- Automatic collective refusal forces the algorithm to raise offers
- US drivers are blocked by anti-circumvention law, not by engineering limits
“And those clubhouses turned into co ops, and the co ops started commissioning software, and the commissioned software to modify their dispatch apps.”
“Drivers here can't do that, not because it's technically impossible, because it's unlawful.”
#gig-economy#co-operatives#indonesia#collective-action
❝Story38:17
Freeing his own audiobook would be a worse crime than pirating it
Audible sells audiobooks with technical protection measures so they play only on Amazon-approved apps, which hold roughly ninety percent of the market. Doctorow points out that every sale therefore creates a switching cost binding the reader to Amazon rather than to him. Despite writing, narrating, financing and owning the copyright outright, giving readers a tool to move their library elsewhere would be a more serious offence than pirating the book.
- DRM ties the listener's library to the retailer, not the author
- Roughly ninety percent market share makes the lock-in near-total
- The author owns the copyright end to end and still cannot unlock it
- Supplying an unlocking tool carries heavier penalties than piracy
“they only play on Amazon's approved apps. They're ninety percent of the market. That means every time I sell you an audiobook, I create a…”
“Not only do I commit a crime, but I commit a more serious crime than you would if you pirated the audiobook.”
#drm#audible#copyright#lock-in