I'm sorry but this analysis is terribly simplistic.
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Miguel Afonso Caetanowrote last edited by [email protected]
I'm sorry but this analysis is terribly simplistic. Big Tech LOVES Intellectual Property, copyright, and specially patents. That's why these companies want to patent and extract licenses/subscriptions from everything that exists online. In the 90s, there were practically no large Internet companies (besides Yahoo!) and most technological infrastructure was decentralized - usenet newsgroups, IRC servers, BBSs, netizens movements, etc. Most technological innovations of that time were led by individual developers working for fun, as a hobby, or for mere survival.
While I'm sympathetic to leftist anti-big tech rhetoric, most of these discourses leave too many details out. You cannot create a false narrative based on misplaced assumptions, false narratives, and innuendos.
Digital rights were very important for the evolution of the Open Web and they should nowadays be considered as part of the human rights stack. Access to Knowledge (A2K) still continues to be critical for non-western countries, along with privacy and data protection rights.
Just because digital rights and the open-source movement were coopted by capitalism, that doesn't mean you should completely jettison them out. They are just a few pieces of a very large puzzle that must completed to surpass the conditions for the expansion of capitalism.
TL;DR: Leftists anti-big tech critics should read more marxist critical theory.
https://disconnect.blog/reclaiming-sovereignty-in-the-digital-age/
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David Alonsoreplied to Miguel Afonso Caetano last edited by
This article put it quite well, I think:
https://www.technollama.co.uk/a-short-guide-to-the-copyright-wars
"Both camps tend to accuse the other of serving the interests of large corporations. The truth is that no matter what your stance is on copyright, you will always be aligned with some corporate interests. The reason for this is simple: there are corporate interests on both sides of the debate, and that is inescapable given the fact that we live in a capitalist system bent on the accumulation of wealth."
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Miguel Afonso Caetanoreplied to David Alonso last edited by
@dalonso Yes, I totally agree with that position.
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Miguel Afonso Caetanoreplied to Miguel Afonso Caetano last edited by [email protected]
"We’re entering a period where internet restrictions can’t just be easily dismissed as abusive actions taken by authoritarian governments, but one where they’re implemented by democratic states with the support of voting publics that are fed up with the reality of what the internet has become. They have no time for cyberlibertarian fantasies."
I almost forgot to mention this whole nonsense concept of "digital sovereignty". It's almost as if we've forgotten that sovereignty is always oppressive and antithetical to autonomy. I don't like sovereigns. What I'm fond of is of autonomous collectives and participatory rule-making