The fact that we can even have discussions about the abolition of "intellectual property" and still imagine a vaguely familiar late-capitalist world existing after it -- but can do no such thing with "real property" -- tells you who really holds the power here
-
-
And in our society paying for that space and for the machines in it means you have the legal right to restrict access to those machines and dictate what happens on them That's all you actually need to hold monopoly power, thanks to the network effect of how websites get popular
Show this thread -
Going through and making all websites have to be GNU-licensed and open up their *code* has nothing to do with this, at all It is easy to imagine the centralized Web 2.0 ecosystem looking exactly as it does now running on FOSS, which is something FOSS evangelists openly tout
Show this thread -
You know what would actually make monopoly power impossible, eliminating *property*, not "intellectual property" If there was no such thing as "owning a server" or "owning a datacenter" If all big computers everywhere were public property
Show this thread -
All websites would be government/community websites and anyone could upload anything or download anything and permissions to those physical machines were controlled by a democratic process THEN you couldn't have a Facebook or a Google or a Twitter wielding monopoly power
Show this thread -
Can you actually imagine that world? Is that ANYWHERE on the horizon? You can imagine Congress someday saying "Copyright isn't a thing anymore" but can you imagine Congress saying to Peter Thiel "Uh, excuse me, you can't OWN a server rack, all server racks belong to the people"
Show this thread -
No, of course not Making that the rule would *actually be* communism It would *actually overturn* most of how we think property works in the US, it would probably be impossible without a massive shift in our constitutional order So nobody talks about it
Show this thread -
We talk about abolition of IP as the best we can do, even though as long as *real* property still exists then we still live in a fundamentally capitalist, monopolist society and IP abolition just shuffles tokens around (in many cases, toward people with a ton of existing power)
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Facebook isn't powerful because of its servers - it's powerful because of the network effect, among other things. Google has spent a lot of effort many times to take a slice of the social media pie and has failed each time - and it's not because they don't have servers.
-
Facebook is more than just a brand name -- it's a walled garden, and control over physical access to computing resources is what allows those walls to exist
- Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.