Our path to better working conditions lies through organizing and striking, not through helping our bosses sue other giant mulitnational corporations for the right to bleed us out.
Doctorow’s had some pretty bad takes, honestly, for all I agree with him on some things. His review of Naomi Klein’s Doppleganger – a book which explores conspiracy theories and how they capture people – reduces the entire book, incorrectly, to his own political soapbox:
Fundamentally: Klein is a leftist, Wolf was a liberal.
This is, frankly, juvenile. Not every bad thing in the world can be mapped on to one’s particular soapboxes. Treating GenAI as Good because Copyright is Bad is exactly in character for him.
(Also Cory gets smug about releasing his novels CC, as if all working writers can do that, but I’m sure it helps the family finances that his wife is an executive at Disney. It’s great to use money from one of copyright’s biggest monsters to act self-righteous about other people trying to make a living.)
his wife is an executive at Disney
Wait. What? Holy shit, every good goddamn thing he’s ever released regarding copyright and intellectual property needs a big bold disclaimer about that in front then.
Fucker’s talking out both sides of his mouth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Taylor_(businesswoman)
In 2017, Disney acquired Makie Labs technology and personnel for an undisclosed figure.
In keeping with the strategic acquisition, 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.
I’m sorry, in non-executive speak, doesn’t that heavily imply that she at least oversees some work on DRM? Any content distribution method Disney touches with a 40-foot pole is going to have DRM methodology.
Motherfucker.
so should he have divorced her in 2017 to prove his ideological purity?
(waves to the local chapter of the leftist circular firing squad)
To be clear, I was critiquing his smug intolerance to be people who don’t meet his standards of so-called leftist perfection, when he, himself, is as complex as anyone else. I was not critiquing his being married or his living under capitalism.
(if we were to question bonafides of leftist intellectuals[1] just because they are supported by someone belonging to the moneyed class, or come from the moneyed class themselves, we’d need to start with certain mr. marx, comrades. and numerous others.)
however you value doctorow’s qualities as an intellectual. ↩︎
