By All Means, Tread on Those People  ## Metadata - Author: [[Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com]] - Full Title: By All Means, Tread on Those People - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/ff77f9b0-8625-42ce-a1f1-39669ba56c44 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Personal Family Update** - Cory Doctorow shares family news about his 17-year-old daughter Posie heading to UC Santa Cruz. - He notes she's volunteering with a sea turtle hatchery before starting university. Transcript: Cory Doctorow I got cursed by the electronics fairy. My monitor, my keyboard, my USB hub, and my USB-C dock all failed. So I have a lot of new electronics that I didn't anticipate having to spend money on, but it's quite nice to have a swooshy new ultra-wide monitor and a new keyboard and it's quite clacky And so on. It's nice to have all that stuff here. I only wish I had more time to enjoy it before I went on the road, but it'll be nice when I get home. More or less in the new year, I think, will be when I get home. Our daughter, Posie, she's 17 now. She's going off to university in a couple of weeks. She'll be at the University of California at Santa Cruz. ([Time 0:02:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/18fcf272-ca06-4783-b6ec-2c155dbf14d9)) - **Wilhoit's Law Explains The Pattern** - Frank Wilhoit's Law frames modern American fascism as legal double standards favoring in-groups. - The law links petty corporate abuses to large-scale authoritarian outcomes by normalizing unequal enforcement. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Just as Martin Neumohler's First They Came has become our framework for understanding the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, so too is Wilholtz's Law the best way to understand America's Decline into fascism. In case you're not familiar with Frank Wilholtz's amazing law, here it is. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. To wit there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. The thing that makes Wilhoyt's Law so apt to this moment, and to our understanding of the recent history that produced the moment, is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the Trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It's a way to join the dots between fascists' business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views. ([Time 0:07:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a64a4ef4-ce61-456f-b230-d9490bea3f17)) - **Petty Grifts Lead To Political Harm** - Tolerance for small corporate abuses creates the conditions for grave political harms. - Doctorow connects wage theft, public harassment, and concentration camps as points on the same continuum. Transcript: Cory Doctorow The gross ways in which Wilhoyt's law applies are easy to understand. The dollar value of corporate wage theft far outstrips the total dollars lost to all other forms of property crime, and yet there is virtually no enforcement against bosses who steal Their workers' paychecks while petty property crimes can result in long prison sentences, depending on the color of your skin and or bank balance. Elon Musk values free speech and insists on his right to brand innocent people as pedos, but he also wants the courts to destroy organizations that publish their opinions about his Shitty business practices. Fascists turn crybaby when they're imprisoned for attempting a murderous coup, but buy merch celebrating the construction of domestic concentration camps where people are locked Up without trial. ([Time 0:08:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1584fae4-2141-4b4d-a999-6919901e3654)) - **Terms Of Service Normalize Unequal Rights** - Terms of service and clickwrap contracts institutionalize Wilhoit's inequality by binding individuals unfairly. - Doctorow argues these unreadable contracts normalize surrendering rights to corporate in-groups. Transcript: Cory Doctorow The Federalist Society, whose law library could save a lot of space by throwing away all of its books and replacing them with a framed copy of Wilhoyt's Law, has long held that merely Glancing at a webpage or traversing the doorway of a shop is all it takes for you to enter into a contract by which you surrender all of your rights. Every major corporation, and many smaller ones, now routinely seek to bind both workers and customers to garbage novellas of onerous, unreadable legal conditions. If we accept that this is how contracts work, then this should be perfectly valid, right? By listening to these words, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all non-negotiated agreements, licenses, terms Of service, shrink wrap, click wrap, browse wrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete, and acceptable use policies, or bogus agreements, that I have entered into with Your employer, its partners, licensors, agents, and assigns in perpetuity without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. ([Time 0:10:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e593590c-cb84-4e26-8a65-6ec682ec718d)) - **Arbitration Tilts Justice Toward Corporations** - Binding arbitration shifted power to corporations by denying individuals the right to sue. - Corporations exploit arbitration and class-action clauses to ensure one-sided outcomes. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Corporations routinely bind their workers and customers to terms that force them to surrender their right to sue, no matter how badly they are injured through malice or gross negligence. This practice used to be illegal until Antonin Scalia opened the hellmouth and unleashed binding arbitration on the world. There's a pretty clever hack around binding arbitration, mass arbitration, whereby lots of wrong people coordinate to file claims which can cost a dirty corporation more than a plain Old class action suit. Of course, Wilhoite's law provides corporations with a way around this. They can reserve the right not to arbitrate and force you into a class action suit when that's advantageous to them. ([Time 0:11:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bceeb705-c687-4c9c-89e0-ad0b5762c511)) - **Property Rights Are Unequally Enforced** - Corporations claim absolute property rights while denying owners real control over purchased devices. - Doctorow highlights locked devices and repair restrictions as contradictions of 'property'. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Conservatives say they revere property rights above all else, claiming that every other human right stems from the vigorous enforcement of property relations. What is private property? For that, we turn to the key grifter thinkfluencer, Sir William Blackstone, and 1768 commentaries on the laws of England, where he defines property rights as that sole and despotic Dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. Corporations love the idea of their property rights, but they're not so keen on your property rights. Think of the practice of locking down digital devices, from phones to cars to tractors, so that they can't be repaired by third parties, use generic ink or parts, or load third-party Apps except via an app store. A device you own, but can only use in ways that its manufacturer approves of, sure doesn't sound like sole and despotic dominion to me. ([Time 0:12:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0303993e-960b-409f-b176-81d2e6de0647)) - **Platform Control Hides Conflicts Of Interest** - Google and Apple both assert control over devices while claiming security or policy motives. - Doctorow warns their conflicts of interest and political donations make centralized control risky. Transcript: Cory Doctorow But as indefensibly Wilhoydian as Apple's behavior might be, Google has just achieved new depths of Wilhoydian depravity, with a rule that says that starting soon, you will no longer Be able to install apps of your choosing on your Android device unless Google first approves them. Like Apple, Google says that this is to prevent you from accidentally installing malicious software. Like Apple, Google does put a lot of effort into preventing its customers from being remotely attacked. And, like Apple, Google will not protect you from itself. When it comes to vetoing your decisions about which programs your Android device can run, Google has an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Google is, after all, a thrice-convicted monopolist who have an interest in blocking you from installing programs that interfere with its profits under the pretense of preventing You from coming to harm. And like Apple, Google has a track record of selling its users out to oppressive governments. Apple blocked all working privacy tools for its Chinese users at the behest of the Chinese government, while Google secretly planned to release a version of its search engine that Would enforce Chinese censorship edicts and help the Chinese government spy on its people. Google CEO Sundar Pichai personally gave $1 million to Donald Trump for a seat on the dais at this year's inauguration. So did Apple CEO Tim Cook. Both men are in a position to help this self-described dictator make good on his promise to spy on and arrest Americans who disagree with his totalitarian edicts. All of this makes Google's announcement extraordinarily reckless, but also very, very Wilhoytian. ([Time 0:14:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14d44e7e-d871-44e2-9e04-b5bd25283eca)) - **Open Source Without Freedom** - Big companies claim software freedom while reserving deployment control for themselves. - Doctorow distinguishes transparency for users from actual software freedom controlled by corporations. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Google software is open source for us. We have the right to look at the code and do free work for Google to identify and fix bugs in that code. But only Google gets a say in how that code is deployed on its cloud servers. They have software freedom, while we merely have software transparency. ([Time 0:17:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b1e6941b-c5cc-490c-92de-6583fedd516f)) - **Digital Sales Are Often Secret Licenses** - Digital purchases are often licensed, not sold, stripping buyers of resale and inheritance rights. - Doctorow calls this 'Schrodinger's download' where transactions count differently depending on corporate accounting. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Take the music industry. They are required to pay different royalties to musicians depending on whether they're selling music or licensing music. Sales pay a fraction of the royalties of a licensing deal, so it's far better for musicians when their label licenses their music than when they sell it. When you or I click the buy button in an online music store, we are confronted with a licensing agreement that limits what we may do with our digital purchase. Things that you get automatically when you buy music in physical form, on a CD, say, are withheld through these agreements. You can't resell your digital purchases as used goods. You can't give them away. You can't lend them out. You can't divide them up in a divorce. You can't lead them to your kids in a will. It's not a sale, so that file is not your property. But when the label accounts for that licensing deal to a musician, the transaction is booked as a sale, which entitles the creative worker to a fraction of the royalties they get from A license. Somehow, digital media exists in quantum superposition. It is a licensing deal when we click the buy button, but it is a sale when it shows up on a royalty statement. It's Schrodinger's download. ([Time 0:17:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3d8c2f47-85bd-4a12-b11f-5e50e1d77de5)) - **Offer Truly Sold Digital Goods** - Sell your own digital products without restrictive terms when possible. - Doctorow sells his ebooks and audiobooks without licenses to preserve buyer rights. Transcript: Cory Doctorow The ability to change the terms after the sale is a major source of inshittification. I call it the Darth Vader MBA, as in, I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further. Naturally, the e-books and audio books in the Kickstarter for pre-sales of my next book, Inshittification, are sold without any terms and conditions. ([Time 0:20:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4cdd9582-d1f5-4b6d-8e80-599ccb561ec2)) - **Shittification Ties To Authoritarian Ideology** - Corporate shittification and Wilhoit's law are ideologically linked to MAGA and authoritarian movements. - Doctorow argues the same logic that permits corporate abuse also fuels political authoritarianism. Transcript: Cory Doctorow But that doesn't mean that there isn't a connection between the unfair bullshit that monopolies cram down our throats and the rise of fascism. It's not just that the worst and shittifiers are also the biggest Trump donors. It's that Wilhoite's law powers and shittification. Wilhoitism is shot through the MAGA movement. ([Time 0:20:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1e3c27fd-8875-4fcc-a09f-9fe7b6363171)) - **Hypocrisy Of In-Group Protection** - The movement defends privileges for its in-groups while attacking marginalized out-groups. - Doctorow lists mask bans, vigilante violence, and anti-trans policies as examples of this hypocrisy. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Conservative bedwetters will donate six figures to a give-send set up by some crybaby with a viral rumble video about getting 86 from a restaurant for wearing a MAGA hat, but they literally Want to imprison trans people for wearing clothes that don't conform to their assigned-at genders. They'll piss and moan about being cancelled because of hecklers at the speeches they give for the campus chapter of the Hitler Youth, but they experience life-threatening priapism When students who object to Israeli genocide of Palestinians are expelled, arrested, and deported. Then there's their abortion policies, which hold that personhood begins at conception, but ends at birth, and can only be re-established by forming an LLC. It's in groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out groups whom the law binds but does not protect, all the way down. ([Time 0:21:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c5b42e55-c465-468a-ab74-dd7399db9cfe)) - **Clean House On Wilhoit Practices** - Enforce zero tolerance for actions that signal in-group legal immunity. - Doctorow urges removing such practitioners from institutions to prevent drift toward fascism. Transcript: Cory Doctorow For this, I propose a form of broken windows policing. Zero tolerance for any activity or conduct that implies that there are in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. We should treat every attempt to pull any of these scams as an inch or a yard or a mile down the road to fascist collapse. We should not suffer practitioners of this ideology to be in our company, to run our institutions, or to work alongside of us. We should recognize them for the monsters they are. ([Time 0:23:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/edf4aeba-7ece-49aa-b2ef-8a106efdb889))