foreign
[Music]
so I'd like to introduce Rebecca Giblin
unfortunately
um Professor Giblin is unable to join us
but we'll be live it's on my on the
video
um bear with me uh so Professor Giblin
is an arc future fellow and a professor
at Melbourne law school and the director
of the internet intellectual property
Research Institute of Australia her work
focuses on diverse range of topics the
legal and social impacts of Library
e-lending projects my my passion
personally
I have Fuller protection of creators
rights can help them get paid and
simultaneously reclaim lost culture
access to knowledge and culture
technology regulation and copyright
Professor Giblin also leads the arc
funded author's interest as well as
untapped the Australian literary
heritage project her new book Trope
Point capitalism which we'll be giving
away as Charity raffle prizes with Corey
doctorow explores how we will recapture
creative labor markets from Big Tech and
big content to get artists paid so I
will pass you on to Rebecca Giblin thank
you
[Applause]
creators aren't getting paid that's
because powerful corporations have
figured out how to create choke points
that let them snatch up most of the
value generated by creative work before
it reaches creative workers
I'm Corey doctorow and I'm Rebecca
Giblin
our new book choke point capitalism
pulls aside the veil on the tricks big
Tech and big content used to lock in
users and suppliers eliminate
competition and ultimately Shakedown
creators and producers
we also share tons of ideas for how we
can recapture creative labor markets to
make them fairer and more sustainable
Margaret Atwood says we tell how the
vampires crashed the party and provide
protective garlic but don't take her
word for it check out our extended video
or read the book for more
[Music]
okay I think I'm on am I on hi everybody
from Austin
um I came here for South by Southwest
which is uh incredible if I'd known to
to dream that I could speak at South by
Southwest I would have had that dream
but I lacked the imagination even to
think that it could have been possible
so it's been amazing I had every
intention of being back on a plane on
Monday and coming to join you live in
Melbourne
um I live and work on the unseated Labor
injury people about a kilometer from
where you're all sitting right now but
the universe has other plans so instead
I am here at almost midnight but super
excited to talk to you about the ideas
in this book and how it came about
um
I want to first of all do acknowledge
the um the Elders of the woundary people
past and present as well as any First
Nations people here with us today and
also to acknowledge everybody fighting
to restore lost knowledge and language
and culture
so this book was uh born
um in a taxi between Saint Kilda and the
city
um in February 2017. Corey had come over
for a book tour and we're doing an event
together we really didn't know each
other very well at that point he you
know you know we knew each other to pass
he'd blogged about some of my research
before but it was really in that taxi
that we we realized that we had this
this shared Vision like we were both you
know between us we've worked in this
space for you know something like for
decades so we're Veterans of the
copyright Wars
um which you know have some intersection
with the culture wars and we were just
so tired and frustrated
we were tired and frustrated because we
were sick and tired of being told that
we have to choose between big Tech and
big content and so if you want um you
know if you if you want exceptions that
work if you want
um you know the ability for for for for
people to have Choice
um that means that you hate artists and
you want them to starve
um but um uh and and vice versa so we
just we're just not accepting this false
dichotomy and what we were what we
realized that we had this shared
understanding that um that no matter
which of those sides that you chose it
was always not going to work because at
best what you were going to do is pick
the giant who and um who whose crumbs
were going to fall from the table and
what we discovered was the shared Vision
where we didn't want to have any Giants
we wanted the people who actually made
um
um made the things and provided the
services that give us value were able to
share fairly in the rewards of their
work so that was 2017 we're both super
busy fast forward uh three years and
um I'm locked in my apartment I was
almost this day to the date I think
um and while of course that was in in a
lot of ways that was
um the opposite of freedom but I decided
to take it as a a moment of freedom
because usually my my work schedule is
like filled up you know a couple years
in advance and I've got
um you know I write a grant application
I say what I'm going to do four years
from now
um but covert through all of that up in
the air and I got to cancel everything
and ask myself the question what do I
most want to work on right now what's
the story that I need to tell and
straight away I knew it was the one
about how big business has
um stolen creative labor markets and all
that we can do to take them back
um and so I start working on this and I
um I I get like a couple weeks in and
it's so exciting and exhilarating but
it's really really hard because yes I'm
locked in my apartment I haven't got any
of those Corridor conversations that I
might usually have at University where I
work at the office but also I'm just
arguing with myself and I'm covering all
of these things that I really haven't
covered before and so my brain one day
was just like you know what would be
better
if Corey doctor wrote this book with me
um and you know that's actually so I
sent him an email and I said hey Corey
do you want to write this book with me
um and that's a thing you can do you can
write to Corey doctor and say write a
book with me and he'll say Yes
um he absolutely hates it when I make
this joke
um because uh he says and if he was here
he would just like do not write to me
please don't do that but
um it just happens that you know Corey
writes when he's anxious and he's now
got seven books coming out so this was a
really good time to kind of get on to
him and um and to start figuring this
out so that was my lifeline to the
outside world during that um long
Melbourne
um six lockdowns
working with Corey to like figure this
out and to to Really unpack all of these
different creative labor markets see
what was going on because we were more
familiar with some than others you know
particularly the book markets we know a
lot about people really got into the
nitty-gritty of other things and then we
realized hang on a minute they're all
using the same Playbook
and so I'm going to start uh today by
telling you
um one of the most egregious stories
that illustrates this Playbook and
that's around audible gate and I'm not
sure how many of you in the room here
have heard of that Scandal it should be
that we've all heard of it but um uh it
didn't get quite quite that that degree
of
um of of of
scandalousness where we were all talking
about it but enough people were talking
about I'm going to tell you what
happened Okay so
audible lots of you will know audible
tons of you'll be subscribers to Audible
and there's really good reasons for that
it is by far the most dominant ebook oh
sorry audiobook supplier in the English
language World
um it tries to treat its customers very
well so you get um you get little perks
if you're an ongoing subscriber and one
of the perks that you get offered
um is that you know there was this very
very generous no no questions asked
returns policy so you could buy a book
with your monthly credit and then um you
could return that book for a new credit
no questions asked and Amazon
um would you know give you a lot of
opportunities to do this so they would
send you an email after you finish the
book or they would like put it in their
sort of
um their regular newsletter emails that
have it listed on their website very
easy to do like one kind of click
um they would bring pop-up after you
finish reading the book
um so there were lots and lots of
opportunities to do this and a lot of
people did it they started treating uh
their audible
um their audible libraries as if they
were
um like library books
um
borrow a book return a book and what
they didn't realize because um audible
kept this part very quiet is that each
time they did return a book and they
could do that you know even if they'd in
they read the whole book they'd loved it
um they'd had it on their device for
like up to a year they could still
return it for a full credit no questions
asked but what they didn't realize is
that when they did that the full royalty
was being clawed back from the
Independent Riders who used the ACX
platform to get their books onto audible
which were a a really big part of the
market share as well as some smaller
Publishers
um and so this this was part of a bigger
scam and and I'm going to tell you how
it got Unwound
um so that it it was becoming more and
more prevalent over time so that um
authors started noticing that there was
something really weird going on with
their sales so they were producing these
books like very expensively in some
cases it can cost you know 10 000 USD to
produce a high quality audiobook they
were being well reviewed but the sales
were really dropping compared to what
they used to be and some authors like
Susan May who's a Perth based Rider they
were thinking you know we think
something's up with the returns right
but they couldn't really find that out
because Amazon and audible notoriously
secret companies and they refused to
report to authors on what their returns
and their sales were instead they would
only report on net sales so it was one
column instead of a column that said
here are the amount of books you sold
here are the number of books that were
returned and here's your net sales you
just got the net sales with all of the
rest hidden in the background
um when people like Susan tried to get
onto audible to to ask for the breakdown
they just kept getting stonewalled
um no matter what they did they couldn't
get this information
but then one day October 2020 there was
a reporting glitch and three weeks of
returns data suddenly came up in a
single day
and authors were saying hang on a minute
like I'm having like dozens or even
hundreds thousands of books being
returned and the scales were lifted from
their eyes a spotlight was shown
um into what was going on here and
people finally understood the scope of
the problem
um so why could audible be so abusive
you know why were they able to get away
with this for so long
um I'm going to talk about what happened
what happened next but but how did they
do this in the first place well Amazon
is the master of this Playbook they
really pioneered it they made it into a
fancy diagram and they really love to
boast about it
um so we Corey and I made another little
video which is to
um unpack how Amazon explains these
tactics which it calls its flywheel and
then explain what we think is really
going on so we're going to show that now
here's how Amazon describes its flywheel
lower costs lead to lower prices which
create better customer experiences
translating to more traffic which then
attracts more Sellers and thus a better
selection that improves The Experience
even more and the cycle continues
Amazon calls this a virtuous cycle
but it's not virtuous it's
anti-competitive
here's what's really going on
Amazon strategy has always been to Lock
in its customers one way it does this is
by putting digital Rights Management on
ebooks and audio books which cements
readers to Kindle and audible another is
by offering fast free shipping to Prime
members once you pay your annual fee
Amazon becomes your default whenever you
need to buy something
in its customers lets Amazon looking at
suppliers too
Publishers and small businesses can't
afford to give up access to Amazon's
increasingly large share of the market
so they keep listing their goods there
even when that's bad for their business
long term
[Music]
Amazon's lower cost structure is just a
euphemism for shaking down its suppliers
and workers
Amazon uses its Market power to demand
steep discounts and high fees from those
other businesses as a cost of selling on
its platform it uses that money to
subsidize low prices
which has the effect of eliminating
competitors who actually pay fairly
as time goes on that means Amazon
suppliers have even less choice
those low prices also lure more
customers who then get locked into
Amazon's platform as well
the Shakedown grows more merciless and
damaging as Amazon's flywheel spins
faster and gains ever more momentum
foreign
all of the companies that we look at in
in the course of the book are doing
exactly the same thing where they're
locking in their their users locking in
their suppliers
um they're able to do this because they
get lots of sweet sweet VC dollars with
the promise that they will choke point
their industries that allow them to
throw at sweeteners you know to to to be
attractive to the customers and then to
be attractive to the businesses but also
to eliminate competition you know Amazon
spent 200 million dollars in a single
month
um when diapers.com looked like it might
be some kind of threat in the the nappy
market and that sounds like an expensive
way of cornering the market for nappies
but it's a very very cheap way of
sending a signal that you will do a
Scorch Earth approach to anybody who
dares to impinge on on what you think is
your space and what that means is that
um that Venture capitalists will not
enter the a Kill Zone of Amazon and
these other Giants because they know
that the the big risk is that they will
lose everything
um if Amazon decides that their toes
have been stepped on
but why are these companies able to
choke point these markets the whole you
know say what you like about capitalism
but competition is supposed to be
fundamental to it right there's supposed
to be a free exchange between buyers and
sellers
but what we've seen over the last 40
years is a systematic project to
eliminate competition and to enable
these choke points to form that came
about thanks to a radical
reinterpretation of the origins of U.S
antitrust law in particular by somebody
called Robert Bork
um he came along it was a bit of a
revisionist
and he said no no no no no
um despite all evidence of the contrary
Congress wasn't really concerned about
monopolies
um when it passed this antitrust
legislation it was concerned about
consumer welfare
and what that means
um in a nutshell there's a little bit
more Nuance but this is the vibe of it
um is that the the question about
whether antitrust law or competition law
should get involved depends on whether
um the the the the the change is likely
to um have adverse effects on consumers
so for example is it going to make the
prices go up at the checkout now that's
a reason where anti that's a situation
where competition law would still
intervene
one of course that did is that it in and
and
um so first of all I'll say what what
that was accompanied by was
um we got rid of the general suspicion
of big companies and the general idea
that being big was you know likely to
lead to abuses
and instead we adopted these Notions
that well if they're very big they're
probably very efficient right and we
don't need to worry about them being big
because if they become big and they get
a temporary Market advantage and then
they make more profits then that will
attract attract competitors into the
market and that temporary Market
Advantage will be competed away and
everything is Rosy okay but of course
that's not what happens because this
this project
um to eliminate competition has been
about figuring out ways in which to to
convert those supposedly temporary
Market advantages into much more
enduring ones and they say the quiet
part out loud you know there's a
shamelessness to it Peter Thiel comes
out and says competition is for losers
like why would you get into a market
where you have to compete
um Warren Buffett
um salivates over companies that have
what he calls wide sustainable moats all
right so in other words barriers that
stop new competitors from entering into
the market
and that's what we mean when we talk
about the choke points in true Point
capitalism
um I should mention that these are
caused not just by monopolies but also
by monopsonies
um this is not a sexy word monopsony um
and it's a little tricky sometimes for
people to get their heads around because
we're going to have a family destroying
board game for that one
um but a monopoly is like the flip side
to oh sorry a monopsony is a flip side
to a monopoly a monopoly is where you've
got sellers who are very powerful
um and a monopsy is where you've got
buyers who are very powerful and so
since there's an Australian audience
maybe the most accessible
um example of this as the supermarket
duopoly calls and woolies if you're um a
food manufacturer or a food supplier
you're the seller
but you don't have very much power at
all right unless you're a Nestle or one
of the other enormous multinationals
your bargaining power
um in relationship to Coles and
Woolworth is very small they are very
powerful buyers
um when you think about the consumer
welfare standard for a moment and we see
well pretty much under this new way of
looking at competition law the only way
you're going to get in trouble is if you
raise prices for consumers
then of course the obvious and very
rational thing to do is to look to the
other end of the chain and find ways to
squeeze your workers and your suppliers
and
um that um
that's what you know what we we know
about monopsony is that that it is the
most dangerous thing for workers far
more dangerous for workers than Monopoly
is
um but the the evils of it are really
um have been very poorly understood
because while we've all been looking
over here at consumer welfare
everybody over here has been squeezed
but of course when you're getting this
downward pressure on your wages or the
money that you can bring in and for your
products and your services because
you're having to deal with a very
powerful buyer
um it has exactly the same end result as
raised consumer prices because you've
got less and less ability to buy the
goods and services that you need and
we're really feeling that at the moment
inflation is so high what we're seeing
is that corporations are passing that on
and then padding a bit of extra to to
increase their profit margins
um so that that we are still getting the
raise consumer prices but at the other
hand because they're so powerful as
buyers of Labor then they're also um
depressing prices at the other end and
that's one of the reasons why we're all
feeling so squeezed
so in checkpoint capitalism when we
started looking at these um at these
different Industries we saw that
industry after industry was um affected
um by this this same playbook in similar
ways the tools used to achieve the choke
points are different so things like
digital Rights Management and
accumulating vast reservoirs of
copyrights that then you know last for
you know 70 years after the author dies
or in 95 years for a sound recording
which you can then use to control the
future of the industry we saw vertical
integration and uh where you you buy up
everything in the value chain like for
for online ad markets and horizontal
integration where you buy up all your
competitors if they're selling the same
stuff
um and and Tool after tool choke point
after choke point
um
it's happening everywhere
now
when they succeed in choke pointing a
market even though it might look a bit
different
it always results in the same thing and
Corey has coined a new term for this
which I really love
in shidification
um
he did this in an instantly uh classic
um pluralistic column and it became
published on wired as well and what he
explains is that first of all
platforms direct their surpluses to
users right like I was talking about
before they want to be as attractive as
possible to users you get the users
there because once the users are there
then the suppliers have to be there
because that's where they access their
audiences and you really want to get the
suppliers in too so at the start you
direct your your surpluses to to them as
well you've you've been attractive to
the users you know your Facebook for
example
you make sure that the users can easily
connect to their friends and family and
like people they want to stalk that they
went to high school with a long time ago
and then they make it easy to be able to
see the updates from those but then you
start changing it so that the business
customers
um they're able to they're able to also
use this as a tool for reaching their
customers and maybe it's a little bit
easier for their messaging to get out
there than to do the individual
messaging to get out there so everybody
rushes to Facebook and it's super
excited about this new way of
communicating
and then the advertisers come on board
and uh you this is the intunification
right you see less and less as a user
you see less and less of the the the the
content from the people that you
actually care about and even the
businesses that you go to you see more
and more material
um from from these random advertisers
the Surplus is is moved away from the
users away from
um the business customers and then into
directly into the pockets of investors
and the aim with considerification is to
make the service make the platform as
bad as you can but just before the line
where people just throw up their hands
and give up on it all together
um we're seeing it play out in real time
with Twitter at the moment Elon might be
a little bit on the wrong side of the
line I don't know how you're
experiencing this but um it's a very
weird Vibes there lately and the sort of
Tumbleweed kind of uh situation
um so maybe it's it's it's it's died the
insidification death
all right
um so we focus on the creative
Industries in the book but choke points
and intuitification uh everywhere and I
do invite you to adopt that attempt and
name it and spot it whenever you see in
shootification
um
it's certainly coming to my mind a lot
that's the problem right the the problem
is these checkpointed industries but
what I want to talk about today uh with
you is the much more interesting
um point of what we can do about it
right
um we were determined when we sat down
to write this book that it was not going
to be yet another chapter 11 book right
like we've all read them there's 10
chapters on how terrible everything is
like set out an excruciating detail and
then a final chapter where oops we don't
really we've run out of time we don't
have really any uh space to look at
Solutions but a bit of sort of
generalized hand waving and some are
just like maybe vote harder this is not
one of those books and I should say
um we were actually really surprised you
know we've had an amazing reception to
this um heard from a lot of readers
particularly on social media but
um a whole bunch of people have called
out the first half of them and they've
said like how like rage inducing it is
utterly rage inducing and I actually I
honestly didn't expect that because I've
worked in this space for so long that I
was just sort of I guess I've just
become Inuit to it but then people just
saying that they're like rage crying and
like throwing the book against the wall
or like worst worth putting it down and
not picking up because they just can't
bear to read anymore and that's
particularly the people the creative
workers who knew that their sector was
bad but then to to pick that up and see
how systematically this Shakedown is
happening across all of these different
markets is the thing that kind of drives
them to despair so if you've started
reading the book and you've gone oof
this is a despair book
um I would encourage you to keep reading
because the whole second half is where
we get to the solutions which is really
what I want to focus on today
and
um
what what I want to be sort of picking
at is this idea that the open ethos has
a lot to teach us about how we can
defeat choke point capitalism
so let's look
um at a few of those um those different
ways in which can we can take
inspiration and I'm going to be talking
about it again in the context of the
creative Industries but also invite you
to think about more generally how this
ethos can help us uh in the project to
defeat corporate concentration and choke
point capitalism more generally in in
other areas
I want to start with transparency which
is obviously one of the the core values
of the free and open source software
movements
um by the ability to um to to view and
and study code
and also you know a big part of the open
education movement open government open
data all everything open and so this is
where I'm going to come back to that
audible gate story
when that data glitch
um happened and the the authors finally
saw what was going on that was the thing
that they needed the Catalyst that they
needed to be able to do something about
it so before this happened
um they suspected something was up but
you can't fight an enemy if you don't
know what it looks like it was really
hard to mobilize any kind of resistance
and as I said um Audible and Amazon are
deliberately secretive and they were
definitely not um they were definitely
hiding this uh deliberately from authors
but once once we got even just that
small light shown on the the situation
the three weeks of return data authors
were able to mobilize and organize and
to begin resisting and they created this
campaign which was really um effective
that
um Drew attention to these abusive
practices
um also you know once once it became
clear that this was what was happening
with the um the the returns
um one of the authors that was involved
in this campaign Colleen cross who's a
former forensic accountant turned writer
of um forensic fraud Thrillers
um she started thinking well you know if
they're doing that to us on returns what
are they doing to us
um when it comes to royalties and so she
started digging into the contracts which
again uh you know
um a deliberately opaque and confusing
and she worked out that actually audible
couldn't be paying independent authors
what they were supposed to be paying
independent authors because the numbers
just didn't add up in a way that that
could have been plausible and so
um you know we we talked to her in the
course of writing the book we asked her
what was at stake here like what kind of
money we were talking about and she's
estimating hundreds of millions of
dollars on the return scam alone and
then there's an enormous amount of wage
theft that she thinks is going on on top
of that and we still don't have any real
answer about the wage there like she
thinks according to her the best
information she's got that up to 87 the
money paid for these
um to access audible books is going to
the platform so just 13 to the the
author um the independent author who's
also the publisher who's also invested
in making that audio book in the first
place now we don't really know if that's
true or not because Amazon audible won't
make that information public
and why weren't they because [ __ ] you
that's why they don't have to right and
they benefit from that lack of
transparency
um and it's not just them it's the major
streaming platforms and the big three
record labels who control almost 70 of
the global recorded um music industry
and they own the three music Publishers
Who Um can perform almost 60 of global
songwrites I was at a panel at South Bay
yesterday where um the songwriter Autumn
row was there and she'd been preparing
for this she was digging into her
royalty statement
um it was 3 000 pages long
and like utterly incomprehensible she
said she kept looking at it and like
trying to find out what you know okay
that many units what's a unit there's
nothing on this that says what a unit is
contacting the other people are going to
be on the panel saying well what is the
unit and like there must be a key here
somewhere just opacity
um for opacity's sake because when there
is opacity then people can't find out if
there is a mistake
um and then that operates obviously to
the benefit of these corporations
so the fact that all of these companies
throughout the creative Industries do
not adequately and transparently report
to creative workers on what are
essentially their paychecks and you're
told to just trust them like that's
really kind of incredible when you think
about it particularly when we see that
there's this extraordinary history of of
mistakes and of deliberate fraud
um you know when the when the Beatles
were playing they had a terrible record
contract at the start they had to split
a penny per album between the four of
them plus their manager
um and then they were still and they had
all kinds of deductions on top of that
and then the the record plant was still
running like a third shift where they
would make a whole bunch of other
records that they didn't even have to
pay that tiny royalty on so we know that
these frauds happen and we need
transparency to to do something about it
and here
um I always think of the the artist
Molly Crabapple
um when she talked talks about what
opacity does
and she says not talking about money is
a tool of class war like a a culture
that forbids employees from comparing
salaries helps companies pay women and
minorities less
and it helps them pay everybody's less
if they're if their project is to
maximize value for their um for their
shareholders and that's what it takes
um it's extraordinary
um we looked when we were researching
this we came across one La based um
auditing firm that had done tens of
thousands of audits mostly of of record
labels and in those tens of thousands of
audits they had only once only once
found an era that was in the artist's
favor
so some kind of isolated probability
storm going on there it looks like the
kind of thing that we should definitely
be able to to to look into more closely
so we do require transparency when it
comes to protecting investors
right like if there is a a a material
matter that's going to affect a share
price the company's got all kinds of
reporting obligations and um and so on
so why do we do that for investors and
not for artists well the answer is
obvious right it's the same answer as
always the purpose of a system as
Stafford beer says is what it does
and um whenever we want to understand
why something works the the way that it
does despite really obvious shortcomings
the trick is to look at who's winning
and who's losing
um we do have some some great uh green
shoots about how we can introduce
transparency here in the EU in 2019 they
introduced the digital single Market
directive which mandates that artists
and performers in each member State get
new rides to find out how their works
are being used what kind of revenues
coming in and how their share is
calculated
implementation is tricky because in each
each member State
um these powerful lobbyists are white
anting the process to to undermine the
transparency that is actually required
but it's absolutely
um you know a step in the right
direction
uh next interoperability of course
fundamental to the open ethos and it's
going to be absolutely critical to
defeating choke point capitalism in both
sort of narrow and broader senses of it
digital Rights Management is obviously a
key way to achieving a choke point to
locking your your users and your
suppliers in so that you can convert one
of those supposedly temporary Market
advantages to something more enduring
um we saw that with audible every
audible book has digital Rights
Management attached to it which is why
we did not
um release checkpoint capitalism as an
audio book on on Audible it's available
um on all other platforms so we had to
we had to self-finance that because the
rights to the audiobook weren't worth
anything if you weren't going to make it
available on Audible so we kick-started
it and um we had it read by an amazing
reader Stefan rudnicki who read Ender's
Game as well some of you might have
listened to that
um and
um we did a few little stunts as well
there is a little part of it that's
available on Audible we just um we we
package the Standalone chapter about
their terrible terrible abuses as a
standalone audible exclusive and made
that available
um uh we were a bit shocked today we
were looking at this and we'd sold a few
hundred copies of it so I feel a little
bad about that but um we did that and we
also we we took the the chapter on
Spotify as most egregious abuses and we
made that available on Spotify as well
um the reason why these lock-ins work is
nobody wants to split up their their
libraries and nobody wants to split up
their friend group you know
um leaving Facebook doesn't just mean
you leave Facebook it means that you you
risk um losing access to your social
networks your Communications networks
um I haven't had Facebook since 2008 or
2009 and there's a lot of barbecues that
you end up just not knowing about
because
um you're not there where everybody else
is getting the invitation
but I would argue we need more than a
right to to bypass DRM we need positive
rights as well
um rights of access rights and so this
is maybe a broader sense of interoper
operability
and Corey's called for a right to exit
freedom to exit
um just the right to leave a syncing
platform while continuing stay connected
to the communities that you left behind
enjoy the media and apps that you bought
and preserve the data that you created
the open ethosis as well has such a
strong focus on equity and there's very
little room for the predatory middlemen
that are positioning themselves to
um sit between
um
audiences and creators or or buyers and
sellers in order to sort of use their
power to immediate access to extract
um an unfair share of value
and
what Open Access really does is promote
Equity regardless of socioeconomic
advantage or disadvantage
um and that's that's really missing in
the creative Industries where we do see
that even if you do have enough
transparency to find out what's going on
you might um you and and everything is
above board you're still very likely to
lack the bargaining power to be able to
to strike a a fair deal it's only a few
Superstars like Taylor Swift who can
really negotiate on those um standard
terms of contract terms of of doing
business
and we can also find inspiration to to
to find out how we can introduce more
equity and widen choke points out
through the DSM directive again and that
mandated again
um minimum rights effectively minimum
wages for Creative workers in the form
of
um
um rights to fair and reasonable
remuneration and it's really exciting to
see the Australian government in the
incredible cultural policy that was
um published in uh January I think it
was January to see that
um they're also talking about you know
maybe having awards for Creative workers
bringing more of the um the ideas and
protections of the employment law to
treat Arts work as as real work which of
course that it is in the EU as well
obviously another way in which they're
leveling the playing field in terms of
equity with use it or lose it rights
um creative workers are often and and
you know many other kinds of workers
include including programmers required
to sign away their copyrights as a
condition of of doing business but those
those copyrights that's a really long
time so in the case of computer code
it's your entire lifetime plus another
70 years after that there's like three
generations of people that have to kind
of figure that out
um nearly always
um the life of the copyright outlasts
the commercial interest in the work and
so this is where it can be really
helpful to have reversion rates you have
an entitlement to get the work back
where it's not being used if it's not
being reasonably exploited
um then the progenitor of that work
should have the right to Chlor it back
and then that promotes not only new ways
of getting creators paid but also helps
us promote access and that's um
something that we've been doing with the
untapped project that I think some of
you are familiar with where we um
another lockdown project where we
decided to create our own pumpkin house
and republish 161 form really out of
print but really culturally important
Australian books we wanted to make sure
that they weren't going to be lost
and
um they um you know they included
something like half a dozen um former
winners of the Mars Franklin award some
amazing amazing books
um and uh
the the writers when they they were able
to exercise out of print Clauses to to
get those rights back they were able to
then get a new Revenue stream because we
were licensing them and working them
available as e-books to license them for
sale but also for use in libraries and
we were ensuring access to a new group
of people so we can see that by
improving Equity we can find ways of of
win-win making the pie bigger
um for everybody
um I also want to talk about stewardship
as a really uh what is something that I
think of as a core value of the open
movement and something that really sets
it apart because you know stewardship is
distinct from ownership
and of course ownership is you know
fundamental to enforcing things like
copy left licenses but the community
ethos very often is one of thinking
about how to protect and preserve
um
um and and ensure continuity for for for
future people
um of different kinds of work
and
um
this I think is why the open movement is
so closely tied so closely aligned to
the preservation movement
um and it also makes me think of this
there's quite like a a First Nations
idea of of stewardship like stewardship
of the land
um in in ways that that do try and
promote sustainability and
um and health and and and
um ongoing viability which is very very
different to the very extractive model
of ownership that we've been um talking
about so far today
and so
I think when we when we start thinking
about stewardship then it it nudges us
to think about well who's got what and
who needs what for this to continue on a
sustainable footing and what we we it it
it it it it really brings it so close to
home that the Arts Industries in
particular but other Industries too are
becoming less and less sustainable so if
we want to keep having them we're going
to have to think about ways of doing it
differently
and so we talk about this about you know
again like how ways in which you can use
things like reversion rights
um to to both in in you know to fulfill
copyrights twin aims of helping
recognize and reward creators but also
to ensure the widest possible access to
knowledge and culture
um
and self-determination is another one
that I wanted to talk about as being
really critical and another core open
value because open gives people
opportunities to
to look and to Tinker and to see if
something doesn't work for them and to
make it different so that it does work
for them so to change the material
conditions
um of of your life and your environment
and the corporations who are so
determinately choke pointing their
Industries uh deliberately depriving us
of the ability to do exactly that
whether it's by locking us into their
silos their world Gardens or whether
it's by eliminating competitors who
might offer us a different choice that
could work better for our needs and of
course if we've learned anything from
the open movement it's that people have
a lot of very different needs one size
doesn't fit all in in almost any
category
Corey puts it really beautifully I think
when he says
competition isn't about making the
market efficient
it's not even about choice
it's about self-determination
weakening the power of intermediaries
who would otherwise take away our
ability to lead our creative and human
lives in a way of our choosing
who would and do Force us to arrange our
lives to benefit their shareholders no
matter how badly that works for us
now big bug bear of mine I don't think
humans are very good at figuring out
what are the conditions for a good life
if we do if we were then we would
definitely not have email
um and don't do any talk to me about
slack which is just Canadian email and
you're not gonna you're not going to
convince me otherwise
um you know it's apocryphal the idea
that that frogs in a slowly warming pan
of water won't jump out if it's warmed
up slowly enough they get hot and they
jump out humans though I think
um really are like those frogs
um in that we can we we are very
resilient very adaptable but that means
that as life kind of steadily gets worse
and the conditions of that get worse we
don't necessarily jump out of the pot
but I think it is clear that too much of
our lives are not around making the
world work for us as humans to to lead
good lives to flourish but around
um the maximum profits for investors and
maximum extraction and so the ability to
change those conditions
um really seems critical to widen intro
points out
um I
can see that um I'm I'm I'm running out
of time so I'll talk quite briefly just
this last little bit I want to talk
about collectivity as well and this is I
think that my most um my favorite part
of the book and the certainly the most
inspiring and hopeful part there were so
many amazing stories that we found of
how even like the most atomized and
Powerless people were able to by working
together
um improve and and even flip the tables
on the really powerful corporations that
that they had been locked into one of my
favorite stories is around the Uber
drivers who were you know deprived of of
access to Justice because they were
locked into contracts that prohibited
them from bringing class actions
individual lawsuits were just not
feasible and they were locked into
mandatory commercial arbitration
the mandatory commercial arbitration
works really well for these firms when
um it's just a couple of people bringing
them but these thousands and thousands
of Uber drivers coordinated to all bring
um binding commercial arbitration
um and matters all at the same time and
Uber ran went running to the court to
say oh my goodness this is so unfair
they ended up having to settle with
their drivers for almost 150 million
dollars which is probably more expensive
than it would have been had it been a
class action
um The Writer's Guild of America strike
was also just such a
such an uh such a great story we were
working with people like David Goodman
who was the president of of the guild at
the time the strike was going on there
were um people abuses in the um the
talent agency arena in Hollywood four
big agencies had um kind of cornered the
market for all the talent and they'd set
up these new structures so that they
were um lining their own nests
Feathering their own nests at the um at
the sake of the creators that they were
supposed to represent and in the Golden
Age of Television Riders were seeing
that their conditions were worsening and
worsening and so
um you know they they thought they
couldn't do anything about this and then
finally they realized that the the
um the agencies that only had the power
that the writers gave them because you
can have Hollywood without agents but
you can't have Hollywood without Riders
and so they came up with a new code of
conduct that got rid of all of these
abuses and they said
um that's it
um we are going to
um fire everybody who doesn't comply
with that code of conduct and then in a
single week 7 000 Hollywood
um Riders fired their agents and it was
brutal like they ground their strikeout
for 22 months but eventually everybody
rolled over and they they changed their
conditions of their work
um
more broadly I think we need a movement
um and that's that's that the the most
critical thing
um the open movement
is I mean this conference I suppose more
than anything that people have been
brought together for it and like the the
other conference but I think it's really
it's growing over time and spreading and
expanding and bringing in different
people
um we see that open is a movement
um that the folks who are developing
free and open source software are part
of the same fight as the ones promoting
open government or open education open
Hardware the um the the gallerian
library and Museum folks who are working
on opening up their Collections and
bringing the open ethos
um to to development and access
but I really want to end by by
encouraging us to see that the open
movement is also part of a broader
movement against corporate concentration
that this too is part of the same fight
um the strip mining of creative workers
is like
part of that broader project in service
of oligarchy that um that we're all
subject to it's not just you know
independent creators and producers who
are being screwed over but it's almost
everybody and if they haven't come for
you yet it's just because they haven't
had time we we have a section in the
right right at the end of the book where
we say that you know the the tech
industry treats its techies better than
it treats the Arts workers because it
has to right but as soon as they find a
way or as soon as the conditions change
where they don't have to then the
techies are going to find themselves in
exactly the same position and we read
that out at South by Southwest on Friday
and we felt very prescient because you
know um you know there's blood on the
walls there are tens of thousands of
tech workers who are suddenly
um out of work and and struggling to
figure out what's going to happen next
and so
um things get worse for all of us when
corporations Shake us down
um
when wealth gets funneled inexorably
towards the rich where we're deprived of
of the ability
um to self-determine to change the the
conditions of our life by tinkering
um we don't have any transparency to
find out you know what is being done
what is being taken to us
um and we're all part of the same fight
but people ask me people often ask me
what is it
um but what is it how do we start how do
we start to change because you know it
feels like such a big project
um and that's and that's absolutely
right
um you know if if you want to get to a
sustainable Fair world where there's
enough for everybody instead of um
violent extracting by a very few over
the very many
um if you want to get there you wouldn't
start you wouldn't start from here but
we have to start from here and we are
starting from here and I think everybody
in in the open movement is doing exactly
what I think is the key which is to to
build connection and community
right that's that's the that's the the
Crux of it it's the
um this extractive
um neoliberal uh capitalist economic
system is designed to isolate us from
one another
um to keep us disconnected so that we
have that Hollow emptiness inside of us
and that's not a bug it's it's a feature
right we're supposed to feel empty
inside because then we will fill it with
ever more production and ever more
consumption so building Community having
conversations with people understanding
their fight and how it fits in with
yours
um these are all these are all the first
bites towards uh eating the elephant
um and I'm so grateful to everybody who
is here today and active in these
movements for everything that you do
towards that
um thank you so much for listening and
for all of the support for the book and
for inviting me along to speak to you
tonight
[Applause]