Cory Doctorow at 39C3 on repealing anti-circumvention laws

In his 39C3 talk, Cory Doctorow argues that US trade policies criminalizing reverse-engineering and device modification prevented global technologists from combating internet monopolization. He contends that Trump’s trade disruptions now present an opportunity to “seize the means of computation” and liberate users from corporate control through hacking, modding, and adversarial interoperability. In the transcript on his Pluralistic blog, the first step is spelled out: repeal anti-circumvention laws such as DMCA Section 1201 and Article 6 of the EU’s 2001 Copyright Directive, since “just one country has to break the consensus.” The thesis: enshittification isn’t inevitable. It’s a policy choice made by named individuals, and it can be reversed.