Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back - Hardcover

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Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back
  • Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back - Hardcover

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back - Hardcover

by Cory Doctorow , Rebecca Giblin
$26.95
$26.95

Book Overview

A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)--or both.

In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of "chokepoint capitalism," with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon's use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook's siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels' use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct "anti-competitive flywheels" designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.

Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that's being heisted away--before it's too late.
ISBN9780807007068
Author Cory Doctorow , Rebecca Giblin
PublisherBeacon Press
GenreNews & politics, Education, and Business
FormatHardcover
PublishedSeptember 2022
LanguageENG- English
Pages312
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Business & Economics Nonfiction Political Science Social Science

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More by Cory Doctorow

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back
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Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back - Hardcover

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back - Hardcover

By Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin
About Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian, British, American blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty-three years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to further and safeguard our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books like this one, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science from the Open University. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. He holds visiting professorship and research appointments at MIT, the University of North Carolina, Cornell University, and the Open University,
About Rebecca Giblin
Rebecca Giblin (she/her) is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor at Melbourne Law School, where she leads interdisciplinary teams researching issues around creators' rights, access to knowledge, and the regulation of technology and culture. She is Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA) and heads up the Author's Interest and eLending projects (authorsinterest.org; elendingproject.org), as well as Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project (untapped.org.au). Chokepoint Capitalism is her latest book. She also wrote Code Wars and co-edited What if we could reimagine copyright?. Follow her on Twitter (@rgibli)

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