How The Financialization Of Music Could Lead To Demands For Perpetual Copyright

from the just-another-asset-class? dept

Back in October, I noted the huge amounts of money pouring into music copyrights, largely driven by the global rise of online streaming. Since then, that trend has continued, most notably with Bruce Springsteen's sale of his recordings and songwriting catalogue to Sony, for a rumored $550 million. As I pointed out in the post, one of the problems with this "financialization" of the sector is that music copyrights become completely divorced from the original creativity that lies behind them. They become just another asset, like gold, petroleum or property. On the Open Future blog, Paul Keller has pointed out a plausible – and terrifying – consequence of this shift.

As Keller notes, the more the owners of copyrights become detached from the creative production process, the less they will care about the nominal balances within the system. In particular, the central quid pro quo of copyright – that a government monopoly is granted to creators for a limited period, after which the work enters the public domain – will be perceived simply as an obstacle to greater profits. The financialization of the music world means that an artist's ability to use the public domain as a foundation for future creativity, or to take advantage of copyright exceptions, will be of no interest to the corporations and private equity firms that are only concerned about the value of their own assets. For Keller, the end-game is clear:

From the perspective of financial investors, copyright is not much more than a bundle of rights created out of thin air that structure financial flows and it follows that there is absolutely no reason why they should not push for governments to make these rights last longer. Once the slate of recording artists that entered into these deals have passed away and will not be able to speak up anymore – or complain that they have been shafted – it will only be a question of time until financial investors start pushing for longer term durations or – more likely – perpetual copyright. Compared to this new class of cultural predators, the good old Walt Disney company will quickly start looking like an innocent schoolboy.

It has been hard enough in the past to make copyright a little fairer for members of the public. If Keller is right – and I fear he is – it will become close to impossible to continue that process in the future unless people start defending vociferously what few rights that they currently have in the world of copyright.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Republished from the Walled Culture blog.

Filed Under: assets, bruce springsteen, copyright, financialization, perpetual copyright, publishing

NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework

from the cry-harder,-cop dept

The New York Police Department is complaining about having to do work again. The New York Post reports officers are unhappy that they're required to do a little bit more paperwork for every stop, regardless of whether the stop results in a citation or arrest.

NYPD cops will soon have to start recording the race, gender and age of every person they pull over during a vehicle stop — even cyclists, The Post has learned.

From Jan. 1, officers will be required to fill out a new form that notes the demographics of the person driving the vehicle or bike, and whether any police action was taken against them, according to an internal order obtained by The Post.

The forms have to be filled out even if no law enforcement action is taken.

This is nothing more than the logical next step for a department that has repeatedly shown it engages in biased policing. Years of lawsuits over its stop-and-frisk program resulted in a court-ordered mandate to collect demographic information on stop-and-frisk encounters. The NYPD complained about the extra work when this was ordered in 2013. Then it spent the next half-decade refusing to comply with it.

Another mandate followed, demanding the collection of information on all stops, which would seemingly include any stop, even those not conducted on foot. The NYPD wasn't any happier with the new mandate and one of its unions claimed that recording demographic information would result in fewer stops and less policing.

That attitude remains unchanged three years later. The NYPD has been given another mandate and officers are once again claiming they're just not going to do it. Their rationale for failing to comply with direct orders? People might find out NYPD officers are engaged in biased policing.

But an NYPD officer with more than two decades on the job said it is just a “recipe for disaster.”

“As an officer, I’m definitely going to think twice about pulling anyone over. That’s the first thing they’re going to look at how many black and Hispanic people you pulled over,” the cop said.

The officer added that some cops were already hesitant to stop people — and the additional paperwork would just deter them even more.

The PR spin by the NYPD implies something different than the opinions offered by the rank-and-file:

“We are complying with the requirements of Local Law 45 of 2021,” an NYPD spokesman said.

But it's not a complete rebuttal. It is possible to comply with the requirements while also engaging in fewer stops of drivers and bicyclists. It sets the stage for the NYPD to blame any rise in crime rates on demographic tracking requirements, rather than step up and discipline officers for refusing to comply with the order or do their jobs. Chances are good no officers will be punished for refusing to do either of these things.

And, once again, a police union is there to blame everything on everyone else, rather than suggest officers do their best to comply with the mandate. Here's Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, railing against everyone else who isn't a cop refusing to their job.

“They passed bill after bill to further the anti-police narrative, but did absolutely nothing to help us curb the bloodshed in our neighborhoods,” he said. “The incoming Council needs to refocus their priorities. Instead of new paperwork, we need meaningful support to get violent criminals off the street.”

I'm not sure what the NYPD is incapable of accomplishing with a $10 billion annual budget, but city officials have agreed to a $465 million increase for 2022. That suggests there's at least a half-billion in "meaningful support" headed its way and that the city council isn't just engaging in an anti-cop narrative. This just sounds like cops who don't want the public to be better informed about how this $10 billion/year is being spent.

If cops are afraid of engaging in any policing because of a fear of it being interpreted as biased policing, perhaps they should direct their anger at the decades of biased policing that led to these mandates. The culture of the department could have been changed at any time. Instead it took court orders and new laws to force the NYPD to confront its own racism. Now that it has to, officers are deciding they'd rather not be forced to look in the mirror.

Filed Under: bias, nypd, police, racism, transparency

Meta Sues Firm For Data Scraping; Claims That Signing Up For New Accounts After Being Banned Is Equivalent Of Hacking

from the why-is-this-a-problem? dept

For years we've talked about the infamous Facebook lawsuit against Power.com. As you may recall, this was a key CFAA case against a site, Power.com, that was trying to create a social media aggregator dashboard -- in which you could login through a single interface, and access content from and post to a variety of different social media platforms. Facebook alleged that this was a form of hacking -- claiming it was "unauthorized access" to Facebook. This was even though there was no actual unauthorized access. Individual users gave Power their login credentials, so everything was completely authorized. After years of winding through the courts, unfortunately, it was decided that this was a violation of the CFAA, mainly because Facebook sent a cease & desist letter, and somehow going against that now made it "unauthorized." In my mind, this is one of the biggest reasons why Facebook has much less competition today than it otherwise might -- because it used the CFAA and cases against Power.com to create a "you can check in, but you can't check out" kind of data arrangement. Things like Power.com were an empowering system that might have made people much less reliant on Facebook -- but it was killed.

In an age now where people are increasingly talking about the importance of data portability and interoperability, something like Power.com would be a useful tool.

So, it's interesting (and a little disturbing) to see that Facebook's new corporate identity, Meta, has now sued another company for data scraping. It is notable that in this case, the defendant, Social Data Trading Ltd., is a lot less sympathetic a character than Power.com was. And -- more importantly -- Facebook is not using the CFAA this time (other cases have suggested that what Facebook got away with in the Power case it would no longer be able to get away with under that law). However, it is trying to use California's state law equivalent of the CFAA. And now matter how you look at it, it's still at least a little worrisome that Facebook (ok, whatever, Meta) believes it has a legal right to stop scraping of otherwise public data.

So first, Social Data Trading is not sympathetic. It appears to be a sketchy service in its own right, scraping data on social media users to sell "in-depth insights into the demographics and psychographics of influencers and their audiences." Meta put in place some technical blocks to try to stop the company from scraping (which seems like fair game), but SDT would then just register new domains and continue scraping. Facebook had apparently tried to stop a predecessor company to Social Data Trading called "Deep.Social," though the complaint seems to imply that SDT is just a reworking of Deep.Social.

The more difficult issue here is that part of the way that SDT did its scraping was by creating fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram, and then using those fake accounts to scrape the data. And that does bring things into a legally more complex area, but also gives Meta the route around to go after these guys without using the CFAA.

At issue is that when you create one of those accounts... you agree to the terms of service, and those terms say you can't use the site for "collecting information in an automated way." Thus, the core argument here is that it's a breach of contract case, and that the SDT folks agreed to the terms and then broke them by using their fake accounts to scrape.

Since January 2019, Defendant created and used multiple Instagram accounts and agreed to Instagram’s Terms. Defendant agreed to Instagram's Terms no later than January 30, 2019.

In addition, since September 2020, Defendant has used thousands of Instagram accounts to scrape Instagram.

Defendant breached the Terms by using unauthorized automated means to access Instagram and collect data from Meta computers without permission, including after Meta revoked Defendant’s access to its platform.

Of course, it seems to me that if this is a breach, the remedy should simply be removal of service, not anything more. But Meta claims damages "in excess of $75,000" (the minimum needed to get into federal court).

The second claim in the lawsuit seems... a lot sketchier. It claims violations of California Penal Code Section 502, which is (more or less) California's equivalent to the CFAA. While, apparently, Meta's lawyers know enough to not go to the well again on the federal CFAA, the use of the state equivalent is still quite concerning.

Beginning no later than June 2021, Defendant, without permission, knowingly accessed and otherwise used Meta’s computers, computer system, and computer network in order to (a) devise or execute any scheme or artifice to defraud and deceive, and (b) to wrongfully obtain money, property, or data, in violation of California Penal Code § 502(c)(1).

Beginning no later than June 2021, Defendant, without permission, knowingly accessed and took, copied, and made use of data from Meta’s computers, computer system, and computer network in violation of California Penal Code § 502(c)(2).

Beginning no later than June 2021, Defendant knowingly and without permission used or caused to be used Meta’s computer services in violation of California Penal Code § 502(c)(3).

Since June 2021, Defendant knowingly and without permission accessed and caused to be accessed Meta’s computers, computer systems, and/or computer networks in violation of California Penal Code § 502(c)(7). Defendant accessed Meta’s computer network after Meta disabled its Instagram accounts, blocked its domain, and sent correspondence to Defendant revoking its access.

Because Meta suffered damages and losses as a result of Defendant’s actions and continues to suffer damages and losses as a result of Defendant’s actions, Meta is entitled to compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, attorney fees, any other amount of damages proven at trial, and injunctive relief under California Penal Code § 502(e)(1) and (2).

Because Defendant willfully violated California Penal Code § 502, and there is clear and convincing evidence that Defendant committed “fraud” as defined by section 3294 of the Civil Code, Meta is entitled to punitive and exemplary damages under California Penal Code § 502(e)(4).

All of this should be concerning to folks. It basically says that if you get kicked off a site and then create a new account... you could face serious consequences (and while this is a civil suit, Section 502 violations can lead to criminal liability as well). This should be cause for alarm. Yes, even if the defendant is a sketchy data operation, and even if Meta really didn't want them scraping their site, to turn around and use what is, ostensibly, a computer "hacking" law against them for setting up new accounts seems incredibly dangerous and could lead to very bad consequences.

Finally there's an "unjust enrichment" claim which also seems a bit silly -- especially for a company like Facebook, which makes so much of its money by collecting data in surreptitious ways, to argue that another firm doing that back to Facebook is somehow "unjustly" enriching itself is pretty rich.

Still, it's claim two that should raise some eyebrows, and I wish that Facebook recognized what a dangerous game its playing in trying to argue that signing up for a new account after you've been banned somehow violates an anti-hacking law.

Filed Under: analytics, cfaa, data, data scraping, hacking, privacy, public information
Companies: facebook, meta, social data trading

Chip Shortage Forces Canon To Issue Workarounds For Its Own Obnoxious DRM

from the something-akin-to-justice dept

For decades now, consumers have been lured into a sour deal: pay for a relatively inexpensive printer, then spend a lifetime paying an arm and a leg for viciously overpriced printer cartridges. As most have learned first-hand, any attempt to disrupt this obnoxious paradigm via third-party printer cartridges has been met with a swift DRM roundhouse kick to the solar plexus. In fact if there's an area where the printer industry actually innovates, it's most frequently in finding new, creative and obnoxious methods of preventing cartridge competition.

Unfortunately for Canon, the global chip shortage has temporarily put a kink in the company's plan to annoy regular customers. The shortage means the company hasn't been able to buy enough chips used to determine whether a printer cartridge is "genuine" or "authorized," and therefore has had to start selling cartridges without DRM, and issue guidance helping users do an end around for the company's own obnoxious DRM warnings:

The company's various international websites warn users that even "official" Canon ink cartridges could be seen as "counterfeit" across a range of printer products lines (19 devices in total) because they can no longer embed the chips needed for DRM:

"The role the chip plays in the toner cartridges is to communicate information, this includes toner level and to confirm that the toner is a genuine Canon product."

Whoops.

Canon was just sued last October for disabling all the functions in their multifunction printers if the device's cartridges ran out of ink (and failing to adequately disclose that to consumers). Basically, Canon did the math and realized that they'd boost their profit margins if they forced millions of customers to buy new printer cartridges -- even if they were only using the device to scan. That this might annoy, inconvenience, or drive up costs for its customers, or sour the public on the brand apparently never entered into the company's thinking.

Of course, none of this would be a problem if the company hadn't embraced annoying, artificial limitations in a bid to hamper competition and drive up costs in the first place, but it's obviously unlikely Canon will learn much of anything from the experience.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, chip shortage, copyright, dmca 1201, drm, printers
Companies: canon

UK Government Apparently Hoping It Can Regulate End-To-End Encryption Out Of Existence

from the sure-hope-'the-children'-are-grateful-for-the-shitty-future-being-handed dept

Politicians -- those motivated by the notion of "doing something" -- want to end encryption. They don't want this to affect their communications and data security. But they don't see the harm in stripping these protections from the general public. Often, the argument is nothing better than "only criminals want end-to-end encryption," something they trot out as a truism despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

But these politicians (and government officials) are cowards. They refuse to call a backdoor a backdoor. They come up with all sorts of euphemisms while pretending compliance with proposed laws won't result in the creation of backdoors that can be exploited by everyone, not just the "good guys." They also deploy other euphemisms to attack encryption that protects millions of members of the public, referring to good encryption as "warrant-proof" or "military-grade." Those terms never survive examination, but the narrative persists because most members of the public have no interest in closely examining falsehoods uttered by governments.

The UK government has expressed an unhealthy determination to undermine encryption for years now. It has the fanciest of plans to undo protections enjoyed by UK residents for reason ranging from "the children" to "the terrorists." The underlying intent never changes even if the name on the office doors do. Regulators come and go but the desire remains. Even the bills get renamed, as though a different shade of lipstick would make the UK's anti-encryption pig any more desirable.

Rebranding from "Online Harms" to "Online Safety" only changed the tablecloths in the Titanic's dining room. The UK government wants encryption dead. But presumably "safety" sounds better than "harms," especially when the government affirmatively wants to harm the safety of millions of UK residents.

The Internet Society has taken a look at the revamped and rebranded bill and has delivered a report [PDF] that explains exactly where on the Internet doll the UK government plans to engage in inappropriate touching. There's no mention of backdoors or broken encryption, but complying with the law means possibly doing both.

The draft Online Safety Bill places a duty of care on service providers within the scope of the draft bill to moderate illegal and harmful content on their platforms, with fines and penalties for those that fail to uphold this duty. The only way for service providers that offer end-to-end encryption to comply with this duty of care would be to remove or weaken the encryption that they offer.

That's the end result of these demands. But the politicians and regulators pushing this are unwilling to directly refer to the harms the bill will cause. There's no ban on end-to-end encryption. There's no mandate for backdoors. Instead, the bill hopes to achieve these ends by applying regulatory pressure that makes both of these outcomes unavoidable.

Service providers deploying end-to-end encryption obviously cannot see the content of communications between users. The UK government says that's no longer acceptable. Providers need to be proactive in preventing the spread of certain content. That leaves them with only one option.

Ofcom can require that service providers use “accredited technology” to identify harmful content and “swiftly take down that content”. To comply with this requirement and fulfil their “duty of care”, service providers will likely need to resort to upload filters and other mechanisms that may interfere with the use of end-to-end encryption.

Basically, the same thing that saw Apple catch a considerable amount of heat will be expected to be standard operating procedure for any tech company doing business in the UK. Client-side filtering is the most efficient way to prevent the uploading and sharing of "harmful content." Shutting it off at the source means either invading devices or removing at least one end of the end-to-end encryption. And once those options are available, it will only be a matter of time before the UK government starts demanding access to unencrypted devices and/or messages.

And the UK government has specifically cited Apple's now-defunct plans to strip protections it previously extended to users and device owners as evidence the proposed law is a net gain for society.

[I]n the Daily Telegraph article announcing the Safety Challenge Fund, Home Secretary Priti Patel points to Apple’s client-side scanning proposal as a positive example, raising concerns about the criteria for evaluating Challenge Fund proposals.

In its quest for easy wins, the UK government is ignoring the long-term fallout of these demands. While it may have no problem stripping UK residents of strong data and communication protections, it may find it more difficult to talk powerful businesses into accepting less-than-solid protections for their financial interactions and transmission of sensitive proprietary info. And government employees still rely heavily on third-party contractors for communication services and data transmission/storage. These same employees also rely on devices and cell phones manufactured by companies that will now be forced to make their products less secure for everyone who uses them.

Everyone loses. But the people who will lose more and lose it faster simply don't matter. Before the cold reality of broken encryption hits home for politicians, they'll have already collected the PR wins needed to secure more terms in office. And with more time comes more power. Eventually, the UK government may find a way to exempt it from the impositions placed on the private sector, elevating them above the people they serve. In the end, very little will have actually been done to address the problems (child exploitation, terrorism) cited to justify these impositions. The only guarantee is that devices, communication services, and the internet at large will be expected to make huge sacrifices in service to the UK government's talking points.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, end-to-end encryption, going dark, online harms, online safety, online safety bill, uk

Daily Deal: The Media Mac Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Media Mac Bundle has 4 apps to help you take your photos and videos to the next level. GlueMotion is designed to reduce the stress associated with creating time-lapse movies by automating image correction and deflickering as it works to create an end result that’s smooth as silk. SnapMotion is the perfect tool to extract images from videos with the best quality possible. PhotoRevive restores the colors of your black and white photographs with ease. MetaImage is the ultimate tool to read, write and edit images metadata. The bundle is on sale for $20.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Now Israel Is Looking To Pass A Social Media Censorship Bill Too

from the this-will-be-abused dept

Like lots of other places around the globe, it appears that Israel is considering a dangerous social media censorship bill, that would force websites to remove content. It does have some safeguards, but, basically, if law enforcement claims a crime was committed via the publication of some content, a judge can issue a takedown order:

Under the proposed bill, a judge would be able to issue an order requiring a content publisher to remove posts from its website, if law enforcement agencies are convinced that a criminal offense has been committed through the publication of the content. It essentially allows Israeli authorities to block posts from any website featuring user-generated content, including Google, Twitter and Facebook, as well as news sites from being seen by Israeli viewers, including those with a paywall and those that require user registration.

That doesn't seem like real due process, of course. From the sound of it, you only have two parties involved -- law enforcement and the judge -- and not anyone representing the actual content creator/publisher. Thankfully, at least some are raising the alarm in Israel over this attack on free expression:

“The bill is broader than necessary and offers a substantial and procedural opening for government censorship,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, the bill also makes it possible to remove content from institutional content sites, like Israeli and foreign newspapers, at a level of intrusion that does not exist in any other country in the democratic world.”

Shwartz Altshuler told The Times of Israel on Tuesday that “the law applies to any website, with a paywall, or without, with registration or without. This means that one could go to court and ask for content removal even from news sites, which is unheard of.”

As they note in the article, this bill goes significantly further than the already wildly abused NetzDG law in Germany.

Among other things the law says it can be used for any crime that "might harm public safety" which is the kind of thing that law enforcement will claim at the drop of a hat about almost anything. Hopefully, legislators in Israel realize that this bill is half-baked.

Filed Under: censorship, content moderation, due process, israel, social media

Big Tech 'Antitrust Reform' Agenda Sags, Revealing Mostly Empty Rhetoric

from the big-plans-go-nowhere dept

Much of last year was dominated by talk about how there was a "new, bipartisan coalition" of folks interested in "reining in big tech" via "antitrust reform." The GOP in particular, which has, for forty years, largely embraced and encouraged monopolization and consolidation at every turn (see telecom as a shining example) was repeatedly portrayed as "very serious about antitrust reform this time." At least as it applied to "big tech." There are countless U.S. business sectors where monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are rampant that Congress simply couldn't give any less of a shit about, whether it's banking, health care, telecom, airline travel, or energy.

For years, experts pointed out that U.S. antitrust reform had grown toothless and frail, our competition laws needed updating in the Amazon era, and "are consumers happy?" (the traditional consumer welfare standard) doesn't actually measure all aspects of potential harm in complex markets. You can look to U.S. sectors like telecom to see the work that needed doing. Good news! We were, the Congress, the press, and the punditry insisted, entering a bold new era of "antitrust reform" with "bipartisan support." At least in terms of "big tech." Why only big tech? Who knows! Stop asking questions.

Guess what? None of the rhetoric over the last two years amounted to absolutely anything. Yeah, we did see some limited, narrow, chopped up proposals for scattered reform of select tech companies, but as we noted at the time many of those had serious problems or (again) weirdly ignored other business sectors like telecom or banking. Despite all the talk about how Congress was "serious this time" about antitrust reform, it turns out that they weren't, actually, and time is running out to get anything done ahead of the midterms:

"I think the timeline, to be sure we get them done as soon as possible, but certainly before the summer break, is critical," Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, told Axios. "We're at an important inflection point." "There is a lot of urgency to get something done in this Congress. By the summer, people's focus will turn to the midterms," he said."

American consumers and economists alike recognize that monopolization and mindless consolidation are harmful and want antitrust reform applied across industries. But here's the obvious problem: Congress isn't interested in antitrust reform, because the nation's biggest campaign contributors ("big tech" or otherwise) don't want antitrust reform. They want feckless, hamstrung oversight incapable of telling them what to do, whether it's "please don't pollute that town's drinking water," "please stop ripping off your broadband subscribers," "please stop acquiring and killing potential competitors," or ""hey, maybe you could do the basics to keep your energy customers from freezing to death."

It's called corruption and regulatory capture. Yes, a scattered number of folks in Congress care about this stuff, but the vast majority do not. A majority care about making money, exclusively. Human, market, planetary, or consumer impact is a burdensome afterthought. Most of the "big tech" critics in Congress were just riding on the public anger over the bad behavior of companies like Facebook, looking to score cheap political brownie points. They were never actually serious. History and voting records should have made it fairly evident.

The GOP's support for antitrust reform was particularly hollow. Reality: the party got mad because some Silicon Valley execs began belatedly and sloppily policing race-baiting propaganda on the internet, a cornerstone of party power in the face of shifting demographics (see: the assault on Section 230). They also wanted to shovel some ad revenue money over to their friends at AT&T and News Corporation. The Fiction: the GOP is "being censored" and is very, very serious about pushing for "antitrust reform" and reining in out of control corporations who are stifling free speech and innovation simply because they're mean.

It was all bullshit, sensible people should have seen it was bullshit, and yet for two straight years we were subject to endless stories from major outlets and pundits pushing the fiction. Namely, "the GOP is serious about antitrust reform this time" and there is now a "very serious bipartisan push for antitrust reform." But they were never serious about antitrust reform. And calling it bipartisan was always generous. The majority of Congress adores monopolization and mindless consolidation because their campaign contributors adore monopolization and mindless consolidation. Despite endless rhetoric about "big tech," every time a real vote for antitrust reform appears the GOP (and a good chunk of the DNC) will run for the hills. Over and over again. You can set your watch to it.

It's a chicken and the egg scenario. You can't reform U.S. antitrust (or regulatory oversight, or a broken court system that panders to the biggest companies) until you tackle corruption. But the very nature of corruption and regulatory capture ensures you can't implement antitrust reform. There will be no real antitrust reform (or any reform relating to unchecked corporate power, really) until the United States finds creative ways to break the cycle and truly tackle (or at least mitigate) corruption. This reality is fairly obvious, yet huge segments of the U.S. population (including much of the press) weirdly either downplay or ignore it. But the circular firing squad is evident everywhere, from consumer and voting rights reform to climate change.

That's not to say there can't be reform with an eye on competition and health markets, just that it's not coming from this corrupt dumpster fire of a Congress. The FTC can certainly still act, albeit within the confines of intentionally constrained authority and intentionally limited staffing and budgets. Some of the antitrust lawsuits against Google are also particularly meaty, given there's what should be some fairly bulletproof antitrust violations (like paying wireless companies and hardware vendors not to compete in the app store space for the last decade). But both routes have limitations and are rife with wrist slaps and pathetic fines that may not fix the underlying rot.

But it's embarrassing how many grown adults took Congress' pledge of being interested in "antitrust reform" seriously. It was unserious grandstanding by unserious and corrupt people peppered with the rare, and occasional sincerity. Which is why after two straight years of endless banging on the drum of "big tech antitrust reform" we've got bupkis and dandruff to show for it. The United States Congress is a corrupt mess, bribed into perpetual apathy on this subject. For whatever reason much of the press and punditry simply adores pretending otherwise.

Filed Under: antitrust, congress, reform, regulatory capture