Chokepoint Capitalism
how big tech and big content captured creative labour markets, and how we'll win them back
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- €13.99
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- €13.99
Publisher Description
‘Chokepoint Capitalism tells us how the vampires crashed the party, and provides protective garlic.’
—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale
A call to action for the creative class and labour 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 analysing 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 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Melbourne Law School professor Giblin (Code Wars) and Boing Boing cofounder Doctorow (Information Doesn't Want to Be Free) deliver a lucid and damning exposé of how big business captured the culture markets. Contending that anticompetitive practices are hollowing out the music, literature, video game, journalism, film, and TV industries, the authors untangle the complex web of contracts, regulations, and legal arguments deployed by corporations to maximize their profits and prevent new competitors from entering their markets. Interwoven with maddening tales of exploitation (the creator of the TV show Cold Case estimates that her agency, CAA, made 94 cents of every dollar she earned from the show) are detailed discussions of statutory licensing reform, copyright infringement detection systems, and other technical matters. The authors' proposed solutions include granting creators "an inalienable right to ‘appropriate and proportionate' pay for the use of their work," and the creation of "a global, multi-language database with high quality metadata about who owns what sound recordings and songs in which countries." The book's broad scope, expert policy recommendations, and flashes of wit (Disney executives are "cartoon villains" for refusing to honor science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster's contracts) make it a must-read for anyone involved in these industries.
