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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1513481
In other words, if you think that you own your digital content only because you are purchasing it, think again: can we call it property if it can be taken away randomly? Companies do act on these types of hidden clauses. In 2019 Amazon (rather fittingly) took back the ebooks of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 from its Kindle users due to alleged copyright issues. Another example is how tractor manufacturer John Deere relied on its end-user licence agreement (Eula) to stop farmers repairing their smart tractors. John Deere’s Eula forbade customers even looking at the software it uses to run its tractors. Betting giant Spreadex took a customer, Colin Cochrane to court to force him to pay almost £50,000 of gambling losses in 2012, racked up by his stepson. Cochrane’s girlfriend’s son had been “playing” with his computer without his permission while he was away from the house. Spreadex pointed the UK account owner to a clause in its customer agreement that equated the use of account passwords with a confirmation of who was behind the screen using the device. Fortunately for Cochrane, the judge held that the clause was not enforceable because it would have been “quite irrational” for Spreadex to assume the customer read the agreement and understood its implications. Regulation won’t work Examples of law reform include the online safety bill in the UK and the Data Act in the EU. They are both in progress, so we don’t know yet when they will be adopted. Law reform is a painfully slow process. Big tech and other large stakeholders have a huge influence because they have money and influence to fight laws they don’t like. Sometimes bills end up so diluted they are of little use. This was the case with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into effect at the end of a nine-year process. It was born out of date. Several studies have underlined GDPR’s inadequacy to deal with new technologies such as ChatGPT. What does work The solution is to collectively organise. Let’s circle back to John Deere and the way the company tried to deprive tractor owners of their right to fix their machines. There is much to learn from those farmers who joined together with hackers to resist “smart power abuses”. After opposing their right to repair campaign for years, at the beginning of 2023 John Deere gave in and authorised farmers and ranchers to fix their own tractors. But only after attendees at a hacker’s convention figured out how to “jailbreak” the code that was locking farmers and engineers out. All around the world, groups of computer scientists, digital rights activists, citizens are creating cooperatives and citizen-led movements. They are motivated by partly different yet overlapping goals for example making the IoT more open and diverse. Big tech workers are acting collectively to prevent unethical uses of their employers’ technology. For example, in 2020 Google employees fought to stop the company’s decision to provide its AI to law enforcement agencies despite the failures of facial recognition, which has often perpetuated racism and other forms of discrimination. We can win the fight against smart power through alliances between these collectives.