Chokepoint Capitalism

Last updated
Chokepoint Capitalism
Chokepoint Capitalism book cover.jpg
Author
CountryAustralia, UK, US
LanguageEnglish
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Scribe, Beacon Press
Publication date
September 27, 2022
Pages312 pages
ISBN 9-780-80700-7068

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back is a non-fiction book by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, published in 2022 by Scribe in Australia and the UK and Beacon Press in the United States. Chokepoint Capitalism is also a term coined by Giblin and Doctorow to describe the phenomenon of powerful corporations systematically "chokepointing" their markets by locking in buyers and sellers, eliminating competition, and eventually using their market power to squeeze out more than a fair share of value.

Contents

While Giblin and Doctorow argue chokepoints are a defining feature of modern economies, the book primarily focus on chokepoints in creative markets. [1]

Synopsis

In the first half of the book, Giblin and Doctorow argue that companies including Amazon, Audible, Spotify, Live Nation and Google (via control of ad markets and via YouTube), have created monopsony markets where they are functionally the only buyers in creative labour markets. This gives them the power to extract more value from creative workers and investors than would be possible in a competitive market.

The authors argue that each of these corporations uses the same playbook to capture markets: first locking in users, then locking in suppliers, and then eliminating competition. They demonstrate these techniques in action across a range of creative markets, including physical and audio books, news, recorded music, music streaming, app development and screenwriting.

The book’s second half proposes a range of ideas for widening these chokepoints out, offering technical, commercial and legal blueprints for artists, fans, arts organisations, technologists and policymakers from local government right up to the level of international treaties.

Reception

A starred review in Publishers Weekly describes the book as "a must-read for anyone involved in these industries." [2] In a review for The Guardian , Kitty Drake writes, "The level of detail in the book will make your eyeballs hurt, but it bears fruit." [3] In The Conversation , Justin O'Connor describes the book as "a wake-up call." [4] Oscar Williams writes in a review for the New Statesman that the "book provides practical steps towards rebalancing the cultural economy and empowering the people whose work drives others' profits." [5] In a review for the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication , Marco Schirone writes that the book "can be read as a scholarly work in the field of intellectual property law and as a critical tool for activism." [6]

The book has received praise from figures including writers Margaret Atwood and David Sirota, comedian Stephen Fry, law professors Zephyr Teachout, Lawrence Lessig, and Jane C Ginsburg, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. [7] The book was listed in the Financial Times best books of 2022, where economist Tim Harford called it "nerdy, sharp, radical and readable." [8] It also provided inspiration to former Writers Guild of America President David A. Goodman in writing the Futurama season 8 episode ‘Related to Items You’ve Viewed’. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Schumpeter</span> Austrian political economist (1883–1950)

Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career, and in 1939 obtained American citizenship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amber Benson</span> American actress (born 1977)

Amber Benson is an American actress, writer, director, and producer. She is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1999–2002), and has also directed, produced and starred in her own films Chance (2002) and Lovers, Liars & Lunatics (2006). She also starred in the movie Kiss the Bride (2007). She co-directed the film Drones (2010) with fellow Buffy cast member Adam Busch. Benson also starred as a waitress in the horror movie The Killing Jar (2010).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cory Doctorow</span> Canadian-British blogger, journalist and author (born 1971)

Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.

<i>Eastern Standard Tribe</i> 2004 science fiction novel by Cory Doctorow

Eastern Standard Tribe is a 2004 science fiction novel by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow. Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission.

Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audible (service)</span> Online audiobook and podcast service

Audible is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer. The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.

Rebecca Soler is an American voice actress based in the New York City area. She has voiced on several audiobooks; her most notable voice work has been the narrator for The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. In anime, she voiced title character Miu Nomura in Piano: The Melody of a Young Girl's Heart, Reanne in Ojamajo Doremi and Battia in Outlanders. In animation, she voiced in Huntik, Viva Piñata, and Winx Club. She has worked with 4Kids Entertainment, NYAV Post, Media Blasters, Central Park Media and DuArt Film & Video. On stage, she has participated in various theater projects, including a play called Becoming Cuba. She is also a producer of a web series called With Friends Like These.

<i>Little Brother</i> (Doctorow novel) 2008 novel by Cory Doctorow

Little Brother is a novel by Cory Doctorow, published by Tor Books. It was released on April 29, 2008. The novel is about four teenagers in San Francisco who, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security's attacks on the Bill of Rights. The novel is available for free on the author's website under a Creative Commons license, keeping it accessible and remixable to all.

<i>Unseen Academicals</i> 2009 Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett

Unseen Academicals is the 37th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The novel satirises football, and features Mustrum Ridcully setting up an Unseen University football team, with the Librarian in goal. It includes new details about "below stairs" life at the university. The book introduces several new characters, including Trevor Likely, a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can; Glenda Sugarbean, a maker of "jolly good" pies; Juliet Stollop, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been; and the mysterious Mr Nutt, a cultured, enigmatic, idealistic savant. According to the publisher, Transworld, the "on sale" date for the hardback was 1 October 2009 although the official publication date is 8 October 2009. Bookshop chain Borders included a small set of exclusive Discworld football cards with each book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariana Mazzucato</span> Italian-American economist and professor (born 1968)

Mariana Francesca Mazzucato is an Italian–American-British economist and academic. She is a professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is best known for her work on dynamics of technological change, the role of the public sector in innovation, and the concept of value in economics. The New Republic have called her one of the "most important thinkers about innovation".

Clockwork Watch is a collaborative transmedia storytelling project set in a retro-futurist steampunk vision of Victorian England. Launched in May 2012, this five-year immersive participatory story is told through graphic novels, interactive promenade theatre, online adventures, an interactive book, and a feature film. The project was created and produced in London by Yomi Ayeni.

<i>Pirate Cinema</i> (novel) 2012 novel by Cory Doctorow

Pirate Cinema is a 2012 novel by Canadian-British writer Cory Doctorow. The novel is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license and is available free on the author's website.

Scarfolk is a fictional northwestern English town created by writer and designer Richard Littler, who is sometimes identified as the town mayor, L. Ritter. It is trapped in a time loop set in the 1970s, and its culture, parodying that of Britain at the time, features elements of the absurd and the macabre. It was first released as a blog of fake historical documents parodying British public information posters of the 1970s, and a collected book was published in 2014, and the Scarfolk Annual was released in 2019. Scarfolk is depicted as a bleak, post-industrial landscape through unsettling images of urban life; Littler's output belongs to the genres of hauntology and dystopian satire; his psychologically disturbing form of humour has been likened to the writings of George Orwell and J. G. Ballard.

<i>This Changes Everything</i> (book) 2014 book by Naomi Klein

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book; it was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster. Klein argues that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.

<i>Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work</i> 2015 monograph by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work is a 2015 monograph by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, published by Verso Books.

Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, although the two can be mutually reinforming. The concept of surveillance capitalism, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, is driven by a profit-making incentive, and arose as advertising companies, led by Google's AdWords, saw the possibilities of using personal data to target consumers more precisely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Information Doesn't Want to Be Free</span> 2014 non-fiction book by Cory Doctorow

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free is a 2014 non-fiction book by the science fiction writer and Internet activist Cory Doctorow. In the book, he advocates loosening restrictions on intellectual property on the Internet. He states that "[i]nformation doesn’t want to be free,...people do.”

<i>Capitalism in America</i> 2018 book by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge

Capitalism in America: A History is a 2018 book written by former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, political editor at The Economist. The book traces the economic history of the United States since its founding and the authors argue that America's embrace of capitalism and creative destruction has given the nation's economy a superior edge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enshittification</span> Systematic decline in online platform quality

Enshittification is a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022 to describe a pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products such as Amazon, Facebook, Google Search, Twitter, Bandcamp, Reddit, Uber and Unity. The American Dialect Society selected the term as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also used the term platform decay to describe the same concept.

The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism is a 2019 book by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, published by Verso Books. In the book, Phillips and Rozworski argue that large multinational corporations, such as Walmart, are not expressions of free-market capitalism but instead examples of central planning on a large scale. They also argue that the question is not if large-scale planning can work, but if it can be made democratic to serve everyone's needs.

References

  1. "Why We Should All Be Worried About 'Chokepoint Capitalism'". Time. 2022-10-04. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  2. "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow". Publishers Weekly . July 15, 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  3. Drake, Kitty (24 November 2022). "Chokepoint Capitalism review – art for sale". The Guardian . Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  4. O'Connor, Justin (23 November 2022). "Cultural industries have been captured by billionaires – a new book considers what we can do about it". The Conversation . Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  5. Williams, Oscar (30 November 2022). "Reviewed in short: From Derek Owusu to Luke Harding". New Statesman . Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  6. Schirone, Marco (7 April 2023). "Brief Reviews of Books and Products: Chokepoint capitalism". Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication . 11 (1): 1–4. doi: 10.31274/jlsc.16099 .
  7. "Praise for Chokepoint Capitalism". chokepointcapitalism.com. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  8. Studemann, Frederick (2022-11-26). "Best books of 2022: FT critics' picks". Financial Times. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  9. "Hurriquake!". TWiT.tv. Retrieved 2023-11-10.