πŸ“‘ Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me

Bookmarked Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me by Cory Doctorow (Locus Mag)

And Uber and Lyft’s apps are encrypted on your phone, so to reverse-engineer them, you’d have to decrypt them (probably by capturing an image of their decrypted code while it was running in a virtual phone simulated on a desktop computer). Decrypting an app without permission is β€œbypassing an effective means of access control” for a copyrighted work (the app is made up of copyrighted code).

Uber and Lyft can use DMCA 1201 to stop you from figuring out how to use them to locate co-op drivers, and they can use the CFAA to stop you from flipping your booking from Uber to Meta-Uber.

This reminds me of the conversation between Douglas Rushkoff and Nathan Schneider on platform cooperatives.

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