📑 Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me
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 “bypassing 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.
This has me wondering about ‘what works’ and how this can be subjective. Uber may have disrupted the taxi industry, but it is yet to succeed in making a profit. The same goes for Netflix. I wonder if what works is platform cooperatives, rather platform capitalism?