A review by notoriousesr
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Cory Doctorow, Rebecca Giblin

challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

3.0

Intellectual property scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer/activist Cory Doctorow team up to discuss the absolute mess that capitalism has made of the culture industry. They posit the idea of “chokepoint” capitalism, where businesses exploit creators by locking them into an anticompetitive environment and squeezing them for ever more, ever cheaper content.

Wow, US intellectual property law is a LEVIATHAN, isn’t it? This book was wildly detailed, which was very informative, but, I have to admit, got a bit boring sometimes. However, unlike many informative-but-boring books, I feel like I came away with a solid understanding of what a chokepoint is and how massive corporations exploit neoliberalism (a word they should’ve said more, in my opinion) to force creators to work for very little money. I read a review that said the solutions they posit in the second half of the book are too incremental or pie-in-the-sky, and there are some points where I agree with that assessment (some of the proposals rely on good faith... I mean, come on), but I do think that many of those reforms may seem small because they’re just obvious. 3 out of 5 DRM-free ebooks.