Cory Doctorow, a prolific author and tech advisor, joins Rebecca Giblin, a law professor and publishing house founder, for an engaging discussion on issues facing artists in today's digital landscape. They explore the barriers created by big tech companies and how these impact fair compensation for creators. The conversation covers the struggles of independent authors, the challenges of digital rights management, and the monopolistic practices in the music industry. Together, they propose actionable solutions for a more equitable creative economy.

This week we’re talking with Cory Doctorow (this episode contains explicit language) about his newest book Chokepoint Capitalism, which he co-autored with Rebecca Giblin. Chokepoint Capitalism is about how big tech and big content have captured creative labor markets and the ways we can win them back. We talk about chokepoints creating chickenized reverse-centaurs, paying for your robot boss (think Uber, Doordash, Amazon Drivers), the chickenization that’s climbing the priviledge gradient from the most blue collar workers to the middle-class. There are chokepoints in open source, AI generative art, interoperability, music, film, and media. To quote Cory, “We’re all fighting the same fight.” Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 8 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:DevCycle – Build better software with DevCycle. Feature flags, without the tech debt. DevCycle is a Feature Flag Management platform designed to help you build maintainable code at scale. Postman – Build APIs together — More than 20 million developers use Postman for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster. Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at developer.squareup.com to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you. Typesense – Lightning fast, globally distributed Search-as-a-Service that runs in memory. You literally can’t get any faster! Featuring:Cory Doctorow – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Buy Cory’s books Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk TikTok’s Enshittification Rural towns and poor urban neighborhoods are being devoured by dollar stores What is Chokepoint Capitalism? Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs Cory on Twitter explaining “chickenization “ Red Team Blues: Another audiobook that Amazon won’t sell The Memex Method Changelog Interviews #221: How we got here with Cory Doctorow Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Rebecca Giblin, Melbourne Law School professor, discusses how Big Tech billionaires are choking creatives and customers in various industries. They explore examples from music, live events, and the content industry, highlighting the consequences of corporate concentration. The podcast also covers the impact of targeted ads, the need for systemic change, and the power of collective action for positive change.