Cory Doctorow
The Atlantic
Burbank, CA, United States
Contact Cory
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Cory:
How Google Ran Out of Ideas
The company thinks it’s an innovator. In fact, it’s an imitator—and not the best one, either. → Read More
Here's How Apple Could Open Its App Store Without Really Opening Its App Store
And what we can do about it.With this year’s passage of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), very large online platforms - those with EU revenues of €75 billion or more and at least 45 million EU users - will have to open up their devices to rival app stores. While this has implications for game... → Read More
How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends (Or Family, Customers or Communities)
Today, we launch “How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends” - a narrated slideshow and essay explaining how Facebook locks in its users, how interoperability can free them, and what it would feel like to use an “interoperable Facebook” of the future, such as the one contemplated by the US ACCESS Act. → Read More
Facebook Says Apple is Too Powerful. They're Right.
In December, 2020, Apple did something insanely great. They changed how iOS, their mobile operating system, handled users’ privacy preferences, so that owners of iPhones and other iOS devices could indicate that they don’t want to be tracked by any of the apps on their devices. If they did, Apple... → Read More
When DRM Comes For Your Wheelchair
Why EFF Supports Colorado’s Right to Repair Wheelchairs LawWheelchairs BreakThree million Americans rely on wheelchairs, which makes wheelchairs a key driver of the $50 billion Durable Medical Equipment industry. Many people depend on wheelchairs to help with the basic necessities of life: getting... → Read More
The Worst Timeline: A Printer Company Is Putting DRM in Paper Now
Are you well organized? Do you have a garage full of well-labeled bins or a pantry full of neatly labeled jars? Do you ship a lot of stuff and print labels? If so, you probably own and cherish your label maker. What’s not to like? Well, if you’re a Dymo label maker owner, there’s a new scam that... → Read More
The Future is in Interoperability Not Big Tech: 2021 in Review
2021 was not a good year for Big Tech: a flaming cocktail of moderation failings, privacy breaches, leaked nefarious plans, illegal collusion and tone-deaf, arrogant pronouncements stoked public anger and fired up the political will to do something about the unaccountable power and reckless self-... → Read More
Facebook’s Attack on Research is Everyone's Problem
Facebook recently banned the accounts of several New York University (NYU) researchers who run Ad Observer, an accountability project that tracks paid disinformation, from its platform. This has major implications: not just for transparency, but for user autonomy and the fight for interoperable... → Read More
Tech Rights Are Workers' Rights: Doordash Edition
Doordash workers are embroiled in a bitter labor dispute with the company: at issue, the tips that “Dashers” depend on to make the difference between a living wage and the poorhouse. Doordash has a long history of abusing its workers’ tips; including a particularly ugly case brought by the... → Read More
Tech Rights Are Workers' Rights: Doordash Edition
Doordash workers are embroiled in a bitter labor dispute with the company: at issue, the tips that “Dashers” depend on to make the difference between a living wage and the poorhouse. Doordash has a long history of abusing its workers’ tips; including a particularly ugly case brought by the... → Read More
Why it’s easier to move country than switch social media
When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. It's time to tear down the walls → Read More
Twitter and Interoperability: Some Thoughts From the Peanut Gallery
Late in 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey floated "Project Blue Sky," a plan for an interoperable, federated, standardized Twitter that would let users (or toolsmiths who work on behalf of users) gain more control over their participation in the Twitter system. This was an exciting moment for us, a... → Read More
The EU’s Digital Markets Act: There Is A Lot To Like, but Room for Improvement
After lengthy consultations and many rumors and leaks, the European Commission has released its public draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA,) represents the first major overhaul of EU Internet legislation in the 21st Century. Like the DSA, the DMA... → Read More
Asleep at the Wheel: Why Didn't Carmakers Prepare for Massachusetts' Right to Repair Law?
The people of Massachusetts demanded their right to repair this month, passing a ballot initiative to allow independent repair shops to access critical information about their cars by an overwhelming 74.9% majority. Now, automakers—whose scare tactics and false privacy and security claims did not... → Read More
Ink-Stained Wretches: The Battle for the Soul of Digital Freedom Taking Place Inside Your Printer
Since its founding in the 1930s, Hewlett-Packard has been synonymous with innovation, and many's the engineer who had cause to praise its workhorse oscillators, minicomputers, servers, and PCs. But since the turn of this century, the company's changed its name to HP and its focus to sleazy ways to... → Read More
Facebook’s Election-Week War on Accountability is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
A legacy of the 2016 U.S. election is the controversy about the role played by paid, targeted political ads, particularly ads that contain disinformation or misinformation. Political scientists and psychologists disagree about how these ads work, and what effect they have. It's a pressing political... → Read More
EU vs Big Tech: Leaked Enforcement Plans and the Dutch-French Counterproposal
At the end of September, multiple press outlets published leaked set of antimonopoly enforcement proposals proposed for the a new EU Digital Market Act , which EU officials say they will finalize this year.The proposals confront the stark fact that the Internet has been thoroughly dominated by a... → Read More
We Fight For the Users
Here at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we have a guiding motto: "I Fight For the Users." (We even put it on t-shirts from time to time!) We didn't pick that one by accident (nor merely because we dig the 1982 classic film "Tron"), but because it provides such a clear moral compass when we sit... → Read More
Bust 'Em All: Let's De-Monopolize Tech, Telecoms AND Entertainment
The early 1980s were a period of tremendous foment and excitement for tech. In the four years between 1980 and 1984, Americans met:The Vic-20 (1980);The Commodore 64 (1981);The IBM PC (1982); andThe PC-compatible ROM (1984)But no matter how exciting things were in Silicon Valley during those years... → Read More
How Mexico's New Copyright Law Crushes Free Expression
When Mexico's Congress rushed through a new copyright law as part of its adoption of Donald Trump's United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it largely copy-pasted the US copyright statute, with some modifications that made the law even worse for human rights.The result is a legal regime that... → Read More