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Anticircumvention

Archive

Archive of stories in "Anticircumvention"

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Cory Doctorow

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Aug 26

The age of disinvention

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The age of disinvention

Cory Doctorow

·

Aug 14

Capital formation

Going legit means going mainstream.

Three weird male figures’ heads. The figures have gigeresque throats made from dripping stalagmites and stalactites, and their crania have been replaced with clear domes. The three figures overlap, each smaller than the previous. In the rightmost, largest dome is the portrait of Ben Franklin seen on a US$100 bill. The middle dome contains a 19th century bank with Grecian columns. The left dome contains the US capital. The background is a heavily processed monochrome image of wiring in an early m

Cory Doctorow

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Jul 27

How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump)

Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

A giant fist clutching the Android robot. The robot is orange and has Trump’s hair. The fist extends from an EU-flag-blue cuff, and it is ringed with yellow EU flag stars. To the side is an old-timey western bar with a drunk, smoking, glaring Uncle Sam leaning on it. The background is a haunted, moonlit forest.

Cory Doctorow

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Mar 16

Tools vs uses

Don’t fall for it.

A pegboard at a hardware store, festooned with tools, with smoke closing in on it from above and below.

Cory Doctorow

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Feb 7

End of the line for video essays

America’s worst copyright law keeps getting even worse.

Cory Doctorow

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Jan 29

Disenshittification Nation

How Canada can defend itself from Trump, make billions of dollars, and build a new, global, good internet.

A turn of the century Main Street, USA. Over the horizon looms a giant Canadian flag, made out of circuitry. In the foreground is a pixelboard sign reading ‘U.S. BORDER CLOSED.’

Cory Doctorow

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Jan 17

The world needs an Ireland for disenshittification

Regulatory arbitrage isn’t just for tax cheats.

A green Irish pillarbox, standing before a verdant, rolling Irish countryside. The pillarbox is emblazoned with the poop emoji from the cover of ‘Enshittification,’ with angry eyebrows and a grawlix-scrawled black bar over its mouth. Image: Stuart Caie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_aperture_Irish_pillar_box_in_Dublin_2008.jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en — Sourabh.biswas003 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PXL_20

Cory Doctorow

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Jan 14

It’s not normal

Remember when you owned stuff?

A 1790 illustration entitled ‘The World Turned Upside-Down.’ It features a topsy-turvy nature scene in which a giant fish stands on the bank, fishing for a human who is gasping in the water. The sky is filled with flying fishes and eels, the sea is filled with swimming birds. The image has been hand-tinted. The background has been replaced with a printed circuit board.

Cory Doctorow

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Jan 10

Predistribution vs redistribution (Big Tech edition)

A thing that governments can do with 100% reliability.

Cory Doctorow

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Dec 16, 2025

America’s collapsing consumption is the world’s disenshittification opportunity

America’s loss is the post-American internet’s gain.

Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.