Night falls in the European capital. Everything’s quiet, but the nightmares are about to begin.

Viktor Orbán’s ghost haunts the Schuman roundabout; ash from the bonfire of red tape covers the Justus Lipsius building; Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert, chases after staffers demanding to know what “associate membership” for Canada actually means; and MEPs tremble at the prospect of construction workers uncovering the skeletons of political intrigues past during renovations.

Scared? You should be.

Here’s our guide to who is terrified of whom in the Brussels bubble. 

Everyone is scared of Marine Le Pen

The person haunting EU diplomats, officials and lawmakers is French presidential front-runner Marine Le Pen. Will she really halve Paris’ contribution to the EU budget, as promised? Will she pull Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni away from the Brussels mainstream? And will she demand von der Leyen’s head?

The bubble had warmed (slightly) to the idea of Jordan Bardella in the Élysée Palace, after his years leading the National Rally’s European operation revealed a certain pragmatism toward Brussels — only for those hopes to be shattered when a Paris appeals court cleared Le Pen to be a candidate for the presidency.

The next ECB chief is scared of Jean-Luc Mélenchon

The European Central Bank president is the euro’s last line of defense against unorthodox national economic decisions — but that could be tested by French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is on course to reach the runoff after vowing to set billions of euros of French debt “on fire.” His incendiary plan calls on the Frankfurt-based ECB to waive interest payments on a vast tranche of French bonds — an unorthodox, perhaps impossible, maneuver that critics warn could even see France kicked out of the euro.

Now that we know Christine Lagarde will step down as ECB president in February, what France’s presidential candidates want to do about its monumental debt pile will haunt the race for her successor, with Dutchman Klaas Knot and Spaniard Pablo Hernández de Cos as the two frontrunners.

Lobbyists are scared of ChatGPT

The number of amendments lawmakers have filed has exploded since generative AI arrived, with key EU laws now facing thousands of proposed text changes. Parliament officials don’t think it’s a coincidence, with some pointing to amendments written in suspiciously bot-like language, and others saying sometimes amendments cite legislation that does not even exist.

The growing pile of amendments is haunting lobbyists, parliamentary assistants and officials forced to track and sort through it all — along with the fear that AI could eventually replace them. Spare a thought, too, for the MEPs who may have to vote through the amendments one by one, with hands raised in plenary. 

Commission officials are scared of Austria’s Europe minister

Well-heeled Commission officials (and their families) are spooked by Austria’s Europe Minister Claudia Bauer, who has been leading a push to slash the Commission’s administration expenditure — which pays eurocrats’ salaries and offices — in the next seven-year budget. The campaign, backed by most EU capitals, resulted in an 8% cut to the admin budget in the latest budget proposal.

Bauer is so feared that EU officials joke they reduce their delegations’ size whenever they travel to Austria.

Jessika Roswall is scared of Stéphane Séjourné and Valdis Dombrovskis

Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall and her department have reason to fear industry boss Stéphane Séjourné, who is taking the lead on the upcoming Circular Economy Act, despite Roswall’s official title of Commissioner “for a Competitive Circular Economy.” Making matters spookier, Roswall’s environment department now shares the Breydel building with Séjourné’s internal market and industry department, setting the stage for some chilling corridor encounters as Roswall pushes for greater environmental protection while Séjourné prioritizes industrial growth.

Roswall is also under pressure from EU simplification chief Valdis Dombrovskis to cut red tape on several environmental laws. The Latvian commissioner, who oversees the omnibus packages, wants a deal before year-end. Meanwhile, the center-right European People’s Party continues to press the Commission to reopen laws on birds, habitats, and water — the EU’s oldest nature protection laws — so they can be simplified too.

Alexander Stubb is afraid of Kaja Kallas and António Costa

Kaja Kallas has not publicly addressed the call that Finnish President Alexander Stubb made to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but the EU’s top diplomat has made clear she dislikes such outreach. Still, if Putin offered serious talks and concessions, Kallas would be the obvious person to answer: as coordinating EU foreign and security policy is her job. “Of course I will talk if such an opportunity presents itself,” she told Estonian media in September when asked about speaking with Putin or his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Also reaching for the phone: António Costa. EU diplomats note that the European Council president represents the bloc at the leaders’ level abroad. That institutional turf war may explain why Stubb stressed that he and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Støre spoke only for their own countries — not for Europe.

Manfred Weber is scared of his own group …

What keeps the leader of the European People’s Party — Europe’s largest political family — up at night? Divisions within his own ranks. So far, Weber has kept a tight ship and wants to reunite his troops ahead of the 2029 EU election, which he is casting as a battle against the far right. But that may prove tricky as the EPP’s national delegations increasingly clash over whether to work with the far right or isolate them.

… and the group is scared of Ouarda Bensouag

Central to Weber’s strategy is Ouarda Bensouag, the group’s secretary-general and his chief of staff. One of his most trusted lieutenants, she has a reputation as a smart but ruthless operator who EPP staffers fear when crossing paths in the Parliament’s labyrinthine hallways.

No one is scared of the Parliament … but they should be

Parliament’s attempts to spook capitals over the next long-term budget have been borderline tragic so far: It keeps threatening to kill the budget, but nobody seems to care or believe it will.

They should care. When it comes time to pass the budget, 361 of 720 votes will be needed, and the margin could be razor-thin in a fragmented chamber that’s hostile to plans to pool farm and regional funds. The louder MEPs protest — and the longer the Council ignores them — the more determined they become to prove the threat is real.

By Max Griera, Gregorio Sorgi, Kathryn Carlson, Nick Vinocur, Jakob Weizman, Fiona McNally and Eliza Gkritsi

I’ve tested laptops for more than a decade, and here’s my advice for finding the right laptop for you.

The first folding iPhone Duo is here, alongside the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, but they’re not your only options. We have all the details on Apple’s smartphone lineup to help you find the right model.

With pricing in flux and new models available, here’s which Surface Laptop and Surface Pro to buy.

Today's links

• Lindsay Owens's "Gouged": The end of a fair price and what that means for your wallet.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Doonesbury on 9/11; Suspicious Looking Device; Elephant-shit paper; The Onion x TSA liquid rules; Borders goodbye letter; Voting machines suck; EFF v DRM; Matt Furie on the hijacking of Pepe; Austerity v last steam-loom; Facebook x "disinformation" criticism.
• Upcoming appearances: Boston, Brighton, Virtual, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, OVancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Montreal.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

---

Lindsay Owens's "Gouged" (permalink)

Lindsay Owens is the executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, who have done some of the most important work on surveillance pricing (using computers to spy on you to rip you off) and algorithmic wage discrimination (using computers to spy on you and steal your wages). Today, she publishes Gouged, a comprehensive, accessible guide to this modern scourge:

https://gougedbook.com/

Owens and Groundwork have done as much as anyone to publicize and fight against the use of corporate power, computers and vast troves of commercial surveillance data to pick your pocket, shrink your paycheck and make the worst people on earth far richer. It was Katie Wells, a Groundwork fellow, who co-authored the report describing how the apps nurses use to get shiftwork collude with data-brokers to find out how much money nurses owe on their credit cards, so they can pay the most desperate nurses lower wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

Owens helped coin the term "the age of recoupment," to describe this current moment in which companies that chased all their competitors out of the market with predatory pricing are now jacking up prices, knowing they're the only game in town:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

And Owens helped lead a study that showed that Instacart was using surveillance data to jack up prices by 20% or more based on inferences about your willingness and ability to pay (after the study was published, Instacart promised they'd stop doing it):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/11/nothing-personal/#instacartography

Owens and Groundwork have a keen eye for the structural conditions that allow companies to screw their workers and customers, especially the role that competition plays in keeping companies' greed in check. Take their proposal for "street pricing" in sports stadiums: like everyone, they understand that sports stadium owners know that you can't easily step outside for a snack, so they've raised prices to the sky:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/28/street-pricing/#sportball-analogies

They have a simple solution: just force vendors to charge the same prices as the shopkeepers in the neighborhood – the ones whose customers can take their business elsewhere. This proposal polls high (Groundwork does a lot of polling), both with Democrats and Republicans (despite the latter group's allergy to "price controls"). It's a good example of the kind of policy work Groundwork does: diagnosing a problem and coming up with a solution that's easy to administer and easy to explain, in terms that are popular with people from all walks of life.

This is the spirit of Gouged: laying out the baroque, data-driven scams that underpin an ever-increasing part of your life in plain language and tracing those scams back to specific policy choices.

Owens does important work here: sector by sector and scam by scam, she lays out how companies collude – often with the assistance of a captured and tame state – to reduce competition in order to raise prices, from groceries to rents to airline tickets. She describes how online sellers exploit their information asymmetry, their ability to both directly observe you and millions of other consumers, and to augment those observations with sensitive information purchased from the wild west of data brokers, to steer you into paying more and getting less. These schemes run the gamut from subscriptions you sign up for with a single click but can't get shut off without canceling your credit card, to lengthy check-out processes that end with a long set of junk prices that tack another 10 or 20% onto the cost you thought you were about to pay.

All of this raises a deceptively simple-sounding question: what is a fair price? Owens takes us through the history of pricing, and the American tradition – begun by Quakers – of replacing haggling with price-tags, and setting those prices at "cost plus a reasonable percentage." She describes an ideological project, a cousin to the neoliberal revolution of Carter and Reagan, to replace this "fair price" with a "market price" that was calculated to be whatever the market would bear. She introduces us to the men who spent a generation dreaming of the technology to change every price for every customer, every time that customer entered the marketplace, and she shows us how, when they got their wish, they shifted billions away from workers and shoppers to owners.

Remember: a wage is also a price: it's the price you get for your labor and the precious, irreplaceable hours of your life. The same men who committed to making prices you pay as high as possible were every bit as committed to ensuring that the price you charged for those unrecoverable moments of the only life you will ever live as low as possible. Every scam to make you pay more has a mirror-image scam that ensures you are paid less. This is the logical trajectory of the gig economy – a way to bring that same exploitable information asymmetry to labor markets, where the boss can observe everyone on the payroll and how much (how little) they've accepted from job to job, but workers don't even know who the other workers are, much less what they're getting paid.

All of this is laid out with admirable clarity and detail. By the time you get to the last chapter, you'll know exactly how you're getting scammed, who is scamming you, and why they're getting away with it. The final chapter is meant to be the "What do we do about it?" chapter, and regrettably, it's weaker than other parts of the book. Owens urges you to have conversations with your friends about these things, she urges you to take basic measures to defend your privacy, and lists some businesses that have steered clear of the scams she describes in the book, with the implication that you could bring your business to these companies and ones like them.

There is nothing wrong with this advice. Every word of it is sound, and your life – and the world – will be better off if you follow it. But this wasn't what I hoped for from someone with such an excellent track record of devising shovel-ready, highly leveraged, popular policy proposals. I would much rather have been presented with a half-dozen well-thought-through, well-explained rules or laws that could really strike at the root of these problems.

The pathologies Owens presents in this book can be traced to the Chicago School, a group of radical economists who won favor with Carter, Reagan, Thatcher, and other architects of neoliberalism. The Chicago School's chief strategist was Milton Friedman, who spent decades advocating for the policies that went on to destroy the world as we knew it. Before Friedman was ascendant, his colleagues would ask him how in the world he expected his plans – totally alien to the political consensus of the day – to ever turn into action.

Friedman had a stock answer for this question: "In times of crisis, ideas move from the periphery to the center. Our job is to 'keep ideas lying around' so that when the crisis strikes, we will be able to seize the moment."

Friedman was a monster, but he was right. There's always a crisis, eventually – the world is big and complicated and subject to all kinds of shocks. Friedman didn't need a crystal ball to predict a crisis – the next crisis was eminently foreseeable. Today, crises are coming thicker and faster than ever, as Friedman's program of autocratic rule and extraction reaches a boiling point.

Each of the scams that Owens lays out in her book is a crisis in waiting. When those crises arrive, I would love to go into it knowing which policies could have prevented it, so that I can blame our policymakers for failing to prevent it, and, after they've been defenestrated, I can demand that anyone who seeks to replace them promise to take meaningful steps to end the crisis and prevent it from happening again.

Throughout this excellent book, Owens makes an indisputable case that the problems she describes have a systemic root. They're not caused by wickedness or greed – they're caused by a system designed to reward wickedness and greed. There's nothing wrong with giving people some simple measures they can take to protect themselves from such a system, but those protections will only ever be partial and temporary. I would have been far more energized if those personal measures had been a prelude to a chapter designed to equip me with a list of bold, muscular policy demands.

Long ago, Owens convinced me that the system is rigged and we all deserve better. This book made that case even clearer. I want to know how we get beyond modest personal protections and make our way to a better world for all.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• How to Beat Surveillance Pricing Before It Bleeds You Dry https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-beat-surveillance-pricing-before-it-bleeds-you-dry/

• By 30 points, voters oppose sending ICE agents to the polls https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-09-29-ice-and-troops-at-the-polls

• Amazon Crime https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/amazon-crime

• Trial of live facial recognition in London stations leads to a false positive and no arrests https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/29/trial-live-facial-recognition-cameras-london-stations-false-positive

• Historic England’s Vanishing Archive https://www.sarsen.org/2026/09/historic-englands-photos-didnt-vanish.html

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Doonesbury on 9/11 https://web.archive.org/web/20020309055239/http://www2.uclick.com/feature/01/10/01/db011001.gif

#20yrsago Suspicious Looking Device exists to incite unease https://web.archive.org/web/20061107112421/http://junkfunnel.com/sld/

#20yrsago HOWTO make elephant-shit paper https://web.archive.org/web/20061020105837/https://intensehumour.blogspot.com/2006/09/elephant-dung-paper.html

#20yrsago The Onion on TSA liquid restrictions https://web.archive.org/web/20061001102305/https://theonion.com/content/node/53536

#15yrsago Goodbye letter from Borders employee(s) (?) spills secrets of bookselling trade https://memex.craphound.com/2011/09/30/goodbye-letter-from-borders-employees-spills-secrets-of-bookselling-trade/

#10yrsago Electronic voting machines suck, the comprehensive 2016 election edition https://web.archive.org/web/20160930060538/https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-voting-technology/

#10yrsago Shadow Regulation: the secret laws that giant corporations cook up in back rooms https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/shadow-regulation-back-room-threat-digital-rights

#10yrsago EFF to court: don’t let US government prosecute professor over his book about securing computers https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-court-block-us-prosecuting-security-researcher-detecting-and-publishing

#10yrsago Matt Furie on the experience of having his Pepe the Frog character hijacked by white supremacists https://riylcast.tumblr.com/post/151123916140/episode-187-matt-furie-bonus

#10yrsago Arkansas lawmaker who pushed law protecting right to video police is arrested for videoing an arrest https://web.archive.org/web/20160930151809/https://theintercept.com/2016/09/30/lawmaker-who-pushed-bill-to-protect-people-filming-police-arrested-for-filming-police/

#10yrsago Austerity kills the last steam-powered loom in the world https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-37512136

#5yrsago Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation" https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/30/dont-believe-the-criti-hype/#ordinary-mediocrities

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Boston: The Post-American Internet: Possibilities for a new internet created by an American Hermit Kingdom (MIT Media Lab), Sep 30
  https://www.media.mit.edu/events/the-post-american-internet-possibilities-for-a-new-internet-created-by-an-american-hermit-kingdom/

• Boston: Rethinking Our Relationship with AI, Sep 30 (Emtech)
  https://event.technologyreview.com/emtech-future-2026/detailed-agenda

• Boston: The Paradox of Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs (Harvard Berkman Klein), Sep 30
  https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/running-harder-falling-faster-paradox-enshittification-and-reverse-centaurs

• Brighton: Digital Sovereignty and the Post-American Internet (Green Party Conference), Oct 3
  https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/digital-sovereignty-and-the-post-american-internet/

• Virtual: How to govern technology in a multipolar digital world (Connecting Current), Oct 6
  https://connectingcurrent.tech/how-to-govern-technology-a-multipolar-digital-world/

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
  https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK=

• Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
  https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/

• Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
  https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow

• Paris: Slow Tech Summit, Oct 15
  https://slowtechsummit.com/

• Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01

• Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
  https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

• Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

• Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
  https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

• Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
  https://kilkenomics.com/

• Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
  https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

• Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
  https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

• Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
  https://montreal2027.ca/en

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

• Could Tech Bosses Destroy Life As We Know It? (Politics JOE)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4VktU0SgY

• Are 'AI Apocalypse' Warnings Just Marketing? (What's Left)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXd9HwIE5bo

• The Real AI Threat Isn’t What You’ve Been Told (The Tea with Myriam François)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc8It00fRsA

• Fascists may come after the AI bubble bursts (You&AI)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WN64aQeYQ

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

---

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 574 (7730 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links

• Jennifer Jenkins' 'Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture': The definitive textbook (with comics!).
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Hair-gel bombers v bras; Hair-gel bombers v chemistry; AOL digs for spammer's platinum; Stross on infosec in 2061; In-game Ponzi; Snowden on Shadow Brokers hack; Life v understanding advanced math; "Greatest of Marlys!"; Housing and precarity; LLMs as slot-machines for coders; Hypercard's backstory; Pirate Party; Fanbois' mental health v critics; Krugman calls for alien invasion; Trump x Serbian genocidaires; The last Sandman Slim; Muphry’s Law; NSA created the Shadow Brokers; DOJ kills private prisons; Walmart externalizes crime; "Sgt Augmento"; Zuckermuskian solipsism.
• Upcoming appearances: Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

---

Jennifer Jenkins' 'Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture' (permalink)

Nobody explains copyright like Jennifer Jenkins, the director of the Duke Center for the Public Domain, in which capacity she is responsible for the annual New Year's roundups of all the materials entering the public domain (a series that started in the decades during which the public domain was frozen by the Sonny Bono Copyright Act):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

Jenkins has a gift for making one of the most complicated, worst understood, most consequential areas of law not only comprehensible, but also fascinating. Her late 2023 explanation of what "Mickey Mouse's copyright is expiring" actually meant was the single best explainer on the subject, in a crowded field:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

Small wonder that she's the go-to copyright and trademark expert for so many media outlets. Perhaps you heard her Planet Money segments on which superheroes are in the public domain:

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/969512231

Jenkins' flair for legal communications carries over to her scholarly work, of course, which is why her Open Copyright Casebook is a standard text for American law schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/30/open-and-shut-casebook/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts

Jenkins co-wrote the Casebook with her husband, the equally erudite and expert James Boyle. It's just one of their many fruitful collaborations; they are also the writing team behind THEFT! A History of Music, the greatest graphic novel ever created about the history of music, music law, music censorship, and the music industry:

https://web.law.duke.edu/musiccomic/

Last year, Jenkins published Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture, an Oxford University Press title that fuses her scholarly and popular work in a generalist textbook on the legal framework for music that will forever change how you think about music. Now, a second edition, with a lengthy section on new music litigation, AI copyright fights, and the issue of uncompensated labor is available as an open access download:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/musiccopyright/

Music Copyright weaves together the economic, cultural, political and artistic history of music, pulling on historic threads ranging from antiquity to medieval Europe to the age of mechanical reproduction to describe changing views of musicians, their audiences, and religious and political leaders on what constituted music, who was allowed to make music, and what music was for. In so doing, she firmly establishes the extremely contingent nature of our present-day norms around music, showing that the "natural" present-day assumptions about who gets paid, who pays, and when payment (or permission) is required are anything but, and are always in flux.

For obvious reasons, much of Jenkins' text describes these changes in the context of the record, the radio, satellite transmission, P2P file-sharing, and digital sampling (along with a chapter on AI). These examples are liberally illustrated with links to musical excerpts that bring the subject to life (these are presented as hotlinks in the ebook; if you're reading the print edition, you can use the book's companion website:)

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/musiccopyright/

Interspersed with these histories and analysis are lengthy, extremely on-point excerpts from THEFT!, her graphic novel history of music. These enliven the text as much as the music samples, making this textbook as entertaining as it is informative.

Of especial interest – and importance – are the long sections on the courtroom battles of Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, and Pharrell Williams over similar "grooves" and "vibes" to other songs, some of them well-known and some quite obscure:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/08/oh-why/#two-notes-and-running

These cases highlight the fundamental incoherence of music copyright, a system composed of improvised responses to new technologies, each layered atop the last in a messy pile that virtually no one understands.

Jenkins understands it, though. I've been reading, writing, and debating about this stuff since the late 1990s, and I learned something new on every page of this delightful book. This should be required reading for anyone who makes music, loves music, or cares about musicians and the arts more generally. It's a towering accomplishment and a brilliant read.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• The CEO who fired 900 people on Zoom just before Christmas wants his job back https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/14/business/vishal-garg-better-ceo

• Who Crapped on Johnny Depp's Bed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGt7-WnWdhE

• No-One Makes You Shop at Amazon https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/no-one-makes-you-shop-at-amazon

• Paramount’s Merger Strategy: Empty Promises and Empty Threats https://prospect.org/2026/08/14/paramounts-merger-strategy-empty-promises-threats-justice-department-antitrust/

• they_live_adblocker https://github.com/davmlaw/they_live_adblocker

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago RIP, The Industry Standard, Palm buys BeOS https://web.archive.org/web/20010927192339/http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46113,00.html

#25yrsago Smart dust sensors https://web.archive.org/web/20011112010004/http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=1935

#25yrsago Pentagon patents onion-routing https://web.archive.org/web/20010912222427/http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46126,00.html

#25yrsago Coltan: the conflict mineral in our gadgets https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/magazine/the-dirt-in-the-new-machine.html

#25yrsago Danny Goodman Talks About HyperCard https://web.archive.org/web/20011214114614/http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/08/17/goodman.html

#25yrsago Report an insecure website, win a visit from the FBI https://web.archive.org/web/20010820110330/http://www.linuxfreak.org/post.php/08/17/2001/134.html

#20yrsago Copyright wars: film-makers eats themselves https://web.archive.org/web/20070318010544/https://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/film/freedom-of-information/14244/

#20yrsago RyanAir to UK govt: ease off on security or we sue https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/aug/18/theairlineindustry.terrorism

#20yrsago Federal court bans Bush’s warrantless spying on Americans https://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit/index.html

#20yrsago Western millionaires plotted Equatorial Guinea coup as a game https://web.archive.org/web/20071114211448/https://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/08/17/roberts/index_np.html

#20yrsago Sweden’s Pirate Party – political arm of the pro-piracy groundswell https://web.archive.org/web/20060820093355/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71544-0.html

#20yrsago Hair-Gel Bombers win war on bras https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-authorities-leave-gel_n_27402

#20yrsago Would a hair-gel bomb actually work? https://seclists.org/interesting-people/2006/Aug/86

#20yrsago The Pirate Bay’s backstory https://web.archive.org/web/20060901180116/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71543-0.html

#20yrsago AOL will dig for buried platinum and gold in spammer’s Mom’s yard https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14365934

#15yrsago Charlie Stross on network security in 2061 https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/usenix-2011-keynote-network-se.html

#15yrsago Damning 2007 letter asserts that phone hacking was an open practice at News of the World https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/16/phone-hacking-now-reporter-letter

#15yrsago In-game Ponzi nets US$50K https://web.archive.org/web/20110921052125/http://gamergaia.com/pc/1724-eve-online-space-heist-one-trillion-isk.html

#15yrsago Copyright troll handed ass (again), tries saddest trick ever to get out of paying its victim’s legal bills https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/08/righthaven-rocked-owes-34000-after-fair-use-loss/

#15yrsago English cops arrest man for planning water-fight via Blackberry Messenger https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/15/essex-water-fight-blackberry-messenger

#15yrsago Woman who recorded Massachusetts police beating charged with illegal wiretapping https://www.masslive.com/news/2011/08/videographer_of_alleged_melvin.html

#15yrsago Criticism of a brand lowers the self-esteem of its adherents https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/users-treat-criticism-of-favorite-brands-as-threat-to-self-image/

#15yrsago Homeopathy multinational sues blogger over statements that its mythological curative had “no active ingredient” https://web.archive.org/web/20110930131033/http://www.blogzero.it/contatti/prova/

#15yrsago Edinburgh Fringe show asks audience to shred banknotes https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/aug/16/crunch-edinburgh-festival-shred-cash

#15yrsago CCTV deterrence and the London uprising https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-does-not-deter-crime

#15yrsago Paul Krugman: save the economy by staging an alien invasion hoax https://comicsalliance.com/watchmen-paul-krugman-alien-invasion/

#15yrsago Minecraft creator challenges trademark belligerents to winner-take-all Quake deathmatch https://web.archive.org/web/20110817205045/http://notch.tumblr.com/post/9038258448/hey-bethesda-lets-settle-this

#15yrsago Muphry’s Law: the inevitability of typos in discussions of typos https://web.archive.org/web/20101227141449/https://www.editorscanberra.org/muphrys-law/

#15yrsago Copyright complaint as phishing email https://memex.craphound.com/2011/08/18/copyright-complaint-as-phishing-email/

#15yrsago Rep Allen West pens “dumbest thing ever written on congressional stationery” https://web.archive.org/web/20110914030034/https://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/17/297619/allen-west-nuts/

#10yrsago The NSA’s program of tech sabotage created the Shadow Brokers https://web.archive.org/web/20160818132904/https://www.wired.com/2016/08/shadow-brokers-mess-happens-nsa-hoards-zero-days/

#10yrsago Walmarts are high-crime zones thanks to staff cuts, but America gets the bill https://web.archive.org/web/20160818000539/https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/

#10yrsago DoJ says it will end private federal prisons https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/department-justice-plans-end-private-prison/

#10yrsago Fiction: Sgt. Augmento, Bruce Sterling’s robots-take-our-jobs story https://web.archive.org/web/20160818161624/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/sgt-augmento

#10yrsago Las Vegas: high unionization rates mean smaller wage-gaps for women, especially older women https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/opinion/how-unions-help-cocktail-servers.html

#10yrsago The incredible true story of the Epcot Horizons superfans who ruled the ride https://web.archive.org/web/20160822031741/https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_true_story_of_the_unauthorized_daredevil_documentation_of_the_horizons_/

#10yrsago Predictive policing predicts police harassment, not crime https://web.archive.org/web/20160821093834/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-016-9272-0

#10yrsago UC Davis Chancellor spent $400K+ to scrub her online reputation after pepper-spray incident https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article94733812.html

#10yrsago Reputation systems work because people are mostly good https://timharford.com/2016/08/the-meaning-of-trust-in-the-age-of-airbnb/

#10yrsago The guy who started Serbia’s ethnic cleansing led a pro-Trump rally in Belgrade https://web.archive.org/web/20160817022133/https://theintercept.com/2016/08/16/serb-inspired-ethnic-cleansing-bosnia-leads-vote-trump-rally-belgrade/

#10yrsago Europe’s banks want to store billions in cash to fight back against negative interest https://web.archive.org/web/20160817152157/https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/16/banks-look-for-cheap-way-to-store-cash-piles-as-rates-go-negative.html

#10yrsago Kill Rock Stars president explains why the radio plays the same songs over and over https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThrXkYwTBP8

#10yrsago Snowden explains the Shadow Brokers/Equation Group/NSA hack https://www.techdirt.com/2016/08/16/ed-snowden-explains-why-hackers-published-nsas-hacking-tools/

#10yrsago Hackers claim to have stolen NSA cyberweapons, auctioning them to highest bidder https://web.archive.org/web/20160816035711/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-hack-nsa-linked-equation-group

#10yrsago What life is like when you really understand advanced mathematics https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-understand-advanced-mathematics-Does-it-feel-analogous-to-having-mastery-of-another-language-like-in-programming-or-linguistics

#10yrsago Parents who can’t pay the bill for kids’ incarceration can still go bankrupt, a US court rules https://archive.thinkprogress.org/everything-wrong-with-how-our-justice-system-treats-poor-people-in-one-awful-case-bfd91a6fa114/

#10yrsago UK Intellectual Property Office grants trademark on “should’ve” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37092366

#10yrsago The Greatest of Marlys! is the Lynda Barry book we’ve been waiting for https://memex.craphound.com/2016/08/16/the-greatest-of-marlys-is-the-lynda-barry-book-weve-been-waiting-for/

#5yrsago Housing, money laundry, speculation and precarity https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/#assets-v-human-rights

#5yrsago Big Oil caught lying about methane https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/king-bullet/#methanescan

#5yrsago Sandman Slim's final adventure https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/king-bullet/#sticking-the-dismount

#5yrsago The Sacklers threaten us all with a good time https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/18/lets-make-a-deal/#art-of-the-deal

#1yrago Zuckermuskian solipsism https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

#1yrago LLMs are slot-machines https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/16/jackpot/#salience-bias

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

• Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
  https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/program/

• Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
  https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
  https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/

• London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
  https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn

• Manchester: Take Back Big Tech with Jovan Owusu-Nepaul (House of Books and Friends), Sep 11
  https://ma.to/event/cory-doctorow-house-of-books-and-friends-11-sep-2026

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Victoria: Munro's Books (Oct 20)
  https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

• Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
  https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Technofeudal Enshittification (Fucking Cancelled)
  https://www.fuckingcancelled.com/p/technofeudal-enshittification-with

• Who The Machine Serves (EFF)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-who-the-machine-serves

• Speculative Fiction for Social Change II (Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff)
  https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/08cbb840-a6ae-013a-d8aa-0acc26574db2/part-two-cory-doctorow-on-speculative-fiction-for-social-change/937e8800-9404-45a6-b5e3-90ebee2cfaea

• Speculative Fiction for Social Change I (Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff)
  https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/08cbb840-a6ae-013a-d8aa-0acc26574db2/part-one-cory-doctorow-on-speculative-fiction-for-social-change/15ad467c-0832-44c9-91ea-59defd783dba

• AI, automation and enshittification (Telecoms.com)
  https://www.telecoms.com/ai/the-telecoms-com-podcast-ai-automation-and-enshittification

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

---

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Friday's words: 564 (6039 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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ISSN: 3066-764X

I'm up to my old ways of looking for fabulous, fun and under the radar Paris cocktail news that you won't find in every other online guide. Like... this very local tip for tacos and cocktails in Paris.

The post Red House bar for cocktails and tacos in Paris appeared first on Paris • Cocktails • Bars.