In short, although policies to improve broadband access are important, policies that help ensure the availability of low-cost devices are also essential.
But advocates of digital equity are not the only constituent groups concerned with the supply and accessibility of computing devices. Environmental and labor rights activists advocate for policies that extend the lifecycle of existing devices, which can help to minimize e-waste and protect the viability of the repair and refurbishing labor markets, respectively. Making computer repair cheaper and bolstering secondhand and refurbishing markets better ensures that low-income consumers can afford to maintain the devices they already own and that they can purchase devices as needed (Fosdick, 2012; Islam et al., 2021). Extending the life of a device through repair is often a more affordable choice than purchasing a brand-new device (Svensson-Hoglund et al., 2021). Furthermore, optimizing the lifecycle of existing devices helps exert market pressures on manufacturer's pricing of new devices, helping to keep down the cost of brand new devices (Islam et al., 2021; Leclerc & Badami, 2020). Thus, policies championed to reduce e-waste and protect the right-to-repair (R2R) can also enhance digital equity.
Policies that have mutually beneficial outcomes for different sectors have been described as multisolving innovations (Dearing & Lapinski, 2020). Multisolving innovations can broaden the coalition of activists in support of a given policy issue and can be strategically framed to appeal to constituent bases that might otherwise be disinterested or even antagonistic (e.g., framing environmental policies around health outcomes to appeal to conservatives) to an issue.
Digital rights
User agents are pieces of software that represent the user, a natural person, in their digital interactions. Examples include Web browsers, operating systems, single-sign-on systems, or voice assistants. User agents hold, due to the role they play in the digital ecosystem, a strategic position. They can be arbiters of structural power. The overwhelming majority of the data that is collected about people, particularly that which is collected passively, is collected through user agents, at times with their explicit support or at least by their leave. I propose to lean on this strategic function that user agents hold to develop a regime of fiduciary duties for them that is relatively limited in the number of actors that it affects yet has the means to significantly increase the power of users in their relationships with online platforms. The limited, tractable scope of software user agency as a fiduciary relationship provides effective structural leverage in righting the balance of power between individuals and tech companies.
A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk in Austria on smartphones and cybersecurity.
“Put up your hand if you like or maybe even love your smartphone,” I asked the audience of policymakers, industrialists and students.
Nearly every hand in the room shot up.
“Now, please put up your hand if you trust your smartphone.”
One young guy at the back put his hand in the air, then faltered as it became obvious he was alone. I thanked him for his honesty and paused before saying,“We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship.”
Now, free software advocates – and free culture advocates – hate the term “intellectual property.” The argument against IP rails against its imprecision and its rhetorical dishonesty.
Prior to the rise of the “intellectual property” as an umbrella term, the different legal regimes it refers to were customarily referred to by their individual names. When you were talking about patents, you said “patÂents,” and when you were talking about copyrights, you said “copyrights.” Bunching together copyrights and trademarks and patents and other rules wasn’t particularly useful, since these are all very different legal regimes. On those rare instances in which all of these laws were grouped together, the usual term for them was “creator’s monopolies” or “author’s monopolies.”
[…]
Seen in this light, “intellectual property” is an incoherent category: when you assert that your work has “intellectual property” protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to protect your customers from deception; or that the government will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more) incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game?
When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:
“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”
That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.
Today, the ownership of digital books is routinely denied to libraries. Many books are offered to libraries in electronic form only, under restrictive temporary licenses; libraries can never own these e-books, but must pay for them over and over, as if they were Netflix movies.
Some publishers have even explicitly named libraries as direct economic competitors.
Digital books have been removed from libraries and edited without librarians’ knowledge or consent. Library patrons who borrow digital books can no longer have the expectation of privacy, with large publishers, distributors and e-book retailers snooping over the shoulder of every reader to build databases that can be sold or shared with advertisers, law enforcement, landlords or immigration agents.