Who Broke the Internet? | E4: Kick 'Em in the Dongle

Summary

Who Broke the Internet? Episode Summary: "Kick 'Em in the Dongle"

Release Date: May 26, 2025

In the fourth episode of Season 5, titled "Kick 'Em in the Dongle," the CBC-hosted podcast "Understood: Who Broke the Internet?" delves deep into the intricate web of modern internet decay, exploring how legislative decisions and the consolidation of power among tech giants have transformed the internet from a promising public space into a "techno feudal" realm. Hosted by Cory Doctorow, this episode intertwines expert insights, personal narratives, and critical analysis to unravel the forces that have "enshittified" the internet and proposes a roadmap for reclaiming its original ethos.

---

1. The Coronation of Techno Feudal Lords

Timestamp: [00:55] – [02:25]

The episode opens with a fictional yet telling narrative: President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in 2025. Amidst the traditional pomp, tech titans such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook are conspicuously present on stage. Economist Giannis Varoufakis aptly labels them as the "techno feudal lords of the Internet." This visual sets the stage for the discussion on how these figures wield unprecedented power over digital landscapes.

Giannis Varoufakis: "They are consumed by their own power and they become real sad bastards."
[02:07]

This portrayal underscores the symbiotic yet parasitic relationship between political power and technological monopolies, hinting at the systemic issues that have led to the current state of the internet.

---

2. Unveiling Techno Feudalism

Timestamp: [02:25] – [05:25]

Varoufakis introduces the concept of techno feudalism, a term he coins to describe the new socioeconomic system where traditional capitalism has been overtaken by a more insidious form of control. Unlike capitalism, which revolves around competition and profit, techno feudalism centralizes power within a handful of tech conglomerates, turning users into "cloud serfs."

Giannis Varoufakis: "Techno feudalism is the socioeconomic system that emerged after capital overthrew capitalism."
[03:41]

This system merges medieval feudal structures with modern digital infrastructure, where tech giants own the "digital land"—app stores, search engines, social networks—effectively dictating the terms of engagement for all users.

---

3. The Mechanics of Enshittification

Timestamp: [05:25] – [07:19]

Cory Doctorow elaborates on "enshittification," a term he coined to describe the gradual degradation of internet platforms driven by profit maximization. This process involves invasive advertising, manipulative algorithms, erosion of privacy, and the inundation of AI-generated content, all designed to keep users engaged and monetized.

Cory Doctorow: "This is not a bug, this is a business model to make money off of you tilling the soil of the Internet."
[06:25]

Doctorow emphasizes that these changes are deliberate strategies to exploit user behavior, ensuring that every interaction translates into revenue for the platform owners.

---

4. Delaney Patra's Tale: Facebook as Lifeline During Crisis

Timestamp: [09:07] – [16:22]

The narrative shifts to Delaney Patra, a resident of Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, who relies heavily on Facebook for community cohesion and information dissemination. During the devastating wildfires of 2023, Facebook served as the primary medium for sharing critical updates, organizing evacuations, and maintaining a semblance of normalcy in a crisis-stricken environment.

Delaney Patra: "My phone was blowing up the whole time. It was insane."
[11:06]

However, the implementation of Bill C18 (the Online News Act) by the Canadian government, intended to regulate big tech's role in news distribution, led to Meta (Facebook) blocking news content in Canada. This regulatory move severely hampered the flow of vital information during emergencies.

Delaney Patra: "We couldn't get, like, the right information... you have to physically go and click and click and click and try to find the right information."
[14:05]

Delaney's struggle highlights the tangible consequences of legislative actions on everyday users, especially in critical situations where timely information is paramount.

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5. The Legislative Struggle: Bill C11/C18 and the DMCA Parallel

Timestamp: [19:27] – [31:55]

The core of the episode examines the legislative journey of Bill C11 (later referred to as Bill C18), Canada’s attempt to mimic the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Spearheaded by Minister James Moore, Bill C11 aimed to compel tech platforms to pay news organizations for content displayed on their sites.

Michael Geist: "Let me conclude the decision to reject the amendments... has the potential to create disadvantageous barriers."
[30:44]

Michael Geist, a renowned law professor and advocate for digital rights, fiercely opposed the bill's digital lock provisions, which would criminalize the circumvention of technological protections on copyrighted material. Despite widespread public opposition and organized campaigns like "Fair Copyright for Canada," the bill swiftly passed, driven by lobbying efforts from major entertainment industries and pressure from the U.S.

Cory Doctorow: "The government hit pause and for a moment it seemed like they were actually willing to hear people out."
[24:52]

Nevertheless, political maneuvers ensured the bill’s passage, embedding restrictive measures that aligned Canadian digital policy closely with U.S. interests, thereby strengthening the grip of big tech on the Canadian internet landscape.

---

6. The Aftermath: Chilling Effects and Stifled Innovation

Timestamp: [31:55] – [34:15]

Post-legislation, the digital ecosystem in Canada experienced significant repercussions. Startups faced operational restrictions, accessibility tools encountered compliance challenges, and the overall environment became less conducive to innovation.

Cory Doctorow: "The Internet's not broken because people stopped caring. It's broken because a few powerful companies locked it up and got our governments to declare those locks off limits."
[36:09]

Despite claims from proponents like James Moore that the laws have aged well, the reality has been a stifling of technological advancement and a reinforcement of techno feudal structures, limiting the ability of individuals and smaller entities to navigate or challenge the dominance of tech giants.

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7. Reclaiming the Internet: A Call to Action

Timestamp: [34:15] – [38:20]

Concluding the episode, Cory Doctorow presents a visionary path forward to dismantle techno feudalism:

1. Repeal Digital Lock Laws: Removing restrictive legislation to allow for greater technological flexibility and innovation.
2. Empower Technologists: Encouraging the development of privacy blockers, alternative platforms, and tools that enable users to migrate away from dominant tech ecosystems without losing their data or connections.
3. Promote Digital Sovereignty: Advocating for policies that prioritize national and individual control over digital infrastructure, reducing dependence on multinational tech conglomerates.

Cory Doctorow: "We need to make it easy for people to leave platforms and to make it easy for people to disinfitify the platforms they can't leave."
[31:05]

Giannis Varoufakis: "Doing all the things that will seriously reduce the power that the owners of cloud capital have over us."
[35:51]

Doctorow emphasizes the importance of "disinfitifying" platforms—breaking free from the monopolistic control exerted by big tech—to restore the internet’s foundational principles of openness, accessibility, and user empowerment.

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Conclusion: A Vision for a Resilient Internet

"Kick 'Em in the Dongle" serves as a critical examination of the systemic failures that have led to the current state of the internet. Through a blend of expert analysis, legislative history, and personal storytelling, the episode underscores the urgent need to dismantle techno feudal structures and reclaim digital sovereignty. It calls upon listeners to engage in the ongoing discourse, advocating for policies and technological innovations that prioritize the collective good over monopolistic profits.

As Cory Doctorow aptly summarizes:

Cory Doctorow: "If that's how Canadians understand this problem, then when people in power cast about for an idea on how to fix the Internet, they won't get suckered into giving the platforms yet another lock they can use to take us and our data and our relationships and our businesses and our news and our politics and our culture and our jobs and our educations and our whole lives hostage."
[38:31]

The episode concludes with a poignant reminder: the internet's potential as a conduit for connection and innovation remains intact, but only if proactive steps are taken to dismantle the barriers erected by techno feudalism.

---

Recommendations for Further Listening:

For listeners inspired by this episode, earlier seasons of "Understood" provide additional insights into related topics:

• Season 1 - The Naked Emperor: Explores the rise and fall of cryptocurrency magnate Sam Bankman-Fried.
• Season 2 - The Pornhub Empire: Chronicles the Montreal-based company’s domination of the adult industry.
• Season 3 - Modi’s India: Chronicles the ascent of a man from poverty to political powerhouse.
• Season 4 - Céline: Unveils the cultural and business forces that shaped a superstar.

These seasons offer a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted challenges and narratives shaping our digital and political landscapes today.

Transcript

[Cory Doctorow]

I thought that I knew Amanda Knox's story. She was the girl accused of murder in Italy who spent four years in prison for a crime that she did not commit. But then she told me what her life has really been like. I had finally done something in my life that defined me more than this horrible thing that had happened to me. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this week on Crime Story. Amanda Knox in her own words. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

[Donald Trump]

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

[Cory Doctorow]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Donald Trump]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Cory Doctorow]

The office of President of the United States.

[Donald Trump]

The office of President of the United States.

[Cory Doctorow]

And will to the best of my ability. Monday, January 20, 2025, Washington, D.C. donald Trump is being sworn in as President of the United states again. Congratulations, Mr. Kelly. The Capitol rotunda is packed. President Trump stands center stage. Beside him, Vice President J.D. vance. Surrounding him, his wife, his sons, his daughter Ivanka. And directly behind them, in a spot usually reserved for elected officials, we have Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook, a group of dudes Giannis Varoufakis calls the techno feudal lords of the Internet.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

When we watched the famous inauguration of Donald Trump, we saw many of the faces of these techno feudal lords basking in the glory of the Donald's coronation.

[Cory Doctorow]

Giannis is an economist. He was Greece's Minister of Finance during the Eurozone crisis. So he knows a thing or two about money and power.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

They are consumed by their own power and they become real sad bastards.

[Cory Doctorow]

We started this series with a term, icoined and shittification, the intentional decay of platforms for profit. Now, I want to introduce you to a term Giannis came up with, Techno feudalism. For Janis, the seed of this idea was planted more than 30 years ago by his father.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

It was, if memory serves, 1993. It was around Christmas time. And my father, who was always very keen to be connected to the latest technological innovations, asked me to connect him to the Internet, to the fledgling Internet back then. And after we did it, and he managed to read some website or send an email, he turned around and he said, so now that computers talk to one another, is it going to spell the end of capitalism, or is it going to make capitalism absolutely safe from any challenge to its power? What he was asking me is, is there hope? And I'm very much afraid that he wouldn't like the answer.

[Cory Doctorow]

And that answer is a system Giannis calls techno feudalism. So what is techno feudalism?

[Giannis Varoufakis]

Techno feudalism is the socioeconomic system that emerged after capital overthrew capitalism.

[Cory Doctorow]

You've probably been taught that you live in a capitalist system. It was a question on my U.S. citizenship exam. What is the economic system of America? Capitalism. Capitalism is a system in which companies compete for profit. If you don't have capital, if you work for a living, then you get wages. The more wages you get, the less profit your boss takes home. Yanis says that the advent of computers that could talk to each other via the Internet ushered in an autophagic form of capitalism that was so successful, it ended up devouring itself in the same.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

Way that the toxic virus becomes so toxic that it kills off its host.

[Cory Doctorow]

So that does mean the end of capitalism, just like his father wondered about. But don't start playing Ding Dong, the witch is dead.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

What has emerged is far worse and more lethal and a clear and present danger to humanity and to nature.

[Cory Doctorow]

Yana says that we are now left with a freakish mutation of capitalism that has merged with something much older called feudalism. Feudalism was all the rage in medieval Europe. With feudalism literally, lords owned the land and peasants worked it, owning nothing, paying rent to survive. Techno feudalism is feudalism plus computers with big tech platforms. As our feudal lords, they have totally.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

And utterly appropriated the Internet, and we are just cloud serfs within it.

[Cory Doctorow]

They own the digital land, the app stores, search engines, and social networks. So whether you're a seller or a buyer, a poster or a scroller, an advertiser or a target, you serve the lords. In other words, we're all digital peasants.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

Every time you upload a photo on Instagram or a video on TikTok or you tweet on what used to be Twitter, what you're doing is you are creating part of the cloud capital of the owner of that platform with your free labor. Of course, it is voluntary labor. Nobody has forced you to do it. But nevertheless, it is labor that you are expending in order to build up the machinery of the cloud fdom, which allows the owner of the cloud fum to extract rents exactly like the feudal lords of yesteryear.

[Cory Doctorow]

You know, when you're online just trying to do something simple, and everything fights back. Cookie pop ups, login walls. That useful button you used to click a million times a day is suddenly moved, and in its spot, there's now a new button that summons an AI chatbot you can't get rid of. This is not a Bug, this is a business model to make money off of you tilling the soil of the Internet. Like the cloud surface you are and your labor man, is it generating a lot of value, just not for you. Those men on that stage with that American president are some of the richest people in human history. They are who John Sherman warned us about back in the 1890s. John Sherman's Kings are Janis Varoufakis, techno feudal lords.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

Behind the throne, money always lurked. So this is not new. What is new is that the Basses, the Zuckerbergs, the Peter Thiels, the Musks of the world have in their hands a form of power that the Rockefellers, the Westinghouses and the Henry Fords never had.

[Cory Doctorow]

So here's the trillion dollar. How do we shatter that power? How do we break the grip of the techno feudal lords who inshidified the Internet and got rich off our cliques? I am going to tell you, the Internet was made in the usa, shaped by American policies and America's policy failures. But the Internet doesn't belong to the us. I mean, it is the World Wide Web. Trump's America won't save the Internet from billionaires. However, in the months since Trump's inauguration, he has inadvertently handed Canada and the rest of the world a way out. He's given us the means, motive and opportunity to save the Internet and we must save it. If we don't, we're risking Canadian sovereignty, innovation, even our lives. Hi, I'm Cory Doctorow and this is the final episode of who Broke the Internet? Episode 4 Kick Em in the Dongle. Delaney Patra is a different kind of Internet royalty.

[Delaney Patra]

I'm a social media queen. I always have been. I'm completely obsessed with Facebook. I'm always on it, I'm always sharing stuff.

[Cory Doctorow]

Delaney lives in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, approximately 2,500. The closest major city is Yellowknife, 740 km away.

[Delaney Patra]

We're a very like tight knit community. Everybody takes care of everybody. Even if you don't like somebody, we still take care of each other. It doesn't really matter. But social media is a big part of our community.

[Cory Doctorow]

For Delaney, Facebook isn't just a way to keep in touch. It's infrastructure. A town bulletin board run on posts, tags and shares.

[Delaney Patra]

A lot of people come to my Facebook to share my posts because I keep everybody updated. And at one point I think I had like 3,000 friends.

[Cory Doctorow]

Storms, school closures, emergencies. If something was going on, people knew who to get updates from. And that was true when the unthinkable happened. Wildfires in the Northwest Territories are forcing.

[Donald Trump]

Thousands to flee their homes.

[Delaney Patra]

Eight areas are now under an evacuation order.

[Cory Doctorow]

All I seen was red flames on both sides of the highway.

[Donald Trump]

High winds fanned the flames, pushing them 75 kilometers in one day.

[Cory Doctorow]

It started getting darker and darker, and it looked like Armageddon. Throughout the summer of 2023, tens of thousands of people in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, and Alberta were ordered to evacuate as forest fires ripped through the north.

[Delaney Patra]

It was very smoky here. Working in this hospital here. The air circulation was not very good, so it was very strong most days. It was very gloomy and kind of like orange. And a lot of the time there.

[Cory Doctorow]

Was falling ash in Fort Smith. The community hunkered down and obsessively checked for updates from their social media town crier.

[Delaney Patra]

My phone was blowing up the whole time. It was insane. Everybody was kind of like, on edge on, like, when are we going to evacuate? Because there was fires coming from the north, fires coming from the southeast, and then fires coming from the west. So we were basically, like, in the center of three big, huge fires.

[Cory Doctorow]

Delaney helped her mom pack up the camper and sent her family ahead to Hay River, a town three hours away. She stayed behind to prep the hospital for evacuation.

[Delaney Patra]

Then we got the actual evacuation order. On the Saturday, officials say about 70%.

[Cory Doctorow]

Of the Fort Smith area have left. Anyone who was remaining in their home should get to the community's recreation center, where they will begin to airlift people out as well. Delaney joined the convoy out of town. When she got to Hay river, she met up with her family at a campground, along with hundreds of other evacuees. For just a moment, she could catch her breath.

[Delaney Patra]

We got to hang out for basically 24 hours before we were evacuated again.

[Cory Doctorow]

Delaney's family rushed to repack, got everyone, kids, dogs, back on the road.

[Delaney Patra]

Then we saw the smoke when we were driving, and within the hour of that, we had heard that there was people stuck in Hay river because the fire had rolled all the way over. Like, I think it traveled 50 kilometers within an hour.

[Cory Doctorow]

Being ahead on the road, worried about the people behind her, Delaney did what she usually did. She tried to post a news story on Facebook to update everybody about the situation. And that's when something strange happened.

[Delaney Patra]

The notification that came up was like talking about some news ban on Facebook or meta or something. I was like, what the heck is this? So then I tried posting it again and again, and nothing would work. And finally I was like, okay, now I have to go and figure out why this is happening. So I went on Google and I found out that news was all being blocked. I'm like, that's not good.

[Cory Doctorow]

Earlier that year, Canada had passed Bill C18, the online news Act. It was supposed to make big tech pay news organizations when their content appeared on platforms like Facebook. The idea was if news helped draw people to the site, publishers should get a cut. But Meta had another idea.

[Donald Trump]

Meta says it will soon start blocking Canadians from news content on Facebook and Instagram.

[Cory Doctorow]

It's in response to Bill C18, which was recently passed. Meta blocked all news links in Canada. Newspapers, TV stations, radio. If it came from a journalist, it was banished from your feed. And that included news about the fires.

[Delaney Patra]

We couldn't get, like, the right information. One person would share this, or this person would share this, and it wouldn't be correct. You'd have to physically go and click and click and click and try to find the right information on where we're going to go next.

[Cory Doctorow]

Meta hasn't responded to any of our requests for comment. But back when the law passed, they called it unworkable, said the only way to comply was to end news availability for people in Canada. They insisted evacuees could still access content from official government agencies and emergency services. But by then, Facebook had already made itself essential. And there was one group Delaney was particularly worried about.

[Delaney Patra]

We have a lot of elders on social media who also rely on posts being shared, like, from the news. I have my grandparents who would probably be on Facebook clicking a link to go to the news story instead of being like, oh, I'm going to go on Google and I'm going to try to find this. Whereas if somebody shared it, it would be more like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go click this and it's easier to get to, kind of thing. Yeah, I just found it not. Not safe at all.

[Cory Doctorow]

So she improvised.

[Delaney Patra]

I would take screenshots of news stories, but I'd have to, like, crop the picture so it didn't say anything else that would get the post ban. That's how I did it through the whole evacuation, was share, share, share screenshots. And I think I have, like, probably a thousand screenshots on my phone from that time.

[Cory Doctorow]

Delaney's family made it out. They. They set up at her uncle's, stayed with them until the fires passed and they could go back home. It's been years since the fires. Delaney's still on Facebook and she's still screenshotting news stories for her community.

[Delaney Patra]

Even to this day. It's still super Annoying that like you like, right now we have two people in Fort Smith who the RCMP are looking for and the news can't be shared on Facebook.

[Cory Doctorow]

And this is the thing. People like Delaney are the reason other people are on platforms like Facebook. She is why Facebook is good, yet she has none of the control. And leaving it's not really an option.

[Delaney Patra]

If there was another app other than Facebook, I would need to take everybody with me.

[Cory Doctorow]

And this is where Delaney's experience connects with Giannis's techno feudalism.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

What you're doing is you are creating reasons for other people to continue to engage with these platforms and you become dependent on them following you, which means that suddenly getting out of that platform and joining another one, you lose all these connections that you've created. Therefore, you are captured in what is essentially a digital fiscal.

[Cory Doctorow]

The answer here isn't, oh, leave Facebook. Teach Facebook a lesson. Because think of everything Delaney would lose Fort Smith would lose the Online News Act. Bill C18 was a law meant to rein in big tech. Bill C18 was a message to American tech companies. We demand that you wield your extraordinary power wisely. Bill C18 was not about taking away that power. And we need to shatter tech's power. And the way to do that is to make it easy for people to leave platforms and to make it easy for people to disinfitify the platforms they can't leave. We know how the United States got here. Decades of weak antitrust enforcement shaped an Internet that serves giants. DMCA 1201 sealed the deal protecting digital locks that made it illegal to go in and disinfitify those giants. But Canada, in case you missed the memo, is not the United States. So why are we playing by their rules? We don't have to. To understand how Canada can extract ourselves from this mess, we first have to go back to the story of how Canada got sucked into it. And we have to talk to the guy who tried to warn us. Could jailbreaking your Tesla be the best possible response to U.S. tariffs? Hey, this is Mattea Roach. I host another CBC podcast called Bookends. And that was just one of the many questions that Cory Doctorow and I dove into on my show. We also talked about his latest thriller novel picks and shovels on bookends. We get inside the creative minds of both emerging authors and best selling writers. So go check it out. Find bookends wherever you get your podcasts. The story of how Canada got pulled into America's ins shitternet starts as so many misguided things do in a windowless Senate hearing room.

[Donald Trump]

Colleagues, I will call this meeting of the Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee to order.

[Cory Doctorow]

It's June 2012. The Wonkarotti of Ottawa have come together for a meeting of the Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee to discuss Bill C11.

[Donald Trump]

Bill C11, An act to amend the Copyright Act.

[Cory Doctorow]

To this committee, this was Canada's first major copyright reform of the 21st century. A big gnarly legislative hairball stuffed with over a decade's worth of updates. Back when this process started, people were still ripping CDs. By 2012, though, we were carrying the Internet in our pockets. C11 was the end game in a long battle over the new rules of the Canadian Internet. In one Corner, repping Bill C11, former talk radio host turned parliamentarian, nicknamed the iPad Minister James Moore.

[Donald Trump]

The Minister of Canadian heritage, the Hon. James Moore. This legislation will strengthen our ability to compete in the global and digital economies.

[Cory Doctorow]

And in the other corner, the unofficial ombudsman of the Canadian Internet, Michael Geist.

[Donald Trump]

I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa where I hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E Commerce law.

[Cory Doctorow]

And when these two got into the legislative ring, it was gloves off for Internet policy.

[Donald Trump]

It's not the government's role to decide whether or not they should or the government.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

I want to know what you think.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah. No.

[Cory Doctorow]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper put James Moore in charge of getting C11 over the finish line. And he'd been with it nearly every step of the way. By the time Michael Geist was called in as an expert witness. He actually liked the bill C11.

[Donald Trump]

There are many positive elements in the bill that reflect a genuine attempt at striking a balance and developing forward looking copyright laws.

[Cory Doctorow]

You can just feel that but coming, can't you? In three, two.

[Donald Trump]

However, the bill also suffers from a very serious flaw that has been the source of considerable controversy and widespread opposition. The digital lock rules.

[Cory Doctorow]

Digital locks.

[Donald Trump]

The concern stems from C11's unbalanced position on digital locks, in which digital locks trump virtually all other rights.

[Cory Doctorow]

Okay, remember back in episode two when that Clinton official slunk off to the UN to make digital locks part of international Internet law Through the WIPO treaties, he forced America's hand so they would adopt laws that were way more extreme even than those treaties demanded. Canada also signed the WIPO Treaties Bill C11 was Canada figuring out what our version of the Internet treaties was going to look like? Well, after the US jumped off the Internet Empire State Building, they expected Canada to jump off the Internet CN Tower.

[Donald Trump]

The US had been Clear that it wanted copyright reform. But even more than just any old copyright reform, it wanted US style legal protections for these digital locks. It wanted essentially a Canadian equivalent of the dmca. And I can recall a number of US lobby groups talking as if this was a done deal. This was, you know, simply just get on with it. This is what you needed to do.

[Cory Doctorow]

And Michael thought, hell no. He'd seen what this kind of law had done in the us.

[Donald Trump]

There was no mystery about what the risks were and what the effect might be.

[Cory Doctorow]

The chilling of security research, the criminalization of tinkering the lock in to corporate platforms, the big hand of big tech coming down to crush the little guy for trying to give the people what we want. And Michael knew what was going to.

[Donald Trump]

Happen if people didn't begin to speak out. We were really going to face the prospect of simply getting railroaded with US style legislation.

[Cory Doctorow]

So Michael spoke out. He wrote op eds, he did interviews. In 2006, he launched a copyright pledge which called on Canadian politicians to reject lobbying for the entertainment industry. He publicly clashed with one prominent MP over that she'd been called out for taking funding from the recording industry.

[Donald Trump]

I think she called me like a user, right? Zealot or something like that. And there were bumper stickers that were.

[Cory Doctorow]

Created as part the of that insult. User rights. Zealot got turned into a rallying cry. Not just bumper stickers, but lawn signs staked out on Toronto's front yards.

[Donald Trump]

It really started to garner a bit of attention, so much so that at one point in time I had a government official come up to me and say, listen, you know what, if you're not careful, you're going to be seen as having a particular perspective on an issue. And I'm not sure that we're going to be able to bring you in on some of these issues. And I took that not as a warning to stop what I was doing, but rather to double down.

[Cory Doctorow]

So when the Harper government tried to introduce a bill in 2007, basically the DMCA with a maple leaf slapped on it, Michael was ready. So were Canadians.

[Donald Trump]

I created a Facebook group called Fair Copyright for Canada that ratcheted up the public outcry and the government blinks, which simply never happens.

[Cory Doctorow]

The government hit pause and for a moment it seemed like they were actually willing to hear people out.

[Donald Trump]

Let's just consult on this issue, okay? Perhaps we haven't been listening enough.

[Cory Doctorow]

They asked Canadians what we thought. 6,138 of us filed comments in opposition to the digital lock rules. Only 54 comments supported the proposal. In 2010, a new bill was tabled and James Moore went on CBC's Power in Politics to talk about it.

[Donald Trump]

Our bill was arrived at after a great deal of consultation and we think our bill gets it right.

[Cory Doctorow]

Just one problem.

[Donald Trump]

At the heart of that legislation was really anti circumvention legislation, so called legal protection for digital locks.

[Cory Doctorow]

The locks were still there. Michael Geist and the others raised a huge stink. This had gone on long enough, but this time when the critics spoke out, there were no more consultations. Instead, James Moore hit back. Those absolutists out there who are babyish in their approach to copyright legislation, who think that any idea that copyright reform would be an attack on individual citizens are people who frankly don't get it. They don't believe in any copyright reform whatsoever. Moore's full speech has been lost to time. But in addition to babyish, another epithet stood out. He called the people who opposed his bill radical extremists. He didn't name names, but Michael already dubbed a user, right? Zealot was pretty sure he was just collecting titles at that point.

[Donald Trump]

Perhaps at that time he thought he was taking a nice swing at me. I thought in many ways that it caused more harm than good. It seemed to me that if you were going to call opponents or critics of this legislation radical extremists, you needed to recognize you were calling librarians extremists and educators extremists and many creators who were against this legislation extremists and consumer groups extremists.

[Cory Doctorow]

We reached out to James Moore for comment in an email. He told us that he has great respect for Michael, but that quote, Mr. Geist has a unique position on IP and digital locks. There is not one political party that agrees with him. And that's true. Nearly every Canadian who accepted that governmental invitation to weigh in on the proposal agreed with Michael. But our political parties didn't seem to care. Parliament dissolved for the 2011 election and the bill briefly died on the order paper. But when the Conservatives came back with a majority later that year, they didn't just revive the bill, they fast tracked it and they gave it a new number, Bill C11.

[Donald Trump]

They decided to introduce it in Montreal rather than in Ottawa. And there's a couple of reasons why you might introduce a bill outside of Ottawa in the afternoon, as it happens, and that's largely because you're fearful of the kind of press coverage it's going to get.

[Cory Doctorow]

When Michael finally got his hands on the bill, he immediately saw that Canada wasn't just going to copy the U.S. our version of America's law was even worse. We weren't even going to get America's minor, mostly toothless safeguards against the dangers of digital locks. No one at WIPO was holding a gun to our head over this. So why was Canada going so far? Who were we doing this for? The answer, of course was right there under our border.

[Donald Trump]

The US Would have with Canada any number of different trade related concerns. Sometimes it's about access to our dairy industry, sometimes it's about lumber. And for a time, copyright was that issue.

[Cory Doctorow]

And the United States had a particular way of getting what they wanted. They made a no digital lock law, no terror, free access to U.S. markets, no free trade with the United States.

[Donald Trump]

Honorable Senators, I call this meeting with the Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee to order.

[Cory Doctorow]

And that's how In June of 2012, a copyright bill ended up before the Senate Trade Committee.

[Donald Trump]

Senators, this afternoon the Senate referred Bill C11, An act to amend the Copyright act, to this committee for its examination. By the time you get to the Senate, you're really at that stage in the bottom of the ninth. And so what you're really hoping for is one last chance to convince enough senators to say, hey, there's a big enough problem here that you need to exercise some of the powers you have to simply say no.

[Cory Doctorow]

So Michael made his case. He urged them create an exception. Do it now.

[Donald Trump]

Recommend a new exception be created by regulation before the bill takes effect, clarifying that it is only a violation to circumvent a digital lock where the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright.

[Cory Doctorow]

This approach, he invoked the Constitution.

[Donald Trump]

Constitutional scholars have warned of the constitutional risks of a digital lock approach.

[Cory Doctorow]

That is, he addressed well worn fears about piracy head on.

[Donald Trump]

Canada has shown the fastest decline in piracy rates in the world world over the last five years.

[Cory Doctorow]

He called on business expertise.

[Donald Trump]

Business experts have noted that the Canadian digital economy has succeeded without this very restrictive approach.

[Cory Doctorow]

And then he brought it all home with a warning.

[Donald Trump]

Let me conclude the decision to reject the amendments to address this concern and leave the digital lock rules intact effectively has the potential to create disadvantageous barriers for both creators and educators and stifle innovation. I think that's a cause for concern, not celebration. Thank you very much, Mr. Geist.

[Cory Doctorow]

And that was it. He'd made his case. The Senators thanked him and shuffled on to the next topic.

[Donald Trump]

One of the things that I think I learned throughout advocacy on a number of digital policy issues is that about 95% of the fight takes place before the bill is ever introduced, and I thought that I did pretty well, but didn't have any real expectations that much would change.

[Cory Doctorow]

Michael was right. Exactly one week later, June 29, 2012, Bill C11 passed. Michael called it a strategic surrender to U.S. pressure. Canada's very own DMCA, digital locks and.

[Donald Trump]

All, they ultimately simply caved on the issue.

[Cory Doctorow]

The twist, of course, was that the vast majority of the companies empowered to hold the keys to all these locks weren't Canadian. The effects were immediate. A Toronto startup trying to make public data easier to access suddenly couldn't use the software they'd built. Accessibility tools for blind people faced compliance risks. Even digitizing public domain books became a legal minefield. The chilling effects had come north. James Moore rejects that idea. In an email, he told us there is no evidence of a chilling and that Canada can't be a global outlier on intellectual property protections and that Canada has obligations to our trading partners to protect ip. When we asked if he still stands by the digital lock rules, he told us yes. The digital lock's provisions have aged well. But in the years since we know what happened, American monopolies boomed and technologists everywhere were blocked from fixing stuff or making it better. And as American platforms and shittified, Canada's response has been to try to make them behave, pay for the news. You profit from police, harmful content, moderate bad behavior. But for platforms to exercise that power over their users, they must have power over us. We need to take their power away, not beg them to use it wisely. And now, thanks to President Donald Trump of all people, we finally have a way out. Breaking tonight, Donald Trump declares a trade war on Canada as sweeping tariffs take effect. Devastating tariffs upend one of the most productive trading relationships in the world. In 2024, Donald Trump called Canadian aluminum a national security threat. He made up some nonsense about Canadian fentanyl, and then he whacked us with text tariffs again and again. And this, this is an opportunity. Now that Trump has reneged on free trade and torched the global trade system in the process, maybe we should all stop playing by American rules.

[Donald Trump]

We need to think hard about the laws themselves. That in many ways, much of digital sovereignty is actually about making sovereign choices, Canadian choices, about what we want our legislation to look like.

[Cory Doctorow]

So here's what I Stop wasting time on laws that just treat the symptoms of the insidernet. We'll never be able to regulate these companies until we take a crucial first step. Cut off their source of power. And that starts with repealing our digital lock laws. Every Time an American tech executive orders a product team to turn the devices and services we rely on into a ten foot pile of shit. Give a Canadian technologist the chance to build a 4 meter ladder that we can use to climb over it. Privacy blockers, scrapers that let you leave Facebook and Twitter but still see the things your friends send you there. Alternative clients and operating system hacks that protect your privacy while you use the web or your phone. If they could break those locks, developers could build new tools that would work with existing apps and sites instead of having to beg permission from American tech companies who get to say no to anyone who threatens their business model. We could move our playlists, our communities, our data, take them with us to platforms that respect our rights. Makers and tinkerers could build those new platforms and better services on. On top of the Web we already have. It's how we turn the Internet from a walled garden into a public space.

[Giannis Varoufakis]

Doing all the things that will seriously reduce the power that the owners of cloud capital have over us.

[Cory Doctorow]

The Internet's not broken because people stopped caring. It's broken because a few powerful companies locked it up and got our governments to declare those locks off limits. And the politicians who could have stopped them, they were warned. John Sherman warned them, Pam Samuelson warned them. Lina Khan warned them. Michael Geist warned them. I warned them. But the mythology of Silicon Valley warned they moved fast. They broke things. They built monopolies, and our governments protected them while they did it. Meanwhile, we were told they were geniuses, not mediocre monopolists that we couldn't afford to get in the way. But that story's done. It's time for a new one. Pam Samuelson, the lawyer who tried to stop the dmca, is like, no, actually, it's our device. We should be able to do with it what we want and therefore just shut up. Because notwithstanding all those locks and shareholder value and monopolies, the Internet is worth saving. Clive Thompson, the Internet culture writer, puts it this way. I think connecting with other people is still the great gift that the Internet has given us from the very beginning. Like, I think it is exactly what those nerds back in the 60s and 70s imagined it to be. What people cherish in the world is connection to other people. Seeing what they do, hearing what they have to say, being an audience for them, and having them be an audience for you. These are incredibly powerful things. Ed Zitron certainly thinks so. When I first logged onto the Internet, and I feel this to this day, I was so grateful because I was so, so lonely. I was so lonely. Corey so the Internet allowed me to talk to people that I love. I met you through the Internet. It's magical, and I love it for them. Emmanuel Goldstein, the legendary phone freak and hacker.

[Donald Trump]

The Internet as it is now, it's terrible what has happened to it. Doesn't mean we can't make more networks.

[Cory Doctorow]

And do it better.

[Donald Trump]

Doesn't mean we can't come up with different technology and just not make the same mistakes. It's going to take a conscious effort. It's going to take a lot of learning. It's going to take a lot of pain. But what choice do we have? We have to keep moving forward. What inspires me is the unknown. You know, what hasn't come around yet, what hasn't been invented, what hasn't been thought of.

[Cory Doctorow]

We're in a wild moment. Everything is up for grabs. We're all finding ourselves in conversations that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Conversations about what the world could and should be. I'm asking you to take this idea into those conversations, to insist that we want weaker, smaller platforms, not tech giants who pinky swear that this time they'll behave themselves. If the that's how Canadians understand this problem, then when people in power cast about for an idea on how to fix the Internet, they won't get suckered into giving the platforms yet another lock they can use to take us and our data and our relationships and our businesses and our news and our politics and our culture and our jobs and our educations and our whole lives hostage. And that's where this ends, at the locked door, the moment before we all decide to build another way out. That's all for who Broke the Internet? In this episode, you heard clips from CBC and the Canadian Senate, CBS and ctv. Thank you to all of our guests who you heard on the show, as well as Andrea Downing, Molly White and Gary Kramlich at the cbc. Special thanks to Imogen Burchard, Willow Smith, Aloysius Wong, Evan Agard, Anise Haidari, as well as Kate Zieman and John Scaife at CBC Archives. The executive team at CBC Podcasts is Chris Oak, Cecil Fernandez and Tanya Springer at Understood. Roshni Nair is our coordinating producer. Mixing and sound design by Julie Musieli. Our story editor is Veronica Simmons. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe Blokos. The director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. The managing editor of CBC News Podcasts is Karen Burgess. Who Broke the Internet was written and produced by Matt muse, our showrunner A.C. rowe, and me, your host, Cory Doctorow, reminding you to seize the means of computation. If this season got you fired up about how the Internet got so broken and who's benefiting from that, you might want to check out earlier seasons of Understood. Season one, the Naked Emperor, is all about crypto Web three and the big scammy promises that were never meant to deliver. It's like peeling an onion. Made of vibes and venture capital. Season two dives deep into pornhub sex work and surveillance. And what happens when we let Moral Panic write Tech policy? Go give them a listen. They're worth your time. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.