Chokepoint Capitalism

{ "name":"Chokepoint Capitalism", "description":"Renowned sci-fi author and activist Cory Doctorow has come to the festival to tell a story that we sure wish was science fiction or fantasy. Do you know what the royalties are for the authors with books at this festival, or how much musicians get paid every time you play their songs on Spotify? How exactly are those very few dollars and pennies calculated? (The Beatles had to split a penny four ways for each song, and times aren’t a-changin’ much.) What about the opaque film and TV industry? Prepare to be fascinated, informed, shocked, and energized by this discussion of one of the most important books of the decade, Chokepoint Capitalism. As Margaret Atwood put it: “Chokepoint Capitalism tells us how the vampires crashed the party and provides protective garlic.” Doctorow and his co-writer, scholar Rebecca Gitlin, lift the curtains on creative industries to reveal startling strategies that Big Tech and Big Content use to capture creative labor markets. They detail how corporations erect “chokepoints” between creators and audiences, allowing them to lock in artists and producers, eliminate competition, and extract far more than their fair share of revenues from creative labor. Come hear the specifics on Amazon’s strategies that radically change the economics of book publishing and hurt writers; Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media; and the Big Three record labels’ coercive tactics to up their own margins at the cost of artists. Giblin and Doctorow give shovel-ready ideas for shattering such chokepoints so we can unite to take back the power and profit for the artists we love.", "startDate":"2023-05-07", "endDate":"2023-05-07", "startTime":"11:00", "endTime":"12:00", "location":"Freight & Salvage", "options":[ "Apple", "Google", "iCal", "Microsoft365", "MicrosoftTeams", "Outlook.com", "Yahoo" ], "timeZone":"America/Los_Angeles", "iCalFileName":"Reminder-Event" }