Incoming: Spare Slots for Freelance Work in 2023

I will soon have spare slots in my freelance writing schedule for regular weekly or monthly work, and major projects. Here are the main areas that I've been covering, some for nearly three decades. Any commissioning editors interested in talking about them or related subjects, please contact me at glyn.moody@gmail.com. I am also available to speak on these topics at relevant conferences around in the world, something I have done many times in the past. 

Privacy, Surveillance, Encryption, Freedom of Speech 

Over the last decade, I have written hundreds of articles about these crucial areas, for Techdirt, Privacy News Online, and Ars Technica. Given the increasing challenges facing society in these areas, they will remain an important focus for my work in the future. 

Copyright

I have also written many hundreds of articles about copyright. These have been mainly for Techdirt, where I have published nearly 1,900 posts, CopyBuzz, and Walled Culture. Most recently, I have written a 300-page book, also called Walled Culture, detailing the history of digital copyright, its huge problems, and possible solutions. Free ebook versions of its text are available. 

EU Tech Policy and EU Trade Agreements: DSA, DMA, TTIP, CETA 

I have written about EU tech policy for CopyBuzz, focussing on the EU Copyright Directive, and for Privacy News Online, dealing with major initiatives such as the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the Artificial Intelligence Act. Another major focus of my writing has been so-called "trade agreements" like TTIP, CETA, TPP and TISA. "So-called", because they go far beyond traditional discussions of tariffs, and have major implications for many areas normally subject to democratic decision making, notably tech policy. In addition to 51 TTIP Updates that I originally wrote for Computerworld UK. I have covered this area extensively for Techdirt and Ars Technica, including a major feature on TTIP for the latter. 

Free Software/Open Source

I started covering this topic in 1995, wrote the first mainstream article on Linux for Wired in 1997, and the first (and still only) detailed history of the subject, Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution in 2001, for which I interviewed the world’s top 50 hackers at length. 

Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Government, Open Everything 

As the ideas underlying openness, sharing and online collaboration have spread, so has my coverage of them, particularly for Techdirt. I wrote one of the most detailed histories of Open Access, for Ars Technica, and its history and problems also form Chapter 3 of my book Walled Culture, mentioned above. 

Europe 

As a glance at some of my 580,000 (sic) posts to Twitter, and 18,000 posts on Mastodon, will indicate, I read news sources in a number of languages (Italian, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Georgian in descending order of capability.) This means I can offer a fully European perspective on any of the topics above - something that may be of interest to publications wishing to provide global coverage that goes beyond purely anglophone reporting. The 25,000 or so followers that I have across these social networks also means that I can push out links to my articles, something that I do as a matter of course to boost their readership and encourage engagement. 

Glyn Moody 

London 2023

Exploring Entitlement Economics

Bradley M. Kuhn has a thought-provoking post with the title "Proprietary Software Licensing Produces No New Value In Society". Here's a key section:

I've often been paid for programming, but I've been paid directly for the hours I spent programming. I never even considered it reasonable to be paid again for programming I did in the past. How is that fair, just, or quite frankly, even necessary? If I get a job building a house, I can't get paid every day someone uses that house. Indeed, even if I built the house, I shouldn't get a royalty paid every time the house is resold to a new owner. Why should software work any differently? Indeed, there's even an argument that software, since it's so much more trivial to copy than a house, should be available gratis to everyone once it's written the first time.

He then goes on to point out:

Thus, this line of reasoning gives me yet another reason to oppose proprietary software: proprietary licensing is simply a valueless transaction. It creates a burden on society and gives no benefit, other than a financial one to those granted the monopoly over that particular software program. Unfortunately, there nevertheless remain many who want that level of control, because one fact cannot be denied: the profits are larger.

For example, Mårten Mikos recently argued in favor of these sorts of large profits. He claims that to "benefit massively from Open Source" (i.e., to get really rich), business models like “Open Core” are necessary. Mårten's argument, and indeed most pro-Open-Core arguments, rely on this following fundamental assumption: for FLOSS to be legitimate, it must allow for the same level of profits as proprietary software. This assumption, in my view, is faulty. It's always true that you can make bigger profits by ignoring morality. Factories can easily make more money by completely ignoring environmental issues; strip mining is always very profitable, after all. However, as a society, we've decided that the environment is worth protecting, so we have rules that do limit profit maximization because a more important goal is served.

This analysis is cognate with my recent post about the absence of billion-dollar turnover open source companies: the fact is, as a pure-play free software outfit, you just can't make so much money as you can with proprietary software, because you generally have to sell scarce things like people's time, and that doesn't scale.

But the implications of this point are much wider, I think.

As Kuhn emphasies:

I'll just never be fully comfortable with the idea that workers should get money for work they already did. Work is only valuable if it produces something new that didn't exist in the world before the work started, or solves a problem that had yet to be solved. Proprietary licensing and financial bets on market derivatives have something troubling in common: they can make a profit for someone without requiring that someone to do any new work. Any time a business moves away from actually producing something new of value for a real human being, I'll always question whether the business remains legitimate.

This idea of getting money for work already done is precisely how copyright is regarded these days. It's not enough for a creator to be paid once for his or her work: they want to be paid every time it is performed or copies made of performances.

So ingrained is this idea that anyone suggesting the contrary - like that doughty young Eleanor - is regarded as some kind of alien from another planet, and is mocked by those whose livelihoods depend upon this kind of entitlement economics.

But just as open source has cut down the fat profits of proprietary software companies, so eventually will the exorbitant profits of the media industry be cut back to reasonable levels based on how much work people do - because, as Kuhn notes, there really is no justification for anything more.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Open Source Management

Yes, really. Here's an excerpt:

It is open source software and its social media descendants such as wikis and blogs that are making some businesses ready to consider openness. These tools are a great start, but it's the way you use them that matters. If employers want to encourage a culture of honesty and caring in their work environment, the most important thing for employers to do is to begin with themselves.

Reasonable, no?