Nov 27, 2019, 12:12 PM ETInterview, Fireside Chat

Cory Doctorow and Joe Betts-Lacroix on Adversarial Interoperability

Adversarial interoperability is defined as plugging a product into a competitor's system without permission, often specifically to capture their customers, contrasting with cooperative interoperability (shared standards) or indifference.
Historical precedent includes the Australian student who reverse-engineered Microsoft's proprietary SMB protocol to create Samba, allowing non-Windows systems to function on Microsoft LANs, and Apple's internal reverse-engineering of Microsoft Office formats to launch the iWork suite in the mid-2000s.
Legal landscape shift: In the 1980s and 90s, adversarial tools faced few legal hurdles due to the absence of software patents, weak DMCA reverse-engineering enforcement, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) not yet covering Terms of Service (ToS) violations.
Current barriers now include a "thicket" of software patents, DMCA claims regarding circumvention, ToS violations treated as hacking, and tortious interference claims, which effectively prevent startups from building compatible products against dominant firms.
Mint example: Aaron Patzer built a successful financial startup by scraping bank websites (adversarial interoperability), leveraging voluntary user credentials to aggregate data in the absence of APIs, eventually selling for a "gazillion dollars" to a major financial corporation that now protects its own monopoly.

HiQ Labs vs. LinkedIn (9th Circuit): A judge ruled that LinkedIn could not use the CFAA to prevent HiQ from scraping public profiles and was barred from using technical countermeasures (like blocking IPs) against the scraper, establishing a pro-competitive public interest precedent.
Blizzard precedent: Legal actions by Blizzard and Facebook previously established that violating a ToS could constitute a felony under the CFAA, a standard Corey Doctorow argues should be overturned legislatively.
Risk of early exit: Startups utilizing "illegal-ish" interoperability tools may be forced to sell early to avoid the legal costs of defending against dominant incumbents who can leverage these new legal tools.
Normative shift theory: Doctorow argues that businesses can drive legal change by creating a constituency that loves their product, generating surplus capital to fund legal battles, and shifting social norms to make previously "fraudulent" acts socially acceptable.
State monopoly risk: Incumbents like Facebook, Google, and Apple attempt to become "state-like" monopolies by arguing they are the only entities capable of handling scale-based harms (e.g., moderation), thereby justifying their dominance and preventing regulation or breakup.

Industrial vs. Non-Industrial: Doctorow advocates for distinguishing between industrial copyright enforcement (for-profit, high-stakes) and non-industrial use (personal, social, fan fiction), arguing the law should not regulate everyday human interaction.
Copyright reform priority: The most critical reform is stopping the application of industrial entertainment rules to non-industrial contexts (e.g., fans, families, civic discourse), where the law is currently too complex for laypeople to navigate.
Fair use expansion: Doctorow supports a hybrid model combining US fair use principles (judicial flexibility) with European fair dealing (enumerated exceptions) to protect transformative works like The Wind Done Gone (an unauthorized sequel to Gone with the Wind).
Streaming fallacy: The concept of "streaming" as distinct from copying is described as a "consensus hallucination"; technically, streaming involves making copies in the client's memory, which makes the current copyright model functionally incoherent for internet use.
Historical cycle of piracy: Every disruptive technology (radio, phonograms, VCRs, Napster) was initially sued by incumbent industries as piracy but was later adopted as legitimate art and distribution, often by the same incumbents once they shifted roles.

Epistemological crisis: The rise in conspiracy theories is linked to market concentration and the subversion of "truth-seeking exercises" (regulators, experts) by parochial corporate interests, eroding public trust in objective processes.
Real-world corroboration: Conspiratorial thinking gains traction because real conspiracies exist (e.g., the opioid crisis, the Sackler family's role, Russian state-funded opposition groups), making the public skeptical of all official narratives.
Market concentration effects: High industry concentration (e.g., cable operators, tech giants) creates "implicit conspiracies" where firms agree on mutually beneficial anti-competitive policies (e.g., no-poaching agreements in California) without explicit collusion.
Algorithmic sorting: Platforms do not "mind control" users but efficiently find people with existing traits (e.g., susceptibility to racism or conspiracy theories) who were previously too dispersed to organize, facilitating radicalization.

Peak Indifference Model: Problems (climate change, lack of encryption) accumulate "debt" until a tipping point is reached where indifference becomes unsustainable and a crisis of faith in the system occurs.
Science Fiction as strategy: Doctorow encourages Y Combinator founders to use sci-fi not as prediction but as a "menu of choices" to imagine diverse futures and avoid Silicon Valley groupthink, citing his own work inspiring the creation of wearable tech.
Resilience vs. Dystopia: The future market demand lies not in "bunkers" for the wealthy but in infrastructure for graceful recovery and community resilience after system breakdowns, drawing on historical examples of disaster cooperation (e.g., the 1906 San Francisco earthquake).
Strategic advice for scraping: Founders should proceed with adversarial interoperability (like scraping) to build constituencies that will drive legislative clarity, as the 9th Circuit has shown a willingness to support such pro-competitive activities.
The "Foot on Both Fields" approach: Successful disruption does not require users to abandon incumbents instantly; rather, tools should allow users to maintain a connection to the old system while transitioning to the new one, a pattern seen in the history of cable TV and other media.