Your Software Is Not Free
My thoughts on the recent encroachment of politics into computers
By MARTIN REZNY
Whether it’s Blizzard buckling under the pressure of its Chinese investors and customers by banning and fining a supporter of freedom for Hong Kong who won a Hearthstone tournament in Taiwan, or Adobe canceling all Creative Cloud subscriptions for the entire country of Venezuela without a refund because of Trump’s sanctions, this has certainly not been a great weekend for the user.
Yep, that was just the last weekend.
I don’t normally do news, but this is enough of it happening to make me comment on what I’ve been thinking about the policies of certain software companies, specifically including Blizzard and Adobe, for quite a while now. Given that Blizzard has made most of my favorite games and given that I vastly prefer Adobe software over any alternatives, I’m deeply concerned.
Even the company that I work for, Red Hat, “the largest open source company in the world”, doesn’t feel entirely safe from this type of bullshit now, since it’s been recently acquired by IBM. There haven’t been any issues so far, but unlike Red Hat and much like Blizzard or Adobe, IBM’s mission is to just make money, and as I’ll try to explain, that’s what’s always problematic. It also doesn’t help that Red Hat’s business model is based mainly on subscriptions.
At least in the case of open source software, though, canceling a support service still leaves the users with software that they can use. Unfortunately, open source software doesn’t exactly help gamers, since most games aren’t optimized for Linux. As for video editing, try doing it in Premiere Pro and then in Blender, and then tell me that it is an adequate alternative. Open source is maybe making strides in both of these areas, but it isn’t there yet.
Based on the opinions that I’ve heard so far, the debate around subscriptions and censorship seems to involve either purely economic arguments like “but the Chinese market is bigger” or “you can’t blame a corporation for trying to maximize its revenue”, arguing over the practical benefits of the subscription model, or political posturing based on which political team you support. I don’t think any of that is the point here.
Users vs. Usurpers
As usual, it is about power, power to shape culture, which in turn exerts pressure on individual identity. In a globally interconnected world that cannot afford to settle its feuds with large-scale war anymore, you can only “win” by forcing others to do (or not do) things through other means.
If you are China and you can make American companies apply Chinese censorship outside of Chinese borders, taking global communication platforms away from your ideological opponents, then you’re winning. If you’re America and you can take away the means to produce competitive cultural content from the citizens of Venezuela, then you’re winning.
Now, if you are not China or America, but instead an individual human user, you may want to have the power to express yourself regardless of what any country prefers, to which things like entertainment platforms or creative tools are essential. What’s becoming clear is that corporations only interested in profits are not going to help you gain or retain any power.
In political philosophy, there’s this phrase, “might is right”, in common usage relating to Max Weber’s concept of “power” being the ability to coerce people using violence. While it may be thought of as a form of power, violence is clearly not the only force motivating people to do or not do things. In the case of corporations, the abilities to withhold goods and services and to enable or prevent the spreading of messages to audiences are their forms of power.
What’s worse, however, is that a profit-oriented corporation doesn’t usually get to wield its power directly, but is instead jerked around by its customer base (mob is right) or states or shareholders (elites are right). By any honest assessment, mobs and elites can be wrong, and often are, both factually and ethically, which means that maybe they aren’t the best wielders of power. Maybe individuals know better what’s good for them.
Maybe it’s as simple as individuals being the only ones who truly care about individual freedom and well-being, while the other power-wielding entities naturally have it in their interest to repress individuals. Mobs are interested in prohibitions and lynching. Elites are interested in enriching and empowering themselves at the expense of everyone else. Individuals, while they may opt to join a mob or become an elite, generally just want freedom.
If you want to protect user freedom, then all you need to do is to make users as immune to coercive forms of power as possible. This means that software must not be possible to take away from them, or their right to participate or any of their accomplishments, regardless of their personal opinions or what group they’re part of. That’s what a liberal democracy is supposed to be — protecting the rights of minorities from mobs and elites, for the good of all.
The World’s Simplest Dilemma
It’s not complicated, not in the slightest. Don’t give away your power to people in whose interest it is to abuse it against you. Don’t support usurpers. That’s irrational and unethical, you lose, game over. The other side of the argument can spin economic or traditionalist arguments all day, but practicality or convenience don’t absolve anyone of their supreme ethical responsibility to not be a shit person, to not condone, let alone inflict, suffering on others.
China is not right. Trump is not right. They just want to “win” by making everyone else pretend that they believe that they’re great, to make everyone else their bitch. What a childish, selfish, unhealthy, destructive, petty mentality. They don’t care about people, not even their own people. They will only make everyone’s lives more miserable to the extent to which everyone will let them. Corporations without a mission are always going to let them.
To be clear, China and Trump may end up winning, getting what they want, they may end up hoarding all the money in the world, but that isn’t going to make them right. Wrong may win. Bad guys can win. Games make more money than ever, but are objectively not better for it. Adobe refusing to offer offline versions of their software to their customers that users could own is unethical and only benefits Adobe. Any other pluses of these developments are irrelevant, as they can never outweigh greater wrongs.
It doesn’t matter, or rather, shouldn’t matter, whether you are in support of Hong Kong’s independence or not, whether you support Venezuela, or Trump, or whatever. If you in any way support power being taken away from citizens, and you’re a citizen, you are creating a world in which power will eventually be taken away from you. Protecting those you disagree with is protecting yourself from those who disagree with you. Either everyone is free, or no one is. A hint — everyone being free is the option that is objectively more right.
We were supposed to learn this lesson after WW2, the “first they came for x but I said nothing” scenario, but I guess every few generations or so, the world has to relearn a version of it again. Oh I have all the faith that the outcome of this lesson will always be the same, since being a selfish asshole is inevitably self-destructive and ugly in hindsight, but the mechanism by which the lesson gets learned must include people actually standing up for themselves.
I understand that this attitude often gets confused with lofty idealism, but there’s nothing abstract or fantastical about it. Countries run by assholes driven only by self-interest collapse from within. That’s how empires crumble in practice. Using lies and force to rule others makes others root against you, it makes your own population rebel, it makes your culture hollow and unappealing, it makes you lose allies. If you’re a corporation, it makes you lose your competitive edge, customers, best talent, and functional integrity.
That’s how the Soviet Bloc collapsed. It wasn’t defeated militarily, the comrades were drowning in weapons. It was defeated by the other side of the fence having more goods, better music, and fewer unhappy people. The elites had all the control, but no trust of the citizenry, and then the elites got old and extremely out of touch. At the end, in my country, it only took a few students being beaten and the majority of the population said “no more”.
It may take much longer in China, a much bigger country which hasn’t entirely run out of trust or momentum yet, but the arc appears to be exactly the same. The question is, will the big software and tech companies allow themselves to go down along with China (or Trump)? After all, in communist and fascist regimes, corporations were only too happy to take the means of production away from individuals and to discriminate against anyone disfavored by the ruling elites. Is that what we’re doing now, again?
Who the hell wants that?
I would think that what people want is to own what they paid for and to not be denied service or ability to express themselves. Am I wrong? Is it too much to ask? Be my guest and try to prove me wrong.
Or I guess Blizzard could settle this by deleting my account.
