Today’s links Middlemen without enshittification: Not every author can be a DIY author. The Bezzle excerpt (Part II): Let’s learn about copyright termination! Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Middlemen without enshittification (permalink) Enshittification describes how platforms go bad, which is also how the internet goes bad, because the internet is made of platforms, which is weird, because platforms are intermediaries and we were promised that the internet would disintermediate the world: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel The internet did disintermediate a hell of a lot of intermediaries – that is, “middlemen” – but then it created a bunch more of these middlemen, who coalesced into a handful of gatekeepers, or as the EU calls them “VLOPs” (Very Large Online Platforms, the most EU acronym ever). Which raises two questions: first, why did so many of us end up flocking to these intermediaries’ sites, and how did those sites end up with so much power? To answer the first question, I want you to consider one of my favorite authors: Crad Kilodney (RIP): https://archive.org/details/thecradkilodneypapers When I was growing up, Crad was a fixture on the streets of Toronto. All through the day and late into the evening, winter or summer, Crad would stand on the street with a sign around his neck (“Very famous Canadian author, buy my books, $2” or sometimes just “Margaret Atwood, buy my books, $2”). He wrote these deeply weird, often…Pluralistic: Middlemen without enshittification; The Bezzle excerpt (Part II) (19 Feb 2024)