Pluralistic: Sorry, eh (13 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow:
Like all the best Americans, I'm Canadian, and while I have lived abroad for most of this century, I still hew faithfully to our folkways, which is why I'd like to start this essay by apologizing.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry! I'm a technology writer, which means I'm supposed to be encouraging you to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the money-losingest technology in human history, AI. No one has ever lost as much money as the AI companies.
There is no way to operate one of Nvidia's big AI-optimized GPUs without losing money. The owners of these GPUs who have lost the least money are the ones who rushed into buying GPUs without ensuring they'd have electricity to power them, and have been forced to leave their GPUs to age in warehouses. The minute they plug in those GPUs, they'll start losing money, and the more they use them, the more money they'll lose.
I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows.
I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.
I don't have any advice for how to do that. I'm sorry!
As Canada contemplates our response to the collapse of the American empire and its alliances with the world, the cornerstone of our current strategy is sacrificing our dollars, water and energy in order to become more dependent on America, in a weird and improbable bet that we will figure out how to make millions of Canadians unemployed. I'm sorry, that just doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
If I can beg your indulgence, I'd like to propose an alternative.
Back in 2012, Canada passed Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. It's a law that bans Canadian companies from modifying America's digital tech exports. We passed it because the US threatened us with tariffs:
Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell jailbreaking kits for phones and consoles, which would let Canadian sellers offer goods and services to Canadian buyers outside of US app stores, sidestepping the 30% app tax that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony and others impose on our digital economy.
Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell mechanics a universal diagnostic tool that turns every "check engine" light into a useful error message. Instead, Canadian mechanics have to send $10,000/year/manufacturer to America for a proprietary car diagnosis kit.
Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't offer ink cartridge manufacturers software that will ensure their cartridges work in the printers Canadians buy from the American inkjet cartel. As a result, Canadians have to spend $10,000/gallon on ink, making it the most expensive fluid a Canadian civilian can purchase without a government permit.
Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell our farmers software that lets them start using their tractors as soon as they've fixed them. Instead, after a Canadian farmer fixes their tractor, they have to wait for a service call from a rep for a US ag-tech monopolist who'll type an unlock code into the tractor's keyboard and charge the farmer a couple hundred bucks for this "service."
Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't revive one of the most successful technologies in modern history: the home video recorder. Remember those? First we had VCRs, then we had digital successors like the Tivo. Canadian law says you're allowed to record the video that comes into your home, whether by broadcast, cable, satellite or streaming. But Bill C-11 bans a Canadian company from selling you a gadget that lets you save the video you get in an app or from a set-top box.
It's crazy: we have actually uninvented the VCR! You know how everyone is pissed off about their favourite shows being yanked from the streaming services? Repeal C-11 and you could just save those shows forever. Repeal C-11 and you'd kill the grinchy little racket that services like Prime pull, where Christmas cartoons are in the free tier from March to November, and cost $3.99 to watch between November and March. Just tape 'em in August and save 'em for later!
It doesn't stop there. Remember when Facebook banned all links to the news in Canada? Repeal C-11 and a Canadian company could sell you an alternative Facebook app that puts the news back into your feed! Repeal C-11 and Canadians could get an alternative app that replaces all the streaming services, letting you search and stream every service you have an account for in one place, mixing in Canadian content from the NFB, public broadcasters, and commercial services.
Virtually every Canadian ministry, corporation and household is locked into a US Big Tech silo. Any of these could be shut down at a single word from Trump to any of the tech giants who've lined up to do his bidding. Repeal C-11 and we can extract all our data from these walled gardens/prisons and get it onto auditable, trustworthy, transparent open source software, hosted in data-centres located safely on Canadian soil.
If there's one thing Canadians are good it, it's going to other countries and extracting their wealth. We're world champions at it.
America's tech monopolies have sequestered trillions of dollars worth of monopoly rents on their balance sheets. This is dead capital, being pissed up the wall on nonsense like stock buybacks and data-centres and grotesque executive bonuses.
As Jeff Bezos said to the publishers: "Your margin is my opportunity."
America's tech trillions represent a rich and readily accessible seam that we can extract – safely, from our own country! – and turn into our billions, and an exportable line of products that the whole world would beat a path to our door to buy.
Look, I'm sorry. I don't have any ideas for how Canada can get to a better future by lighting billions on fire in a bet on a failing technology whose dubious profitability depends on ruining our job market, our power grid and our water supply, which will tie the American political situation to our ankles.
All I've got is an idea for how we can make insanely profitable products that people really want to buy, that will insulate us from cyberattacks by US tech giants who are in thrall to Trump, and that Americans will pay us to use in order to free themselves from the tech giants who abuse them, too.
I'm really sorry. I know it's out of step with the times, but all I have is ideas that make money, make us safer, make us richer, and make our technology better.
On the other hand, those chatbots sure are cute. It's funny when they "hallucinate."
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Associate professor, David Eaves, writes about the essential role of the commodification of services in digital sovereignty. The questions to ask on the way to digital sovereignty are not as much about owning the stack but about the ability to move workloads. In other words, open standards for protocols, file formats, and more are the prerequisites. The same applies to the software supply chain. However, as we recently discussed here, PHK recently pointed out that Free and Open Source reference implementations would be of great benefit. Associate professor Eaves writes:
There is growing and valid concern among policymakers about tech sovereignty and cloud infrastructure. A handful of American hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud — control the digital substrate on which modern economies run. This concentration is compounded by a US government increasingly willing to wield its digital industries as leverage. As French President Emmanuel Macron quipped: "There is no such thing as happy vassalage."
While some countries appear ready to concede market dominance in exchange for improved trade relations, others are exploring massive investments in public sector alternatives to the hyperscalers, advocating that billions, and possibly many many billions, be spent to on sovereign stack plans, and/or positioning local telecoms as alternatives to the hyperscalers.
Ironically, both strategies may increase dependency, limit government agency and increase economic and geopolitical risks — the very problems sovereignty seeks to solve. As Mike Bracken and I wrote earlier this year: "Domination by a local champion, free to extract rents, may be a path to greater autonomy, but it is unlikely to lead to increased competitiveness or greater global influence."
Any realistic path to increased agency will be expensive and take years. To be sustainable, it must focus on commoditizing existing solutions through interoperability and de facto standards that will broaden the market (and enable effective) national champions. This should be our north star and direction of travel. The metric for success should focus on making it as simple as possible to move data and applications across suppliers. Critically, this cannot be achieved by regulation alone, it will also require deft procurement and a willingness to accept de facto as opposed to ideal standards. The good news is governments have done this before. However, to succeed, it will require building the capacity to become market shapers and not market takers — thinking like electricity grids and railway gauges, not digital empires .
The essential role of commodities has been widely known and acknowledged for decades. We are in this situation because key companies and/or monopolies saw that long ago and were allowed to fight so hard all this time against ICT remaining as commodities. Sadly, the discussion about commodification probably peaked in the years just after the infamous Halloween Documents, particularly the first one. Eric S Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and early FOSS developer, published these leaked documents which covered potential strategies relating to M$ fight against free and open source software and, in particular, against Linux back in 1998. In retrospect these documents have turned out to be blueprints, used against FOSS and open standards by other companies as well.
Previously:
(2026) Sorry, Eh
(2026) Poul-Henning Kamp's Feedback to the EU on Digital Sovereignty
(2026) A Post-American, Enshittification-Resistant Internet
(2025) This German State Decides to Save €15 Million Each Year By Kicking Out Microsoft for Open Source
(2025) Why People Keep Flocking to Linux in 2025 (and It's Not Just to Escape Windows)
(2025) Microsoft Can't Guarantee Data Sovereignty – OVHcloud Says 'We Told You So'
(2014) US Offering Cash For Pro-TAFTA/TTIP Propaganda
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday January 18, @11:07AM (7 children)
Would Canada survive intact if they (a) tried going against the USA and (b) actually succeeded at doing the above?
I just don't see the USA as a country/empire that would just passively accept its money machine being undermined like that, and I don't see Canada being powerful enough economically/militarily to not be subjugated if they tried (but perhaps I am wrong about Canada?).
Still, I won't complain if they tried, if they actually succeed it would be a big boost to their economy, not just from locals but foreigners who have similar ideas and need a place where they can produce such tooling/products.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Sunday January 18, @11:50AM (2 children)
It's very clear by now that Trump's "art of the deal" is little more than the kind of behaviour you'd expect from a kindergarten bully and, like most bullies when you get right down to it, they are just cowards when stood up to. How many TACOs are we up to now? Some of us were calling it from the moment he started threatening the US's allies of the past 80-years or so; the US is no longer a trustworthy partner and you need to make sure you are not entirely reliant on them for trade, finance, military support, or anything else. Forget threatening the counter tariffs; threaten - and, if necessary, actually do - repeal the laws that mostly tithe money to the US. Putting sane, consumer friendly, rules around copyright and enabling reverse engineering/right to repair would put immense pressure on many sectors of the US economy that rely on those being locked down, and force the CEOs of the companies concerned whether kissing the ring for another three years is worth the long term harm that will bring.
It's not just "the economy, stupid", it's also "the best government corporate money can buy", and if you lose that corporate support you are done.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 21, @09:23AM (1 child)
Well yes, but I don't believe this is Trump specific. Trump just does things in a brash tactless way, with no attempt to sugarcoat reality. This makes the whole experience more jarring for a world that was used to the US doing its "dirty work" in the shadows.
However no US president would just lie down and accept another country to undermine them like that. A country who does no real manufacturing any more (outside of weapons) can only export "services", IP and branding, which is I suspect why they are so keen on IP protection, DRM, locking everything down, and services that charge you monthly.
Cory Doctorow's proposal would blow a gaping hole in the above income streams. If you can bypass locks, you can bypass DRM (no more IP protection, and now more "authorised replacement parts only" at high cost), bypass locks (you can do with your device whatever you wish, including unlocking in-built features you normally would have to pay extra for to enable), and redirect smart devices from the paid company cloud services to a locally run server (removing both their services income, and their ability to spy on you and sell your data onwards).
I agree the above would be wonderful for end users and customers, however I don't see the corporations and "big money" in the US ever allowing it to happen. So no doubt any potential US presidential candidates who would support the above would be filtered out early in the selection process, leaving only the ones who would use the USA's power to prevent other countries from doing such things.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday January 21, @12:16PM
Being more creative, and going down a different - Canadian/EU/etc. consumer friendly - that hits corporate America much harder than it directly hits the public on either side of the Atlantic, applies the necessarily pressure without riling voters, whether that's non-USian's seeing higher prices because of the counter-tariffs, or Trump supporters seeing this as yet more non-US exploitation of the US economy. Perception is everything, and even if it's wrong you can still play on that.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday January 18, @02:03PM (3 children)
See one of Doctorow's previous posts, which he also presented as a talk at CCC: The way the US bullies other countries is through trade sanctions, or threats thereof. When the US applies trade sanctions to you even though you've done all you can to kowtow to them, the threats become empty, so there's no longer any benefit to kowtowing to the US.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Sunday January 18, @03:21PM (1 child)
Yeah, that's a big thing about Trump. His sales pitch to morons was "America is so strong, why do we let all these foreign nations walk all over us" completely misunderstanding how all the systems he is ripping up existed for America to walk all over other nations.
Trump brain says NATO is bad because Europe doesn't spend as much as us on defense. But the system was set up so we could literally militarily occupy our nearest economic rivals.
Trump brain says USAID was us stupidly giving money away. But the system was set up as the world's biggest legalized bribery network to keep scummy dictators and juntas favoring our mineral extraction corporations.
Trump brain says that low Canadian tarrifs were letting the US industry get undercut. But the reality was they not only came with low reciprocal tarrifs, but like a million other concessions on the part of Canada.
It takes a real fucking special brain to think the existing international order wasn't pro-american and mavhivellian enough already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, @04:38AM
Umm you're missing the point. Its not pro-american to him and his... much like the system that's he's kicking over is pro-american to his predecessors.
Its just a different group of tyrants - Trump is just more barsh, inciteful, arrogant, in the way he goes about it.
- its funny how Americans are attacking him, when its same same from folks on the outside feeling the tyranny/oppression of the US of his predecessors. Americans really need to get their head out of the sand, Trump is not creating a new problem - he just exposed an ongoing one and brought everything into the light.
If Americans truly care about their place in the world and how the rest of the world sees them, stop falling into the left vs right game that is setup to divide you and start putting in a system and leaders that actually make a difference. If you don't care about the rest of the world why are you complaining about Trump with regards to what he does outside of the US?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ken_g6 on Sunday January 18, @08:36PM
This might have been true when Doctorow originally made the speech, December 28, 2025. As of January 3, 2026, we also abduct the leaders of countries that break our laws.
(Score: 3, Funny) by animal on Sunday January 18, @11:08AM
Apology accepted
(Score: 1, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday January 18, @02:50PM (4 children)
The second half seems to be a long dirge about how awful it is Canadian subjects (not citizens, they don't have rights up there) can't participate in the enshitification economy, which is somehow automatically bad.
How awful they can't SELL hacking tools. So just give them away on the internet for free.
It costs money to create enshitification so Canadian competitive "real world goods" should be cheaper and make more profit than enshitified american products that are widely cracked.
Why would anyone on the planet buy a more expensive enshitified John Deere when they could buy a better, cheaper, easier to use and maintain Massey Ferguson or Versatile/Buhler?
Those are not fringe brands either they have "some" presence in the upper midwest already.
Its possible the Canadian brands are already more enshitified than John Deere, I'm not up on my farm tractor lore although I know people who are. I have two grand uncles on different sides of the family who own farm tractors LOL so I'm vaguely familiar with the situation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 18, @03:19PM (3 children)
>Uninvented the VCR
Sort of. VCRs were relatively expensive and very low quality even when they were working perfectly.
A cell phone on a tripod pointed at a flat screen with decent sound gives better quality, at lower cost in inflation adjusted money.
Note that a monthly phone subscription is not required to access the video recording function, and with a WiFi connection the recording is instantly globally shareable for less than the cost of a VCR tape.
I actually traded recordings with a tape pirate once, he had something I wanted that was "out of print" so we agreed (via email) I would send him a tape of something he didn't have and wanted then he sent me the tape I wanted. The whole exchange took about 3 weeks and the video quality was 480i of course, but that was life at the end of the VCR days...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrpg on Sunday January 18, @06:07PM (2 children)
OT, I'm watching Videodrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday January 18, @10:10PM (1 child)
Ah, Cronenberg. Do you like eXistenZ? I always preferred that to The Matrix when it comes to movies about perfectly realistic virtual worlds. It's a lot weirder.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrpg on Monday January 19, @08:26AM
I think I watched the last half of ExistenZ, I should watch it complete. A few weeks ago I saw The Thirteenth Floor, good one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Sunday January 18, @06:13PM (10 children)
"Back in 2012, Canada passed Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. It's a law that bans Canadian companies from modifying America's digital tech exports."
What's striking to me is somebody expended so many words bitching and moaning about all they ways Canadians have forbidden themselves from stealing American technology, while exhibiting total and absolute blindness to the fact that Canadians are, and have always been, completely free to invent and develop their own digital technologies. Instead, it seems they'd rather buy America's nice things. Which, I might add, they do so of their own free will.
It's whatever makes them think that buying our products entitles them free use of the intellectual property behind them, free access to the ecosystem used to curate/distribute them and free use of the infrastructure to support them, that I can't understand. But of course, collectivism has never made any sense.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18, @07:36PM (6 children)
What "American technology" is being "stolen" here? The spoiled children aren't the ones you're thinking of. The whole point of the article is that the Canadians have been prevented from using their ingenuity and resources to invent and develop their own digital technologies to produce compatible products, fix the equipment they've purchased, etc. They chose through the C-11 bill to prevent these activities in exchange for the promise of free trade with the US (or rather, to avoid the threat of tariffs being imposed upon them). Now that the US has arbitrarily and capriciously levied illegal tariffs on them and have broken the deal, the article is arguing that they should drop the previous self-imposed restrictions and act in their own best interest.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Sunday January 18, @08:12PM (5 children)
"...or rather, to avoid the threat of tariffs being imposed upon them"
Bullshit. You just made that up. Nowhere, in the text of Bill C-11, or any of the articles describing it's purpose, could I even find an occurrence of the word tariff, let alone anything claiming the bill's purpose was to avoid them. So no, our President has not violated some sacred promise.
"illegal tariffs"
How so? Which law makes them illegal?
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Sunday January 18, @10:32PM (2 children)
"So no, our President has not violated some sacred promise."
Typical fucking dumb American the current trade deal specifically prohibits the use of tarrifs as have many other deals you scummy bastards have broken numerous times. Oh and your rapists in chief complaining about this very bad current deal is the same one he blackmailed us in to making years ago to replace the NAFTA another deal you slime balls broke. Lying American bastards never keep any deals they make they sign it then the next day break it and start threatening to do more tarrifs or actually doing it. The word has caught on to your game, enjoy all your show us your papers storm troopers coming to a city near you. I for one cannot wait for the coming civil war you scumbag are going to have, have fun with all the winning.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ChrisMaple on Monday January 19, @06:40AM (1 child)
With clowns like Trudeau and Doctorow. Canada has a long way to go to fix itself before it complains about the U.S.
If you have to resort to profanity, you've already admitted that you've lost the argument.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by RedGreen on Monday January 19, @01:31PM
"If you have to resort to profanity, you've already admitted that you've lost the argument."
To paraphrase the wonderful Ukrainian man saying it at the start of the Russian war, Fuck you Yankee. And still some piece of shit yapping on about Trudeau the man who single handily saved us from the Repugnant Party wannabees the Conservatives and their gutting of our country, the social safety net their destructive pitting of people against people to further their murderous agenda. One of THE greatest Canadians who every lived and will always be remember as such by freedom loving people. Unlike their poor excuses for a human being equivalents do in the US right now murdering your own citizens and numerous more migrants. Again Fuck you Yankee we will take our country as it is imperfect as it is where we respect human rights, the rule of law and democracy as fallible as it is we are not beholden to any dictators like you scum are. Enjoy all your winning and the coming civil war you dumb fucks.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19, @01:09AM
Well, he fraudulently declared various "emergencies" to bypass congress. He is acting unlawfully, but without any opposition, he will continue indefinitely
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19, @04:56AM
Read up on the immense pressure from the US [huffpost.com] and US corporations to pass digital locks, and the discussions going into TPP negotiations later in the year. Those two issues were joined at the hip, which is the point being made in TFA. If tariffs are going to be applied whenever the toddler throws a tantrum, Canada should feel free to throw their digital locks aside.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Marvin on Monday January 19, @11:30AM
Well, being canadian, he just addresses his country... All he said is very valid for the USA, too. Right to repair and all that. Just listen to Louis Rossman, he's American and he basically says the same thing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by r_a_trip on Monday January 19, @01:10PM (1 child)
Don't be too smug in your sense of superiority. The world has woken up and seen how disadvantageous it is to be beholden to the US of A for technological and military support. One president hell bent on fucking everything up and you find yourself up shit creek without a paddle. That truth has now been spoken out loud.
The rest of the world is now doing the tight rope of still seeming to be allied as usual and meanwhile scurrying to scale the dependencies down. Lots of initiatives to build up alternative infrastructure are being put in place. IT, weaponry, military personnel is being pulled "in house".
The power structures will inevitably change from here on out. It's not even about winning or losing. It is about maintaining sovereignty as best as can be done, in a world where former allies become unpredictable, wannabe invaders.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by DadaDoofy on Monday January 19, @02:29PM
"IT, weaponry, military personnel is being pulled 'in house'."
It's about time. We've allowed Europeans the luxury of their collectivist welfare states, while we've funded their defense, for the last 80 years. Those days are over, and not a moment too soon. All it took was a president with a set of balls.
"The power structures will inevitably change from here on out."
Yes. I strongly suggest Europeans familiarize themselves with the Koran. In particular, Sharia law. It will serve them well in Europe's "new world order".