In light of recent events, other countries should simply stop recognizing US intellectual property claims as valid.
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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In light of recent events, other countries should drag Trump to the ICC and thence straight to the gallows.
LOL have you never heard of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act
Oh and guess who isn't part of the ICC?
I'd like to see these "other countries" drag Trump there. How? With what? This isn't Star Trek, you can't beam him mid-poop to the Netherlands.
If we can’t do it legally, we’ll just have to do it illegally. What’s important is that it gets done.
I mean, he's set the precedent - apparently it's now allowed for a country to just snatch the leader of a sovereign nation and run off with them
Iirc this is an actual (as in offical and described in legislation) lever the EU can pull, unfortunately regardless of public sentiment many of its leaders are beholden US economic interests.
They are becoming less beholden by the day for reasons Doctorow laid out.
Yes but they'd rather make money with the usa then do the smart thing
They're making way less than they could be because of lopsided "free" trade agreements.
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The only real solution isn't reactivating roombas but cutting dependence on US goods and markets. The US market is highly desirable from a purely population angle but isn't essential today. Moving to an alternative to the dollar, expanding production of essential goods to other nations, etc.
If you really want to spite the US use retaliatory IP lifting. "Ok, US IP protections are now invalid."
Just declare any simple script that does a wget on copyrighted information to be "AI". AI is immune from copyright infringement it seems.
Please do. Let this cess pool rot. Its not salvagable.
EU tech companies keep letting themselves be sold to US tech companies, or re-HQing to America.
Capitalism can't solve problems created by capitalism. The largest companies will always gobble up the competition, eliminating the alternatives.
Moving HQ to murica is usually done because of venture capitalists having it as a requirement for funding. If EU based startups want to be successful without it they require either funding from european VCs or figure out how to do compete without VC money.
Competition and markets authorities are empowered to block acquisitions and it's often high profile when it's done due to an unfriendly power like china trying to do it. The USA is now a more aggressive power than china so acquisitions by US companies ought to be blocked by default.
This may mean less money flows from the US into the European acquired companies, but tough shit, this is too important.
We need to realise that the status quo is not what we had two years ago, because Trump changed it. He's making the whole world poorer, and we can choose whether that poverty affects us monetarily (because we need to put money into replacing US tech) or more fundamentally - e.g. if he uses dependence on US tech to exert political control over European nations.
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Agreed. I like the spirit of Switzerland's "public money, public code" initiative. If they could do that for infrastructure, that'd be awesome.
"Why whack some poor farmer from a state that begins and ends with a vowel with tariffs on his soybeans. That guy never did anything bad to Canada." Be-fucking-Cause they voted for Trump and they do not give one single fuck about how it affects anybody. But now they are like I didn't vote for this bullshit. Yes they did. They just thought it would not touch them.
Farmer was a pretty bad example. American farmers have it coming to them and do deserve a punch in the face for overwhelmingly voting Trump.
They've had several punches in the face from tariffs, but keep insisting they walked into doors and it's all fine and still love him.
Soybean farming involves huge corporations exploiting small producers.
That fails to acknowledge the force of the argument which is that tariffs affect innocent people.
Point is, it's too important. If you fight back when you're invaded, innocent people (like your own soldiers) will be killed. Consequences will be worse if you just roll over though.
Maximum pressure needs to be exerted on the US, through retaliatory tariffs, ceasing to recognise American intellectual property, and sanctions.
It's obviously the right idea, Cory's been saying it to anyone who will listen for months if not years, but it would depend on governments doing something. How can it possibly happen then, if there aren't powerful corporate interests hiring lobbyists to say it in a way that politicians can hear?
Be the change you want to see: start lobbying government for it.
"Say it in a way politicians can hear" means bribes. You got politician bribe money sitting around? I don't.
It surprises me from time to time just how cheap some of these politicians sell out for. If I could get together with my neighbours all contributing $50 and buy a legislator or two, we could probably get funds for a stadium.
"The former Royal Bank of Scotland submitter who was offered sushi rolls in exchange for helping try to rig the Libor rate-setting process has been banned by the UK's financial regulator." https://www.ft.com/content/23868e36-0095-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62
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This is just defeatism. Not all politicians are corrupt. And even corrupt ones also have to respond to other kinds of pressures, if those are strong enough. Defeatism is what makes democracy die.
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I'm not sure how far you read, but he argues that it would only take one country's legislature to set this off and reap the rewards of nurturing a fully open alternative to the US big-tech stack.
With the US pissing off pretty much everyone else and losing allies by the day, it will only be a matter of time before the doors are blown open on this.
It's a speech. He has a hypothesis at best, and expertly lays out one way for it to go.
If one country did it, they'd try to give them the Venezuela treatment.
Don't get me wrong, I think the overall concept has incredible legs, but the finer details of tit-for-tat and retaliation aren't quite fleshed out.
It's why things have to happen in a certain order. You can't do the more aggressive economic actions against the US until after certain conditions are in place. First you need to cut dependency on the US for anything essential. Food and strategic resources like aluminum, steel, and energy. You also need a strong enough military to make any US military action costly for the US.
Once those conditions are met you can take further action. Hitting the US tech sector is more of a middle option. Manipulating the US bond market is the nuclear option.
Currently these options aren't on the table since the US can kick out the legs of that table if you tried to play those cards. But many things are quietly changing around the world while Americans are obsessing over Epstein files, Trump playing battleship, and Hegseth and Rubio fucking around with tinpot South American dictators.
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Give him the Sudetenland, I'm sure he'll stop after that. Appeasement always works!! /s
Something not often discussed is the possibility that the UK and France might not have been capable of stopping Hitler through military force at that time.
I mean even later even after building up a bit more, France got curb stomped and the UK barely got out of Dunkirk. And that happened while Germany was occupying Czechoslovakia and part of Poland which took significant military resources from fighting the UK and France. There's a very real possibility that standing up to Hitler over Czechoslovakia would have gone even worse than standing up to Hitler over Poland. Sure the Soviets might have helped at that time, but their military wasn't even capable of taking on Finland at that point.
At any rate at the present time, the world needs to build up it's military power before standing up to Trump. We're saying it's because we're fulfilling NATO obligations (like Trump told us to!) or getting ready to fight Russia maybe. But military build up is happening but it's not going to happen overnight.
Very much agree with this argument though it's not new. IP law has always been a secret weapon against US which is mostly a service economy country.
EU just seems too weak to take advantage of this though
I like the DisEnshittification. Actually why not call it Deshittification ? Just like DeGoogle.
Coincidentally, Doctorow is the one who coined ‘enshittification’ originally.
Moreover, Trump introduced major tariff exceptions for some countries. For example, the integrated North American auto industry would have been devastated if he hadn’t decided on 6 March to exempt goods from Mexico and Canada from the 25% levy that had gone into effect two days earlier. Goods from these countries now face no penalty if they are imported under the US-Mexico-Canada agreement.
This softening was predictable. US business would have suffered enormously if Trump had fully implemented the tariffs he had announced, let alone threatened, so it was never likely that he would persist with the worst of them. Trump regularly stakes out extreme negotiating positions, only to back down when the heat is on, even if he hasn’t gotten what he demanded from the other side. In fact, investors’ assumption that “Trump always chickens out” – known as Taco – has become a taunt. But when a madman threatens Armageddon, it is foolhardy to goad him into following through. The tariffs Trump has implemented are still very high.
Why haven’t Trump’s tariffs crashed the US economy?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/29/donald-trump-tariffs-us-economy-inflation-employment-2026
like 'dark web' except not public. fuck them lemmings. 'meat with eyes' - lewis black
Tarrifing in response is effective long-term, i think. Short-term, it's a blow to your economy, but the businesses will reorientate to different pastures, because the US is more expensive.
Edit: ok, maybe that's a bit naive.
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the unshitification privateers. subscription cleanse. oh wait it's just them again
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