The US Treasury sold $25 billion of 30-year bonds at a 5.22 percent yield, the most it has paid to borrow that far out since 2001, reports the Financial Times.
That's up from 5.06 percent at July's sale, and 4.91 percent just before Trump's second term began. β Read the rest
The post The government now spends more on interest than on the military appeared first on Boing Boing.
LONDON β Andy Burnham entered Downing Street with a promise to give hard-pressed voters βbreathing spaceβ on the cost of living. Now heΒ must show he can deliver.Β
At the top of his list is finding a way to reduce stubbornly high energy bills β even as the Iran-U.S. war forces up prices and ministers are under pressure to cut their own departmental budgets. The new prime minister knows any intervention must make a real impact for voters if he is to turn Labourβs fortunes around.Β
βYou need to make an emotional connection with people,β said one senior government official, granted anonymity to talk candidly about Whitehall thinking.Β
Britainβs new prime minister has already made one bid to show voters he is serious about tackling the problem:Β Removing VAT from household electricity bills, something he announcedΒ on his first day inΒ No. 10.Β
The move will knock less than Β£4 off the average monthly bill, ends after one year,Β and comes with a price tag of Β£850 million.Β Downing StreetΒ said it will be paid for through so-far unspecified Whitehall savings.Β
But Burnham and his new Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, promised that the intervention is just a start. Cutting VAT is a βdown paymentβ ahead of the winter, Fahnbulleh said.Β
That means ministers have just weeks before Burnhamβs first budget this fall to figure out what, if anything, can really ease the burdenΒ β and howΒ to pay for it.Β
βThe fiscal space is going to be a challenge, and that is the case for any government,β said Sam Alvis, associate director for environment, energy security, and nature at theΒ Labour-alignedΒ Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.Β
ThatβsΒ becauseΒ any intervention to bring down energy bills willΒ have to be funded from already under-pressure Whitehall departments.Β
βThis government is going to have a look at theΒ budget. Whether it chooses to do some priorities differentlyΒ βΒ that is an open question,β Alvis said.Β
OneΒ optionΒ for Burnham isΒ toΒ slice more charges from electricity bills, as he did with VAT. But any savingsΒ couldΒ be quickly wiped outΒ if, as expected,Β the Middle East crisis pushes upΒ wholesale gas prices.
Forecasters at Cornwall Insight predict that average annual household bills willΒ rise by two percentΒ this fall,Β even after theΒ VAT intervention.Β
That leavesΒ Burnham facingΒ the same problems asΒ the man he replaced,Β KeirΒ Starmer.Β
Starmer cut Β£150Β offΒ yearlyΒ billsΒ last NovemberΒ by shifting some so-called green levies,Β used to fund a clean energy scheme,Β onto general taxation. By theΒ summer, that cut had been swallowed upΒ by higher pricesΒ driven byΒ the Strait of Hormuz crisis.Β
Nonetheless, Alvis said, this approachΒ remainsΒ BurnhamβsΒ mostΒ realisticΒ option.Β
βWe are now in a bit of a scenario of salami slicing, where youβre aggregating lots and lots of smaller bits,βΒ he said.Β βThereβs no oneΒ big thingΒ that you can doΒ thatβsΒ going to take over Β£100 off bills. So,Β itβsΒ about accumulating all those things that you think you couldΒ possibly doΒ in one go,Β so it becomes sizable and noticeable.βΒ
One of thoseΒ options, proposed by the think tank NestaΒ andΒ reportedlyΒ beingΒ consideredΒ byΒ Burnham, involves shiftingΒ furtherΒ greenΒ levies from electricity billsΒ onto tax.Β Β
ItΒ identifiedΒ another Β£42 ofΒ savings fromΒ aΒ yearly bill, costingΒ the Treasury Β£1.7 billion per year for a decade.Β
Every small cut helpsΒ consumers, insists Andrew Sissons, Nestaβs director of sustainable futures. The think tankΒ has also proposed knockingΒ Β£22 a year off bills by shifting the standing charge on gas β currently a fixed daily fee β onto the unit rate, which changes depending on how much energy a home uses. That would take a year to implement and would not cost the governmentΒ a penny,Β Nesta says.Β
ButΒ such movesΒ mustΒ be accompanied by larger interventions if voters are to feel the benefit, he added.Β
βThe amount youβd need to cut peopleβs energy bills β¦ for it to feel like a real difference is quite substantial,βΒ he said. The government, heΒ argued,Β should aim for a βbig package.βΒ Β
If the governmentΒ aims forΒ largerΒ changes,Β they wouldΒ come with even greaterΒ costs.Β Β
Nesta hasΒ suggestedΒ a one-off move to wipe out electricity debt,Β removing some bailout costsΒ currently funded through bills,Β takingΒ total annual bill savings to Β£130. But the Treasury would have to findΒ Β£2.7 billion to fundΒ that.Β
β[We]Β shouldnβtΒ ignore the fact that there are fiscal trade-offs. But if the government wants to prioritize energy bills, then this is the kind of step it needs to take,β Sissons added, pointing to their proposed levy change alongside the VAT cut.Β Β
Net-zero policies will,Β ministers hope, bring down bills for good. But large-scale changes take years to implement.Β
βRealistically, the only way to deeply, deeply help people is to get them solar panels, is to get them anΒ EV [electric vehicle], potentially heat pumps in some houses as well,βΒ said Alvis.Β
This is another reason to opt forΒ βsalami slicingβ,Β he said:Β To βalter the balance of electricity and gas prices,Β so that those clean technologies stack up and save people even more money.βΒ Β
Alex Bevan, a research fellow at the Future Governance Forum, agreed thatΒ big savingsΒ attached to the shift to green energyΒ were still a wayΒ off.Β Β
βThere arenβt quick workarounds on whichever form of energy you choose to generate and deploy,βΒ he said. ButΒ governmentΒ must nonethelessΒ βlock in the benefits [of clean energy],βΒ he argued.Β
The same official quoted above stressed that no decision had yet been made onΒ how the government wouldΒ interveneΒ on bills. Asked whether theΒ governmentΒ favoredΒ a series of small policies or one big intervention, they said: βItΒ doesnβtΒ have to be binary. β¦ ItΒ doesnβtΒ have to be one or the other.βΒ Β
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: βThe energy secretaryβs focus is bringing bills down for good. We will tackle the cost of living to make lifeβs essentials affordable again and bring back hope.β
For now, AlvisΒ insisted,Β BurnhamΒ has one thing going for him: HeΒ canΒ operateΒ in the knowledge voters acceptΒ international issues are pushing up costs.Β
βThe political point I would make is:Β By doing your best effort, you give yourself the space to have a conversation with the public,β he said.Β
The tiny Mediterranean island is clashing against the European Parliament and former football legend to oppose the levy.
By GREGORIO SORGI
in Paceville, Malta
PhotoβIllustration by NatΓ‘lia Delgado/POLITICO
Brussels is bracing for an unusual fight between the EUβs smallest country and a British ex-footballing legend.
Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeper who conceded the βHand of Godβ goal from Diego Armando Maradona in 1986, has started a new life as an anti-gambling advocate after overcoming a decades-long addiction.
Despite being a diehard Brexit supporter, heβs become the poster boy of the European Parliamentβs push to tax online betting in a bid to raise some much-needed funds to finance the blocβs next β¬2 trillion budget.
But the campaign has run into strong opposition from Malta. The tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of just over half a million people, is home to a burgeoning betting sector. It says that higher taxes will cripple its gambling industry, boost illegal operators and drive firms outside the bloc.
β[Malta] will not accept the introduction of any EU-level taxes designed to sustain the blocβs spending,β the countryβs Prime Minister, Robert Abela, told the Maltese Parliament in June.
But Shilton, who lost more than Β£1 million in betting on horse racing over 45 years and now runs his own gambling addiction charity, dismisses the arguments by Malta and the gambling lobbies as βwindow dressing.β Heβs in favor of higher taxes as he wants to shrink advertising revenue that is used to lure in new gamblers.
βDeep down theyβre after everybodyβs money. Simple as that,β he told POLITICO during a visit to Brussels in June.
The topic has split the EUβs 27 governments, pitting gambling-heavy Southern European countries against their more supportive Western European peers, led by France. Capitals are already fighting even though the Commission hasnβt yet issued a formal proposal for the possible tax, which would ultimately need to be unanimously approved by governments.
Itβs one of numerous budget battle lines being drawn, with Ireland β which is steering the talks as chair of the rotating Council presidency β set to restart negotiations to facilitate an overall deal on the EU budget before the end of the year.
Thatβs no mean feat given Dublinβs task to mesh competing spending priorities into a single budget β financing everything from farmersβ subsidies to foreign aid β that is acceptable for each of the EUβs 27 governments.
National capitals will have to unanimously approve new EU-wide taxes β known as own resources β to pay for soaring defense spending and post-Covid debt repayments if they want to avoid drastically increasing national contributions to Brussels.
Supporters of the gambling levy point to the fact that it would rake in over β¬13 billion throughout the next budget cycle and β for some, more importantly β address a serious public health issue. An estimated 80 million adults globally have experienced a gambling addiction, according to experts.
βWe look on it [gambling] as an illness. Itβs something thatβs inborn in you and that can be ignited,β Shilton said.
Malta has invested heavily in the gambling industry βΒ including lotteries, betting and casinos increasingly operating online βΒ which now accounts for around 12 percent of its gross domestic product.
These firms have relocated to Malta because of its light-touch licensing regime, business-friendly tax regime and balmy weather.
The country is βas dependent on the online gambling industry as Germany is on cars,β said an EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak freely.
While gambling firms need local authorization to operate in most other European countries, securing the Maltese license is crucial to access banking services and gain a foothold in the EU market.
Malta-based firms dominated the German and Austrian online gambling markets before national regulators cracked down. This has prompted the Maltese government to refuse to recognize some court rulings and sanctions issued by other EU countries against its gambling firms.
Given its influence, it is hardly surprising that the gambling industry has found a friendly ear among Maltaβs politicians in Brussels.
The Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, last year gave the opening speech at an international gambling conference in Rome that also featured Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani.
βIβm more than a little proud that it started in my island home of Malta,β she said, referring to SiGMA, a Maltese events company that focuses on online gambling founded by Eman Pulis, a university friend of Metsola.
Betting lobbies say they oppose higher gambling rates on the grounds that they will fuel appetite for the illegal market, away from the grasp of EU rules.
βA higher tax would lead to worse odds for the customers β¦ and it is relevant because access to the illegal markets in Europe is, obviously, one click away,β said secretary general of the European Gaming and Betting Association, Maarten Haijer.
Nicola Matteucci, an economist at the UniversitΓ Politecnica delle Marche in Italy who has undertaken extensive research on the gambling sector, argued there is a βpoint where prices exceed a certain level and the demand [for gambling] diminishes. But itβs not as immediate as suggested by the industry.β
Matteucci said that most gamblers will be undeterred by slightly higher taxes and worse odds as they are not fully rational consumers.
Anti-gambling groups reason instead that higher taxes will reduce the sectorβs spending on commercials, preventing would-be punters from getting sucked in to gambling in the first place.
βHigher taxes will therefore mean lessΒ gamblingΒ advertising overall and many people would regard that as a public benefit,β said Derek Webb, the founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling advocacy group.
Malta has joined forces with fellow Mediterranean countries β Italy, Portugal and Spain βΒ to challenge the mooted tax which was first proposed by the Parliamentβs socialist lawmaker Victor Negrescu, said four diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.
According to the European Commissionβs estimates, seen by POLITICO, a 3 percent tax on the net turnover of the online gambling sector would generate an estimated β¬1.9 billion per year.
With its big online gambling market, Spain is expected to be among the biggest financial losers, should the tax go ahead. It is estimated to be on the hook for β¬414 million per year, almost a quarter of the total amount. That compares to a projected bill of β¬165 million per year for Maltaβ a disproportionality high amount for such a small country.
Portugal is also reluctant to back the levy. It fears that higher taxes would eat into revenue brought in by state-run betting and lotteries that is currently channeled to the charity Santa Casa da MisericΓ³rdia de Lisboaβs healthcare and youth support programs, said a Portuguese official.
Meanwhile, given the relatively low uptake of online gambling, Italyβs misgivings have surprised anti-betting advocates. Rome is expected to pay a mere 7 percent of the proposed new levy βΒ a significantly lower proportion than its regular EU budget contributions.
However, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloniβs Brothers of Italy party has previously been receptive to the gambling industry. Last year its MPs passed a resolution encouraging the reversal of a ban on professional football clubs advertising gambling firms. Β
The European Union has collected β¬1.4 billion in revenue from immobilized Russian central bank assets and will channel the proceeds to Ukraine, the European Commission announced Wednesday.
In a press release, the Commission said the payment, received Monday, was the βfifth transfer of its kind.β Since the assets have been immobilized, they have generated a total of β¬8 billion in windfall profits.
Brussels said 95 percent of the latest tranche would go through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism, helping Kyiv repay EU and G7 loans, while the remaining 5 percent would flow through the European Peace Facility to meet Ukraineβs βpressing military and defence needs.β
βOnce again we wake up to the news of horrible atrocities by Russia through its aerial attacks on Ukraine,β Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. βRussia must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilised Russian assets to make sure it does.β Von der Leyen said the EU was making βa further β¬1.4 billionβ available to support Ukraineβs βcontinued resistance against Russiaβs illegal war.β
Her comments came after one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Kyiv this year. Ballistic missiles and drones killed at least 17 people and wounded 44 overnight, striking residential buildings, warehouses and a railway station. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Wednesday that additional missile interceptors βcould have saved livesβ and blamed delays in Western air-defense deliveries for the mounting casualties.
Over β¬210 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen by the EU after Moscowβs full-scale invasion in 2022. Since 2024, financial institutions holding those assets have been required to ring-fence the extraordinary profits they generate, allowing Brussels to redirect the proceeds to Ukraine while leaving the underlying reserves untouched.
It may strike you as weird, but lenders love to lend money to poor people who will have trouble paying back their loans. Obviously, lenders want to be repaid, and obviously the more money you have, the easier it is to settle your debts, but (paradoxically) that means that if you have a lot of money, you expect to pay less to borrow.
In other words: because poor people have a higher likelihood of defaulting, their loans come with higher interest rates and worse terms. Debt is steeply regressive: the less money you have, the more you're expected to pay. The industry term for this is the "risk premium": the riskier a loan is, the more it costs the borrower.
Lenders are always seeking the highest possible return on their loan-books, which makes that "risk premium" awfully tempting. Why loan $1m to Elon Musk at 0.5% interest when you can make 10,000 $100 payday loans to non-union Tesla workers on food stamps at 1,000% interest?
Obviously, the fly in the ointment here is the risk in "risk premium." The reason the risk premium exists is that poor borrowers have a harder time paying their loans. That can be good, up to a point: if you're Klarna and you're originating loans to people buying Chipotle lunches on the installment plan, you want your borrowers to miss several payments. Klarna loans are free if you pay them back on time, but if you miss a payment, you're hit with a huge penalty charge and sky-high interest (on top of the principal and the penalty). On a small purchase, penalties and interest can quickly add up to a triple-digit APR.
That's where Klarna makes its money: people who miss their burrito installment payments. However: if a Klarna borrower goes bankrupt before they've repaid the principal, Klarna loses money. A successful loan-book of unsecured burrito mortgages depends on the existence of many missed payments and few defaults.
"Financial innovation" is often just a project to decrease the risk in risky loans, but without decreasing the risk premium you get paid for issuing those loans. It's a way to eat your cake and have it too: even though you've reduced the likelihood that you'll have to write off your loan, you still charge the borrower as though that risk is unchanged. As with so many aspect of finance, "innovation in lending" is a way to shift value from the financial industry's customers to itself.
Remember the subprime crisis? The whole point of collateralized debt obligations and swaps was to offer loans to people with bad credit β even loans they obviously couldn't pay back β without incurring a default risk. Subprime mortgages supercharged the practice of loan origination and resale (where a bank offers you a loan and then sells that loan to someone else, so your default becomes their problem) by splitting the loans into pieces. These pieces were recombined according to complex mathematical formulas that supposedly "proved" that the default risk from poor borrowers had been "offset" by combining them with other borrowers' loans and wrapping them in opaque insurance contracts.
Those subprime mortgages came with cheap "teaser rates" β the interest rate you paid over the first couple years β but then the interest payments "ballooned" to farcical sums that borrowers had no hope of repaying. Those farcical sums were the risk premium. When financiers transmuted these high-risk 30-year mortgages into complex derivatives, they were effectively promising their customers a piece of that risk premium for 28 out of the 30 years that the mortgage ran for.
But it wasn't all financial engineering: subprime mortgage salesmen could also promise customers that they wouldn't lose everything even after a wave of borrower bankruptcies and defaults. That's because mortgages are secured: they are backed by deeds for the homes the borrowers own(ed). If a borrower goes bust, the lender can repossess their house or apartment and sell it to recover the loan amount.
Now, the finance sector did repossess a fuckton of houses after the crash. Foreclosure and eviction became official policy: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Obama that a wave of foreclosures was necessary to "foam the runways" for the banks, so Obama encouraged banks to foreclose on their loans, rather than restructuring them so that Americans could keep their homes:
But even with these foreclosures, lenders and their customers lost hundreds of billions on the subprime crisis. That's because all that subprime lending pushed the price of houses up and up and up, so when the market collapsed, those mortgages were "underwater" β the money from selling the foreclosed homes didn't cover their outstanding loans.
Collateralization β backing loans with legally binding promises to surrender some asset if you default β is a way to reduce risk, but it can't eliminate it. Assets degrade: houses burn, cars get totaled, jewelry is stolen. Assets also devalue: a loan backed by bitcoin at $111,000 on the eve of Trump's election will be underwater today with bitcoin at $64,000. This devaluation can also occur when your house's value plummets because Elon Musk repeatedly bombs your neighborhood with flaming rocket debris, or when your Tesla's resale value collapses after Musk throws a string of Sieg Heils on national television.
The point being that risk mitigation is never risk elimination, but markets have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Partly that's because of risk shifting. A lender who can "securitize" their loans (turn them into bonds and sell them off to investors) can insulate themselves from risk, because the people who buy the bonds are now carrying that risk.
So many of our crises come from the intersection of these two phenomena: the promise of reducing loan risks without losing the risk premium and the fact that risk reduction can fail suddenly (or be revealed as nothing more than risk-shifting). The first phenomenon creates vast credit bubbles, the second one pops them.
This leaves would-be usurers on an endless quest for new ways to lend money at a premium to poor people while reducing their own risk. You don't need technology to do this β all you need is a captive audience of broke people whom other lenders won't touch.
When the US government adopted the racist practice of "redlining" (denying government-backed loans to Black borrowers), they created a market for predatory pseudo-mortgages called "contract buying." Contract buying is like a mortgage, but without the equity: miss a payment and you get evicted, and you aren't entitled to any of the sale price of the house, even if it was 99.99% paid off when you got kicked out.
Lenders can tip the scales in their favor by making up arbitrary junk fees, and a smart lender waits until the house is almost paid off before whacking the borrower with a ton of these fees. The borrower misses a payment, the seller repossesses the house and sells it again:
Contract lending never went away. Wherever you find a desperate, disfavored group who are locked out of the credit system, you'll find scumbag contract lenders running this scam. Take long-haul truckers, among the most exploited workforce in America. Long before Uber made worker misclassification (treating an employee as an independent contractor) mainstream, the trucking industry was effectively indenturing truckers, exerting more control over their lives than a boss could ever impose on a waged worker, while disclaiming any employer-related responsibilities. Truckers don't get health insurance or sick leave β and they don't get paid if they have to sit at a port for 20 hours waiting to pick up a load.
But the exploitation of truckers doesn't stop with mere wage theft. Truckers also "contract buy" their trucks. Their bosses issue loans that let drivers buy their trucks on terms that allow the company to repo the truck after a single missed payment. And of course, bosses have total control over truckers' wages, so a canny boss can wait until a truck is nearly paid off and then stop the driver's wages, forcing them to miss a payment and lose their truck, which can be sold on to the next victim:
Subprime auto-loans bring this same profitable arrangement to regular drivers who just need a car to commute, pick up groceries, and shuttle the kids to and from school. A subprime auto-loan often contains the "teaser" and "balloon" rates at the heart of the subprime mortgage bubble: for the first year or two, your car payments are affordable, but then they shoot up to a sum that you can't possibly pay. The lender then repossesses your car, zeroing out your equity, and sells it to another victim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s
But the subprime car industry puts a decidedly modern spin on the contract lending scam that has been used to profitably rob so many Black home borrowers and long-haul truckers. Subprime lending's risk-reduction relies on repossession. A subprime car lender doesn't just get rich by charging poor borrowers more money that rich borrowers for shittier, older cars. Subprime car dealers repeatedly "sell" that car to many, many poor people, on conditions that all but guarantee that the borrower will default on their loan and lose their car.
This is where tech comes in. Ubiquitous digital networks and computing make it much easier to repo a car. This started with the humble lo-jack, a simple tracker marketed as a way to locate lost or stolen cars. Subprime auto-lenders were early and aggressive lo-jack adopters, because you can't repo a car if you don't know where it is. Installing a lo-jack is much cheaper than paying repo men to drive around looking for the cars you want to claw back, which means that you can sell cars to people who represent worse credit risks, charging a higher risk premium, and still find the car when those high interest rates force your borrower into default.
The next wave of automotive usury-tech was a kind of systematic exploration of the entire space between a car that is repossessed and a car that isn't. Some subprime cars are fitted with an extra stereo system that can only be controlled by the lender over a wireless connection. Miss a payment and this secondary stereo turns itself on and starts playing earsplitting threats about what will happen to you if you don't pay up. The only way to turn it off is to make the payment. The next step is remote immobilization: miss too many payments (or violate a lease clause by crossing the county line) and your car just stops working:
But the apex of this usury-tech comes from (where else?) Tesla. Miss a Tesla payment and your car can do way more than just immobilize itself and tell the dealer where to get the car β it also unlock its doors, flash its lights, honk its horn, and back out of its parking space when the repo man arrives:
The cheaper the repo, the riskier the loan can be; the riskier the loan, the higher the risk premium. Digital tech makes repo much cheaper, so wherever you find digital tech, you find digital arm-breakers coming up with ways to robo-repo the things you buy.
There's India's subprime phone lenders, who pre-install usury-tech on their phones. This is a tool that spies on the phone's owner, building a dossier of the owner's most frequently used apps. When the owner misses a payment, the phone starts disabling the user's favorite apps, working its way up the list to the most indispensable ones:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers
It's the digital version of the mob loan-shark who breaks a finger, then your hand, then your arm. The more graduated the threat matrix is, the more payments you can capture. A borrower with a broken finger can get to a pawn-broker to sell their wedding-ring; a borrower with two broken legs has a much harder time.
Digital arm-breakers aren't an epiphenomenon of digitization alone. Usury tech only works if the device's owner can't disable it. Remember: a computer is flexible. The only computer we know how to make is the "Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine," defined as a device that can compute every valid program. If your phone is running a program that disables your apps, then you can install another program that disables that program. Same goes for your car's lo-jack; the stereo system emitting ear-splitting complaints about your car note; and the immobilizer hooked up to your ignition.
That's where the law comes in. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to produce a tool that bypasses an "access control." That means that if a computer is designed to block you from modifying it, removing that block is a felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $500k fine. DMCA 1201 doesn't distinguish between modifications undertaken for a lawful purpose (changing your printer so it works with generic ink) and unlawful purpose (breaking the locks on a DVD so you can sell infringing copies). DMCA 1201 criminalizes anything the manufacturer dislikes. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."
DMCA 1201 is the reason you can't neutralize the digital arm-breakers by deleting or blocking the usury-tech in your car, phone or other device:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
Here's where it gets interesting. Apologists for DMCA 1201 insist that the law is necessary, because it lets device makers lock malicious parties out of your devices. Apple leads the pack here: they use DMCA 1201 to block independent repair of their devices, insisting that this isn't done to extort high fees from you or to force you to throw away and replace last year's iPhone after you drop it. No, Apple does this to protect you β from unscrupulous repairers who might install malware on your phone:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
And Apple says the reason it blocks you from installing apps without using its App Store is to protect you from malicious apps β not to control the app marketplace, where it makes $100b/year on payment processing junk-fees, siphoning off 30% of every dollar you spend in an app:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup
Apple's greatest accomplishment isn't technological, it's psychological. Apple managed to convince millions of people that buying products from a multi-trillion dollar corporation with close ties to both Trump and Xi makes them members of an oppressed religious minority, and those members of the "cult of Mac" tie themselves into knots insisting that Apple would only ever use its powers for good:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
But moral behavior doesn't consist solely of resisting the temptation to do bad things β to be truly moral, you must not put yourself in temptation's path in the first place. Morality isn't the strength to resist the siren's song β it's the humility to recognize your own weakness and tie yourself to the mast:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped
By giving itself a veto over its customers' choices, Apple deliberately sailed into siren-infested waters, after first putting a gun on every mantelpiece it could find. Now the company is drowning in sin, while spraying gunfire in every direction.
Today, the company is getting into the leasing business. Having monopolized its markets and eliminated the possibility of growth by making and selling things, the company is becoming a lender. As a lender, Apple wants to maximize the risk premiums it can charge, while minimizing its actual risk. That's why the new version of iOS β the operating system for iPhones and iPads β comes with software that lets lenders brick your device if you miss a payment:
The code steals a trick from India's subprime phone lenders, giving Apple the ability to "restrict apps and services when payments are missed." It hooks into a "Partner Finance Lock," which allows Apple to sell devices to third-party userers who want to get into the subprime game, promising those customers all the imaginative flexibility a digital arm-breaker could dream of.
This was always the trajectory of Apple's decision to sell you a computer that takes orders from its manufacturer, rather than its owner. Apple didn't invent the subprime gadget. It also didn't invent the GUI, the MP3 player or the smartphone. Rather, Apple took those gadgets mainstream β just as it will do with subprime gadgets. Just in time for the affordability crisis, the oil shock, the climate shock, the AI collapse and the tariff shock, the age of the digital arm-breaker has well and truly arrived:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/29/boobytrap/#device-lock-controller
Reading βDo Artifacts Have Politics?β https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-do-artifacts-have-politics/
Google hit with $1 billion fine for breaking EU antitrust rules https://www.theverge.com/tech/943866/google-alphabet-eu-dma-fine-search-services-play-store-steering
Why Paramount Should Be Worried https://prospect.org/2026/07/22/why-paramount-should-be-worried-warner-bros-merger-ellison/
The Plain Language Guide to Digital Privacy https://shannonguides.com/dl/167c8da8a0ab/digital-privacy.pdf
#25yrsago Shapeable printed batteries https://web.archive.org/web/20011102112023/https://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991069
#20yrsago Monopoly replaces play-money with fake credit-cards https://web.archive.org/web/20070220050926/http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1228653,00.html
#20yrsago HOWTO build a fax out of salmon tins https://web.archive.org/web/20060828010312/https://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/07/25/build-a-rather-bad-salmon-can-fax-machine/
#20yrsago Power outlets in airports wiki https://web.archive.org/web/20060807061721/http://wiki.jeffsandquist.com/default.aspx/AirPower/AirPower
#20yrsago How iTunes is bad for the music industry and the public https://web.archive.org/web/20060813140818/http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191000408
#15yrsago Ousted EMI boss: pirates are our best customers, suing is bad for business https://torrentfreak.com/former-google-cio-limewire-pirates-were-itunes-best-customers-110726/
#15yrsago Patent trolls and shakedowns: Intellectual Ventures and the βlittle guyβ https://web.archive.org/web/20160810163346/https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack
#10yrsago Textiles printed directly from sewer covers https://raubdruckerin.de/
#10yrsago Mexican indigenous groups form co-op phone company to serve 356 municipalities https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/26/so-long-phone-companies-mexicos-indigenous-groups-are-getting-their-own-telecoms/
#5yrsago Surge pricing violates antitrust law https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#pure-transfer
#5yrsago Oregon's carbon offsets go up in smoke https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#murder-offsets
#5yrsago Charter schools are money laundries https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#ed-bezzle
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/program/
Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/
London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
Waarom jij straks het hulpje van AI bent (VPRO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOnvR2fs8CA
Talk Tech Bock (Vera LinΓ)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFjGvQoBgc
How To Think About AI Before Itβs Too Late (This Is Hell)
https://thisishell.com/episodes/1919
AI Won't Replace You⦠But This Might (Deep Focus)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oorWq_m48AQ
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
This work β excluding any serialized fiction β is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
ISSN: 3066-764X
Just as Hillary Clinton positioned her run as a third term for Obama ("America is already great"), so did Biden (and then Harris) position their campaigns as a second Biden term. As Biden said (in 2019): "Nothing would fundamentally change":
So a vote for Biden would be a vote for another four years of forceful, material support for genocide; another four years of compromise with the Democratic establishment on student debt and healthcare gouging; and another four years of a president who was obviously in mental decline.
Harris's campaign was, "A vote for me is a vote for all of the above (minus the cognitive decline)." Actually, it was worse: by conspicuously failing to campaign on the Biden administration's record on reining in corporate power, a vote for Harris was "A vote for all of the above, minus the mental decline and the antitrust."
Whereas a vote for Trump was a vote for change, a vote to give the establishment a black eye. It was also a vote for genocide and racist pogroms and gangster kleptocracy, which is why many voters stayed home, casting a ballot for America's all-time favorite candidate, "None of the above," while any number of furious people and/or vicious racists turned out for Trump.
There's one book that crystallizes my thoughts on this better than any other: Naomi Klein's 2023 Doppelganger, which analyzes our politics in terms of (warped) "mirror images." One of the mirror world pairings that Klein analyzes is the progressive movement, a coalition of liberals and leftists (led by liberals).
Like every coalition, the two main groups that constitute "the progressives" do not agree on many important issues, though they do have common goals. Both groups support equality for people of all genders and races, but for liberals, an equal world is one that fixes the problem that 150 straight white men own everything by replacing 75 of them with racialized people, women and queer people (whereas the leftist fix is abolishing the system in which 150 people own everything).
Biden set himself up as a peacemaker for this coalition, and his "unity task force" divided up the appointments in his administration between the Warren-Sanders leftists and liberals, including those who clearly belonged to the Manchin-Sinematic universe. This meant that his administration worked at cross-purposes to itself, neutering its boldest initiatives, rendering them impotent.
Take Biden's plan to finally allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharma companies, a move that was very long overdue. Before this, the way the system worked was: pharma companies named a price β any price! β and then Uncle Sucker paid it. No other country in the world operates this way, and, of course, the lion's share of pharma R&D costs are already borne by the American public (or they were, until Musk DOGEd the US research budget to death).
So the American public pays more than anyone else in the world to develop these drugs, and then they pay more than anyone else in the world to buy these drugs. This is madness, and putting an end to it is an obvious political win. But Biden found a way to do it that "balanced" the leftist principle of protecting people from capitalist exploitation with the liberal principle of protecting businesses lest the essential function of developing life-saving drugs become a state activity (rather than a market one).
Biden's solution? A "Build Back Better" plan that would allow the federal government to negotiate up to ten drug prices (and as few as zero drug prices), but the new prices would only kick in after the 2024 election, so no one would see the benefit of this in time for the next general election:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption
This is a solution that pleases no one β and that's the point. Biden and his team viewed the presidency as an institution for making sure everyone was equally unhappy, a philosophy that Anat Shenker-Osorio calls "pizzaburger politics." This is named for a thought-experiment in which half your family wants pizza and the other half wants burgers, so you serve them "pizzaburgers" and make everyone miserable and declare yourself to have the fair-handed wisdom of Solomon (yes, I'm aware that this analogy has a fatal flaw in that pizzaburgers actually sound delicious, but work with me here).
Biden prided himself on running a pizzaburger presidency, in which every move that satisfied the left of his party was neutralized by a concession to the party's right wing establishment:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change
(Trump enacted a mirror-world version of Biden's pharma price controls: TrumpRx, a program that claims to lower drug prices while those prices actually go up):
Biden's pizzaburger compromises made everyone unhappy. He appointed generational talents like Lina Khan, Jonathan Kanter and Rohit Chopra to run key agencies charged with crushing corporate power, and then gave lifetime appointments to corporate-friendly judges who blocked their rulemakings and penalties:
Of course, it wasn't just Biden's own judicial appointees who stood in his way; from the Supreme Court on down, on issues from student debt cancellation to noncompetes, judges blocked the Biden administration. When this happened, Biden somehow couldn't find his way to his bully pulpit. Rather than working the refs β the way Trump does, in ways that energize his base, stiffens his legislators' resolve and intimidates other judges β Biden tinkered in the margins to find ways to advance half-measures and stayed mum in public.
This compromise-oriented meekness carried over into Biden's relationship with Democratic lawmakers who sold out the American people. Rather than campaigning for the primary opponents of monsters like Fetterman, Sinema and Manchin, Biden worked behind the scenes to broker compromises, delivering yet another inedible pizzaburger (and acting hurt and bewildered when no one thanked him for it). The alternative? Constitutional hardball:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war
It's not clear whether Harris's abbreviated campaign could have made the public case that she would govern in a more muscular fashion as befitted the polycrisis facing the nation, but she didn't even try. A couple Democratic Party insiders of my acquaintance tell me that Biden only agreed to step aside on the condition that Harris not criticize his record. I don't know if that's true, but even within that hypothetical constraint, Harris hardly presented herself as an avatar of change. She carried on Biden's tradition of conspicuously failing to campaign on the significant achievements of Biden's own trustbusters, and put her brother-in-law, the lawyer who helped Uber crush labor rights in California, in charge of her campaign:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/us/politics/kamala-harris-tony-west.html
The point of all this is that the American people have, on two occasions, comprehensively rejected the "America is already great"/"Nothing would fundamentally change" politics of a liberal-dominated left/liberal progressive coalition. The senior partners in that coalition have driven the country into a ditch, letting Trump stage a fascist takeover that has us fighting not to win another election, but just to have another one.
Americans are sick of being told that their politicians can't do anything because "they're not the Green Lantern:"
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
America isn't already great. If we are to have more elections β much less win them β we will need to mobilize millions of people. You don't do that by telling them to oppose Trumpismo β you get them out in the streets by giving them something to support. That was Mamdani's winning message: "I know what a politician can do, and I will do it":
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence
Big Finance Might Be Dooming the SPLC β Even Before Its Day in Court https://theintercept.com/2026/05/08/splc-donations-banks-censorship/
Four Theses on the Conservative Legal Movement https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/four-theses-on-the-conservative-legal
Hearts and Minds: An Ambivalent Review of βProject Hail Maryβ https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11659
Meta Is Dying. Itβs About Time. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opinion/meta-facebook-zuckerberg.html
#25yrsago Denmark plans to legalize music trading https://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/05/07/denmark.downloads.idg/index.html
#20yrsago Babysuit https://web.archive.org/web/20060513013815/https://www.gildlilies.com/pop_ups/phillip_toledano_kaleidoscope.htm
#20yrsago Patent office will ask the public to βpeer reviewβ inventions https://web.archive.org/web/20060512051743/http://www.dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/
#20yrsago Report from Franceβs DRM protest at Place de la Bastille https://web.archive.org/web/20170902135411/https://tofz.org/?dir=Paris%2Fevents%2FMarch
#20yrsago Interactive maps show your cityβs floodline when the sea rises https://flood.firetree.net/
#20yrsago Scientology to open βSuper Powerβ training center in FL https://web.archive.org/web/20060522112457/http://www.sptimes.com/2006/05/06/Tampabay/Scientology_nearly_re.shtml/
#20yrsago Homemade radios http://www.duntemann.com/radiogallery.htm
#20yrsago Vatican astronomer denounces Creationism as βpaganismβ https://web.archive.org/web/20060517013332/http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=674042006
#20yrsago Canadaβs New Democratic Party embraces copyfighting musicians https://web.archive.org/web/20060520024734/http://www.ndp.ca/page/3713
#15yrsago Teens and privacy online: using Facebook is compatible with valuing privacy https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/05/09/how-teens-understand-privacy.html
#15yrsago Ann Arbor library acquires lending, sharing and copying rights to Creative Commons music catalog https://annarborchronicle.com/2011/04/28/ann-arbor-library-signs-digital-music-deal/
#15yrsago Tin robot on Karel Δapekβs grave https://www.gilesorr.com/travels/Prague2011/BestPrague.20110421.6142.GO.CanonSX10.html
#15yrsago Just look at this banana Dalek. https://web.archive.org/web/20110716022131/https://www.daleksoftheday.com/2011/05/banana-dalek.html
#15yrsago NRA and Florida gag pediatricians: no more firearm safety advice for parents https://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136063523/florida-bill-could-muzzle-doctors-on-gun-safety
#10yrsago Conservative economics: whatβs happened to the UK economy after a year of Tory rule https://web.archive.org/web/20160509113126/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/what-has-happened-to-the-economy-under-the-tories-in-six-charts-a7017131.html
#10yrsago Save iTunes: how the W3Cβs argument for web-wide DRM would have killed iTunes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-itunes
#10yrsago Americaβs courts are going dark https://www.justsecurity.org/30920/courts-going-dark/
#10yrsaogo Australian government issues report calling for copyright and patent liberalisation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/australian-productivity-commission-slams-protectionist-copyright-and-patent-laws
#10yrsago Panama Papers: New Zealand is the go-to money launderer for crooked Latin Americans https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/panama-papers/303356/nz-at-heart-of-panama-money-go-round
#10yrsago Safe Patient Project: searchable spreadsheet tells Californians whether their doc is on probation, and why https://web.archive.org/web/20160507002350/http://consumersunion.org/research/california-doctors-on-probation/
#5yrsago The Memex Method https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/
#5yrsago How copyright filters lead to wage-theft https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/08/copyfraud/#beethoven-just-wrote-music
#1yrago Who broke the internet? https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman
Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification
Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow
Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html
Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
SXSW London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901
NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
Enshittification (99% Invisible)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/
Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor
When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8
Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
"The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work β excluding any serialized fiction β is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://pluralistic.net/plura-list
Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):
https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net
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Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
ISSN: 3066-764X
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