COMMUNIA and Wikimedia Deutschland hosted a presentation and discussion of the book “Chokepoint Capitalism” with author Rebecca Giblin on June 27, 2023 in Berlin.
The labour markets for creatives have been taken over by Big Tech and Big Content. How can we take them back and ensure that creative workers are paid fairly? Rebecca Giblin, professor at Melbourne Law School, and Cory Doctorow, author and journalist, describe in their joint work the new type of capitalism that we find today, especially in the creative industries, which they call “chokepoint capitalism.”
Big tech companies with their platforms have advanced to become market-dominating players. They act as powerful intermediaries between consumers and creators and control the trade in creative goods as if through a bottleneck. Their market power allows them to influence the rules in their favour and to strengthen their stranglehold on creatives in order to skim off an ever larger share of the profits generated. Through their analysis of chokepoint capitalism, Giblin and Doctorow also arrive at insights into how this system can be overcome and develop recommendations for doing so.
Rebecca Giblin spoke about the core arguments of the book, after which we engaged in a moderated panel discussion with her and other guests to exchange their analysis and approaches to solutions.
Participants:
- Sandra Trostel
Independent film maker, storyteller and researcher - Justus Dreyling
Policy Director of COMMUNIA - Rebecca Giblin
ARC Future Fellow and Professor at Melbourne Law School and Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia - Zara Rahman (moderator)
Researcher, writer and moderator
Video recording:
A video recording of the event is available on YouTube.
