On one read, chokepoint capitalism is really just plain old capitalism. The regulatory barriers (or moats) that companies erect to protect their monopolistic/monopsonistic power—including regulatory capture, neutering of competitors, complex contractual terms with suppliers, and straight up non-compliance with their legal obligations—are how capital works to protect and reproduce itself.

These industries lack the capacity (and inclination) to focus on human flourishing, and have actively skirted accountability for design decisions. Through this book, the social structures that have shaped our lived environment are not just rendered visible, they become hard to unsee. Road to Nowhere pulls the mind of the reader towards the myriad of possibilities that come into view if we think of our world without the car.

For many of the communities making their move away from Twitter, it will become apparent that functional online spaces don’t happen by accident: they involve actual work. Why do this for a company that does nothing more than monetise your content to help make Musk’s next billion?

If Labor wanted to set itself apart, it could start by promising to implement a range of policy proposals that are already on the table that could contribute to a more expansive idea of online safety. Bolder still, strong opposition against the introduction of rampant surveillance powers, invasive technologies such as facial recognition, and attempts to undermine our digital security would be welcome moves to enhance our collective safety in the digital age.

By inviting news providers to join the platforms they cannot beat, Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code effectively commercialises all news content. Even public service content is now reliant on the attention it can generate on platforms like Facebook and Google News to reach an audience.

Ultimately the creation of safe access zones required legislative change, drafted by a coalition of women from a variety of political stripes, and subsequently endorsed by the High Court. The struggle is not yet over – access, particularly for women outside major cities, remains a significant problem. But the truth remains that we are in a much better place to agitate around these issues than we were two decades ago.

As women around the world gather to march, we could not let this moment pass without challenging some of the criticism of Promising Young Woman which we feel misses the central point – and, by extension, the reason why women’s rage is again bubbling towards boiling point.

In case it still wasn’t clear: Facebook is not a public service. Today, it has shown it by taking an unforgivably heavy hand to banning content – targeting everything from the Bureau of Meteorology to the Australian Council of Trade Unions. In doing so, it continues to show us what the company is really like: it’s time we finally believe them.

We need a diverse and flourishing media landscape, in which new content providers can make use of the incredible potential of the web and in which the historic role of journalism to speak truth to power is afforded protection and respect. Unfortunately, the proposed media code may take us in the opposite direction.

With the defeat of Donald Trump, we face a critical moment for users of technology and citizens of the digital world. An appetite among the public for reform is about to face off against a well-resourced industry that is looking for ways to contain the regulatory impulse.

Now is the time to learn from previous crises, and rather than accede to the power grab, start to question motives, demand transparency and accountability, and take part in a genuine debate about credible alternatives.

Borders are not just political and economic: they are ideological. They are about creating what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls a ‘systemic cruelty [with a] dehumanising culture’ that allows a line to be drawn between people we care about and those we consider dispensable.

The outcome of the High Court of Australia case of Comcare v Banerji has been touted as the death knell for freedom of speech in Australia. It’s hard for something to die that was never really alive in the first place, but the decision remains deeply alarming.

From across the ditch, the news that the Christchurch terrorist was an Australian was accompanied by a sinking feeling. The way in which our everyday public debate is steeped in concepts of white superiority made it all too predictable that such a horrendous crime should find its origins on our shores.

Last week, people gathered around the Opera House in Sydney, disgusted by how politicians had allowed a World Heritage public space to be sold off to the destructive and predatory gambling industry. As the protest swelled, it was reported how ‘the whole kitchen staff from the Bennelong restaurant gathered at their windows and gave the protesters a standing ovation.’ While a worker takeover of the Opera House seems unlikely, it also seems instinctively no less fair to give them a say in how their workplace is run.

It is tempting to look from Australia to the result on the Emerald Isle with excitement and momentum, wondering where might be our next focus for reform in reproductive healthcare rights. But before we do, it is worth spending a moment reflecting on how the campaign to repeal the eighth succeeded.

Promise is a company that aims to reduce the population of people detained while awaiting trial because they cannot post bail (what Australians call being on remand). There are currently 450,000 people in the US in this category. Through a variety of technical tools, from tracking devices to intelligent calendars, Promise would allow the state to keep tabs on these people, but without the need to keep them in jail.

It is hard to believe that the rates of incarceration of Aboriginal people are actually higher than the rates of incarceration of African Americans in the USA (2,346 per 100,000 in Australia, 1,408 per 100,000 in the US). The problems that flow from over policing are much better understood in the US, a country we like to think of as much more regressive in the quality of its policing. But Aboriginal communities and their allies can take lessons from the US in how to tackle over-policing.

Despite coming formally under the control of voters, the reality is that the propertied classes use the state to impose their interests on the majority. It is an observation with a long history. ‘Civil government supposes a certain subordination,’ wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, ‘so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.’

The role of intellectual property law in the age of the information economy is a hugely complex topic, and parsing out the various roles and objectives of copyright (let alone intellectual property law more generally) is a monumental task. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to buy the line that protecting copyright (and resisting the liberalisation of the regime via fair use) is synonymous with the interests of artists.

The Juicero story exhibits all the excesses of the technology industry in one neat bundle: the assumption that technological development is inherently good; the overly clever design with shortcomings that appear patently obvious to outsiders; the zeal for throwing vast sums of money at a brazenly ostentatious product in a time when many struggle to meet their basic needs. How did we get to a point where inane products are designed and financed by a community that fancies itself the repository of the globe’s brightest minds?

It was supposed to be a funeral on Thursday, but as we canvassed around Battersea, it was unclear what we were supposed to be sad about. We were five deep at every conceivable outpost and doorknocking in council estates half a dozen times during the day (after many more attempts in the weeks leading up to polling day). We were relishing the excitement of a possible end to Third Way politics. Yet the polls were convincing us of the wisdom of taking this moment to mourn the Corbyn campaign. By 10 pm that night, it was clear that the political topography of Britain had completely changed in a way very few had predicted.

Both the Women’s March on Washington in January and the international women’s strike that took place last month have raised questions about how to build a lasting resistance movement. How do we get the balance right, for example, between calling for bold political actions and consolidating the movement? How might we coalesce despite the uneven nature of the politics of broad coalitions?

Gender oppression is only one part of this story. Simplistic analyses that see men as the problem – for which the binary solution is women – have led to a dead end. It’s time for something new. Or as the great Louise Michel summarised it nearly 150 years ago: ‘[a woman] bends under mortification; in her home her burdens crush her. Man wants to keep her that way, to be sure that she will never encroach upon his function or his titles. Gentlemen, we do not want either your functions or your titles’. It might not feel like it right now, but there is a lot more to politics than elections.

Malcolm Gladwell has been subjected to significant amounts of criticism over the years, which are to varying degrees compelling and valid. His approach to storytelling is both overly simplistic and engaging. He reproduces what others have researched in accessible ways, but makes mistakes and misrepresentations. He is entertaining but, given his reach and looseness with the truth, arguably dangerous.

It is certainly fair that someone like Amber Heard should be believed about allegations of violence in the hope that those in similar positions feel empowered to do the same. But Heard is a wealthy, well-connected woman; how similar are these positions likely to be? It is well and good on one level to support survivors of violence by bringing their experience into the mainstream using celebrity culture, but there is a need to go beyond this.

[T]he time has come to resist constantly turning to law as a place to direct our political disquiet. The indignity and disrespect with which we treat our fellow human beings is no longer about the law. The time has come to build a movement of solidarity with the people across oceans we plan to imprison, should they decide to make the rational decision to flee wars that we are already involved in (or no doubt will be fighting in future) – and to align ourselves with the fates of those we’ve already imprisoned.

The question does not ask about the specific circumstances of the Bali 9 case, nor does it offer any explanation for the positive response. There are no follow up questions about alternatives, such as imprisonment. Without such context, it cannot and should not be used as evidence that Australians support the death penalty for Chan and Sukumaran. Polling has a profound power over politicians, regardless of what they say. The fuss over the parliamentary Liberal Party leadership is an obvious example of how polling can spur politicians to action (or inaction as the case may be).

The parliament has passed legislation that permits the Attorney General to authorise certain activities of ASIO and affiliates as ‘special intelligence operations’.

There has been plenty of hype over the recent changes to Australia’s national security legislation, and rightly so. But it is worth spending a moment to work out what actually is already on the books, what is new, and what’s coming.

If reports are to be believed and the Australian government really has handed refugees back to the Sri Lankan army, this is a new low.

I’m somebody who takes up (a tiny) space in the refugee movement, though I myself am not a refugee. I do what I can as a lawyer, writer and campaigner. It is ridiculous to think that in the first of those roles I take up space that others should fill: as a lawyer my job is to stand in and make arguments on behalf of others.

I have heard about a man with an acute mental illness detained for days on end in solitary confinement in a detention centre in searing heat.

In a recent, extraordinary piece for the Daily Telegraph, Warren Mundine wrote about how ‘sit-down’ money was condemning generations of Aboriginal people to poverty and breeding anti-social behavior.

What is it like to cross into the West Bank from Jordan? Amman is a hot, dry and dusty city. Dense urban sprawl sits in tight clusters across the undulating hills of bone coloured sand and rock. When you look out across the vast valley, it is almost as if you could run your fingers through the arid landscape and reform it in different shapes.

In a recent column for the Guardian, Van Badham asked whether the ‘public shaming of Australian gamblers has more to do with bourgeois loathing of working-class habits than any genuine moral crusade for public good.’ There is something galling about defending gambling on the basis of its working class cultural credentials, given the industry thrives on stripping money from the disadvantaged.

Helen Razer’s piece about the failures of the ‘Left’ is a political version of an Escher drawing. Chastising what she sees as vacuous symbolism and disintegration into individuality, Razer appears wholly unaware of the intense irony in calling this out in the exact manner she decries.

During a brief stint working as a lawyer for indigent death row prisoners in Louisiana, I attended a public forum where one of the speakers was a former long-time warden of a Mississippi prison. While speaking, he expressed a reflection that neatly condensed the key conundrum of criminal justice in Western society.

Criticising the next generation for their apparent failings is an eye-wateringly tiresome pursuit, recycled through history. It usually reflects some kind of existential crisis: a moment of jealousy with an overlay of fatigue for radical imaginings.

I come to dread the phone calls. But, even when I am not there to take them, the messages haunt me. An ominous flashing light on my phone, a few buttons pressed; her ghostly voice, barely audible, in my ear. ‘Elizabeth Lawyer, this is R. Please be calling me.’

Next month, an organisation called The Lawfare Project (TLP) is putting on a conference about lawfare, which it defines as: the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic ends. The role of the organisation is set out on their website. The scope of the Lawfare Project’s focus is limited to lawfare as it […]

The Choir of London has come to perform classical music across the Occupied Territories. The idea is to promote excellence in the West Bank, to use music to encourage inspiration and dignity. The project emphasises collaboration with local artists and educational programs, to foster performances of the highest standard for people who would otherwise have little access to other musical traditions.