I'm not usually very keen on Kickstarters, but this is a very cool one. Cory Doctorow (
@pluralistic ) is self-publishing an audiobook version of his upcoming _Attack Surface_ (the third volume of the _Little Brother_ series). It's a very good series that deals with the insidious effect and damage that the intersection of Big Tech and Surveillance Capitalism have on our present world.
And this Kickstarter itself is very real world instance of the struggle portrayed in Doctorow's series: not only does Amazon (via its audiobook wing Audible) force DRM on all of its audiobooks, but it has a stranglehold over the audiobook market.
Success of this Kickstarter could change the way publishers think about monopolistic electronic platforms like Amazon/Audible and help to carve out an open space (for authors and readers alike).
A space outside of the control of one of the emblematic bad actors in the tech space both in terms of monopolistic practices and literally in terms of surveillance capitalism (e.g. Amazon's Ring -
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/29/ring-amazon-police-partnership-social-media-neighbor) .
Here's the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/attack-surface-audiobook-for-the-third-little-brother-book