People Are Pissed Off and Ready to Own Their Shit
People Are Pissed Off and Ready to Own Their Shit
人们已经忍无可忍，准备夺回属于自己的东西
The train blasts through right as Louis Rossmann starts to speak. This has happened several times already at the event he’s hosting on a Friday night in San Jose, California. All the speakers before him patiently paused when the train on the nearby tracks roared by, its loud horn blaring, then resumed talking. But Rossmann is mid-sentence in his rapid-fire delivery about the topic he’s fiercely passionate about, and he doesn’t stop. He shouts over the train.
就在路易斯·罗斯曼（Louis Rossmann）开始发言时，火车呼啸而过。这已经是他周五晚上在加利福尼亚州圣何塞主持的活动中发生的几次插曲了。在他之前的演讲者在附近铁轨上的火车轰鸣而过、汽笛长鸣时，都会耐心地停下来，等火车过去后再继续。但罗斯曼正处于他那连珠炮式演讲的中间，谈论着他极其热衷的话题，他没有停下来，而是直接盖过了火车的轰鸣声。
This is the penultimate stop of the Own Your Shit tour, a US-wide odyssey of events this summer put on by ownership advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann and his advocacy nonprofit Fulu. Around 80 people have crammed into the narrow side porch of a brewery. The final event will be in Silver Springs, Maryland, on October 1.
这是“夺回你的所有权”（Own Your Shit）巡回活动的倒数第二站。今年夏天，所有权倡导者兼 YouTuber 路易斯·罗斯曼及其非营利倡导组织 Fulu 在全美各地举办了这一系列活动。大约 80 人挤在一家啤酒厂狭窄的侧廊里。最后一场活动将于 10 月 1 日在马里兰州的银泉市举行。
Before Rossmann spoke, panels featured an advocate from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, students from San Jose State University’s Fixit workshop, and a leader of the Fisker Owners Association, a group of vehicle owners who refuse to let their cars die. The main call to action is to kill a very specific piece of legislation: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Enacted in 1998, this section of the DMCA prohibits bypassing digital restrictions and locks enabled by a product manufacturer.
在罗斯曼发言之前，小组讨论的嘉宾包括来自电子前沿基金会（EFF）的倡导者、圣何塞州立大学 Fixit 工作室的学生，以及 Fisker 车主协会的负责人——这是一个拒绝让自己的汽车“报废”的车主团体。此次活动的主要诉求是废除一项特定的法律：1998 年颁布的《数字千年版权法》（DMCA）第 1201 条。该条款禁止绕过产品制造商设置的数字限制和锁。
Ostensibly, the legislation was meant to ensure device security. Ownership and repair advocates have long criticized it for helping companies put software locks on devices and then charge owners for access to their own hardware. Rossmann, along with fellow advocate Kevin O’Reilly, started Fulu to pay out bounties for people who can disable digital locks on a device, even if there are legal consequences.
表面上，这项立法旨在确保设备安全。但所有权和维修倡导者长期以来一直批评它，认为它帮助公司在设备上设置软件锁，然后向所有者收取访问其自身硬件的费用。罗斯曼与另一位倡导者凯文·奥莱利（Kevin O’Reilly）共同创立了 Fulu，为那些能够破解设备数字锁的人提供赏金，即使这样做可能面临法律后果。
“How many people here enjoy it when they get threats of lawsuits?” Rossmann asks during the San Jose event. “Raise your hand.” Maybe four or five hands go up, including a grinning Rohit Chopra, the former director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “I enjoy when people try to sue me,” Rossmann says. “When they send me threats, I literally frame them.”
“在座的各位，有多少人喜欢收到诉讼威胁？”罗斯曼在圣何塞的活动中问道，“请举手。”大约有四五个人举起了手，其中包括咧嘴笑着的罗希特·乔普拉（Rohit Chopra），他是联邦消费者金融保护局的前局长。“我喜欢别人试图起诉我，”罗斯曼说，“当他们给我发威胁信时，我真的会把它们装裱起来。”
His presentation bounces through his various ownership- and repair-oriented fights. He calls out companies like Amazon, which removed books from people’s Kindles, and home pipe leak detector company Roost, which discontinued stand-alone Wi-Fi products to the dismay of its users. He criticized Apple, Sony, wheelchair companies, and BMW, which recently ran ads for the new Spider-Man movie on their customers’ dashboard screens. He accuses companies of adding paid subscriptions to their products after customers buy them as a form of “ransomware.”
他的演讲涵盖了他参与的各种关于所有权和维修的斗争。他点名批评了亚马逊（曾从用户的 Kindle 中删除书籍）和管道泄漏检测公司 Roost（停止了独立 Wi-Fi 产品的支持，令用户感到沮丧）。他还批评了苹果、索尼、轮椅公司以及宝马——宝马最近在客户的仪表盘屏幕上播放了新《蜘蛛侠》电影的广告。他指责这些公司在客户购买产品后强加付费订阅，这是一种“勒索软件”。
It’s a righteous screed that feels infectious in the crowd. People cheer and call out their own ownership issues. Rossmann is a preacher at the pulpit of people pissed off by subscription services, the steady decline of physical media, and the inability to fix their stuff.
这是一篇正义的檄文，在人群中产生了感染力。人们欢呼并喊出自己遇到的所有权问题。罗斯曼就像是一位布道者，站在那些对订阅服务、实体媒体的持续衰落以及无法维修自己物品而感到愤怒的人们的讲坛上。
The Own Your Shit tour comes as people grow increasingly angry with companies like Sony ending physical disc support and deleting digital items in customers’ libraries. (Google has recently done something similar and deleted a user’s copy of The Lord of the Rings.) Amazon just ended support for its perfectly fine older Kindles. People feel squeezed by economic pressures as devices get more expensive and want to hang onto their devices longer.
“夺回你的所有权”巡回活动正值人们对索尼等公司越来越愤怒之际，因为这些公司正在终止对实体光盘的支持，并删除客户库中的数字内容。（谷歌最近也做了类似的事情，删除了用户购买的《指环王》副本。）亚马逊刚刚停止了对其功能完好的旧款 Kindle 的支持。随着设备价格越来越贵，人们感到经济压力巨大，希望能够更长时间地使用自己的设备。
Katharine Trendacosta, a director of policy and advocacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, spoke at the event to call out the way companies have turned just about everything into subscription services users have to pay for. “They get the subscription and our data,” Trendacosta says. “It’s a win-win for them and a lose-lose for us.”
电子前沿基金会的政策与倡导主任凯瑟琳·特伦达科斯塔（Katharine Trendacosta）在活动中发言，批评了公司将几乎所有东西都变成用户必须付费的订阅服务的做法。“他们既得到了订阅费，又得到了我们的数据，”特伦达科斯塔说，“这对他们来说是双赢，对我们来说则是双输。”
The tour may be coming to an end, but right-to-repair legislation has been growing worldwide. This year in the European Union, new regulations require companies to help extend the life of consumer products by making them more repairable and giving them more easily replaceable batteries. John Deere, long criticized for its repair-adverse policies, was hit with a $99 million lawsuit and a US Federal Trade Commission ruling requiring it to make its products more fixable. Repair advocates in the US have shot down anti-repair bills and are calling for federal regulation to ensure better automotive repairs and product longevity.
巡回活动或许即将结束，但“维修权”立法正在全球范围内增长。今年在欧盟，新法规要求公司通过提高产品的可维修性并提供更易更换的电池，来帮助延长消费品的使用寿命。长期因反维修政策而受到批评的约翰迪尔（John Deere）公司，面临了 9900 万美元的诉讼，并受到美国联邦贸易委员会的裁决，要求其提高产品的可维修性。美国的维修倡导者已经否决了反维修法案，并呼吁联邦政府进行监管，以确保更好的汽车维修和产品寿命。
Chopra, the former director of the CFPB, now heads the newly established California Business and Consumer Services Agency, created in July by California governor Gavin Newsom. In a conversation after the event, he shared a vision for what the BCSA will focus on.
曾任消费者金融保护局局长的乔普拉，现在领导着新成立的加州商业与消费者服务局（BCSA），该机构由加州州长加文·纽森（Gavin Newsom）于 7 月创立。在活动后的交谈中，他分享了 BCSA 未来将重点关注的愿景。
“New technology should not just help out people in the boardroom or in the C-suite,” Chopra says. “It’s actually supposed to help all of us, but we are seeing how it can sometimes be designed to scam people, to rip people off, or sometimes create some real harm for them. People who are just trying to get by really feel totally hosed by some of these practices.”
“新技术不应该只让董事会或高管层受益，”乔普拉说，“它实际上应该造福我们所有人，但我们看到它有时被设计用来欺骗人们、敲诈人们，甚至有时会给他们造成真正的伤害。那些只想维持生计的人，真的感到被这些做法彻底坑害了。”
Chopra says his goal in coming to this event was to help spread the word about the new agency and encourage people to reach out to their representatives about unfair consumer practices. “We are going to be looking hard to make sure that we’re cracking down on illegal practices,” Chopra says. “That there’s actually some real enforcement, but also when it comes to new technology, that it’s really actually helping everybody.”
乔普拉表示，他参加这次活动的目标是帮助宣传这个新机构，并鼓励人们就不公平的消费者行为向他们的代表反映情况。“我们将严厉打击非法行为，”乔普拉说，“确保有真正的执法力度，同时也确保新技术真正能够造福每一个人。”
After the event, I ask Rossmann how he’s feeling about the tour. He says he was initially worried that people were coming for the free pizza but was pleasantly surprised at how engaged and passionate the audiences have been. “I’m feeling like there’s finally a turning of the tide,” Rossmann says.
活动结束后，我问罗斯曼对这次巡回活动有何感想。他说他最初担心人们只是为了免费披萨而来，但观众们的参与度和热情让他感到惊喜。“我觉得潮流终于开始转变了，”罗斯曼说。