I believe or think that the following companies or the companies which operate under the following brands are doing things or trying to do things which harm me or or my friends or which limit my freedom or which threaten to do so, and which are probably illegal and certainly immoral:
Apple
Amazon
Sony
Microsoft
Orange
Ebay
“Hollywood” and all its denizens
...and I expect to add to the list.
I don't expect things to turn up in my house which I didn't bring in myself, or invite from friends. I can easily detect physical junk mail and throw it away. If I produce rubbish, I can see it for what it is, and the bin is outside. I can sell or give away or discard my possessions at will.
My kettle boils water, my fridge keeps the milk cold, my lights go on and off when I want and my bed is a horizontal place which is comfortable to sleep in. My pen writes, and when it stops I know that all I have to do is refill the ink. Of course I expect to have to pay for that ink, but what colour it is and what I write with it are my own affair. Outside, I get the metro to the station I want, I see anything I care to look at, I come and go as I please in public places. I look at anything in shops and buy what I want anonymously if like. I can talk to anyone I want, without asking permission or making payments. I have the right to authorship of anything written, painted, composed or photographed, and I can give these same things to and receive them from other persons. I have to buy food and pay for accommodation and transport and so on but no one makes me use those things in an unnatural way, for covert purposes, or so as to harm me.
In that world I can modify anything according to my own wishes to the limit of my skill or beyond it at my own risk. I can repaint my room, shorten the legs of a chair that is too tall, fit a new handle on a drawer. No one prevents me from using any kind of tool to make changes to the things I own.
And the law not only prevents me from stealing, defrauding or harming others but protects me from those who would try to do these things to me.
But the electronic world is not like that. My email account does not just send and receive emails: it collects information about me and bombards me with spam, which I do not want. It tells organizations things about me which are private, which are not their business. Facebook controls what I tell people I do know and at the same time collects information about me and sends it to people I do not know without my consent. Google withholds services from me which I have paid for unless I allow them to gather information about my present and past whereabouts, and allow them to make unspecified use of it. They also require me to pay to read an electronic copy of a book I already own. Ebay passes information to taxation authorities and law-enforcement services even those in countries which have no jurisdiction over me about goods which I buy and sell when there is no evidence at all that I have committed any crime. Orange “sells” me a phone which I can only use on their network.
I am pleased to say that I have never bought anything for myself from Apple and it is some years since I had anything to to with Microsoft. These companies are guilty of the nastiest and subtlest thing of all. If they could, they would place software in my PC and my phone which limit my ability to purchase electronic goods and services, which limit my freedom to use the goods and services as I wish, which conceal their behaviour from me and which prevent me from controlling and modifying their behaviour according to my own wishes. Meanwhile they have created the electronic means and the de facto right to alter that software, to control its behaviour and keep that behaviour secret from me, and to do things now and in the future which are covert, which is already bad enough, and which might well be illegal if only the law knew what was going on, which as you can see, it does not.
Well, I am in danger of boring you. I will probably add to this document in due course and you will be able to read all about it and get all your news from me as easily as you like from my website: about 5 years ago I grabbed a really great webpage name and everything I want the world to know about me will be posted there, and you can email me at the same website. I control it completely and so you will know that I am getting your information and using it only as a trusted friend or relation would treat your private communications to me and you will know that what you get from me is personal, from me to you.
This is what you need to know:
1. My new email address is mine and mine alone, private and personal to me, only. The existing address, dixon.bill(aa)grotmail.dot.com will disappear once I have figured out how to dispense with it completely.
2. Everything I want to make publicly known about me, to publish or to share will (eventually) appear on the website, which is also mine and mine alone.
3. There will be other things things I haven't figured out yet.