It’s GPLv3-licensed and they have some pretty easy documented steps for self hosting. Their github page is linked in the article.The per-user cost is for a hosted solution. Which isn’t to say they’re not going to pull something shitty in the future.

This guy did it back in the 80s:

https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.04.1991/page/n33/mode/2up?view=theater

Yeah, but they were testing the waters with this one. The hydra’s going to grow another head eventually. It’ll be interesting to see how/if the media integrity API gets leveraged in the Android Chrome browser. They’re eventually going to attack this problem from a slightly different angle.

Read the check, it’s not an auto-gratuity. The gratuity is still expected. This is a service charge. A service charge that is likely not listed on the menu. It’s bullshit. Raise the price of the food and don’t hide costs that you are charging the customer.

Because the price on the menu then appears lower than what the customer actually pays. It’s completely misleading.

True. But it still amounts to them refusing to sell his audio. If you want to be pedantic, Amazon doesn’t sell ebooks or audiobooks at all. They sell licenses to access the content. You can argue that Doctorow should be saying that he refuses to market his content in accordance with their policies. But I’m in favor of him framing it this way. It underscores who the real shitheels are here.