Governments worldwide are trying to rein in Big Tech's power, but most efforts focus on redistribution—making tech giants pay for past harms. This article argues that predistribution—preventing the harm in the first place—is a more effective strategy. By repealing anticircumvention laws and legalizing alternative clients, countries like Canada could stop data theft and market extraction before they happen, rather than fighting for a slice of stolen profits.
Governments around the world are struggling with a fundamental problem: how do you regulate companies that are larger than most nations and have captured the political process? For the past decade, we've watched attempts to rein in America's tech giants—Apple, Google, Meta—follow a familiar pattern. Regulators identify wrongdoing, impose fines, and demand changes. Yet enforcement remains elusive.
The core issue isn't just that these companies are wealthy. It's that our regulatory approach focuses on redistribution rather than predistribution.
The Redistribution Trap
Redistribution means taking money or data after it's already been stolen and trying to return some of it to victims. It's the dominant strategy in tech regulation today.
Consider the news media crisis. Advertising revenue has collapsed, and tech platforms capture the remaining dollars. Meta and Google take 51 cents of every advertising dollar, up from the 15% industry standard before surveillance advertising. They've cornered the market through collusion and illegal practices.
Governments responded with "link taxes"—requiring tech companies to pay news publishers for linking to their content. Australia, Germany, Spain, France, and Canada have all implemented versions of this.
But redistribution fails on multiple levels:
First, it misdiagnoses the problem. Tech platforms aren't stealing news content; they're stealing money from the entire advertising ecosystem. The news itself is public information. Banning links to news doesn't harm platforms—it harms citizens who can no longer find journalism.
Second, platforms can simply opt out. Meta banned news links in Canada, leaving users with far-right influencer content instead of journalism. Google threatened to do the same until Canada backed down on its digital services tax.
Third, it creates perverse incentives. When Google paid millions to the Toronto Star, the paper dropped its award-winning "Defanging Big Tech" investigative series. The media becomes dependent on the very companies it should be investigating.
Most damningly, redistribution makes the media's future dependent on Big Tech's continued ability to extract value. If you curb tech's predatory practices, they have less money to pay the link tax. You're essentially taxing the theft rather than stopping it.
What Predistribution Looks Like
Predistribution prevents harm before it occurs. Instead of asking tech companies to return stolen money, we stop them from stealing in the first place.
Repealing Anticircumvention Laws
Canada's Copyright Modernisation Act (Bill C-11) makes it illegal to reverse-engineer or modify tech products. This law was passed despite overwhelming public opposition, and it protects American tech exports from Canadian competition.
Repealing Bill C-11 would enable:
Alternative app stores: Canadian companies could create app stores that don't charge the 30% "app tax" on in-app payments. For a Canadian news outlet, this means 30 cents per subscriber dollar stays in Canada instead of flowing to Apple or Google. The actual payment processing cost is under 1%, so that 29% difference is pure extraction.
Surveillance-blocking clients: Companies could sell modified Facebook or Twitter clients that block surveillance advertising and restore access to algorithmically suppressed news. Users could see their actual feeds, not what the platform wants them to see.
Device-level privacy tools: Businesses could offer products that modify phones to block data collection at the source. Over half of web users run ad-blockers, but phone-level blocking is currently illegal.
Recording and archiving tools: Legal jailbreaking would allow companies to offer PVR functionality for streaming services, preserving access to content that platforms might remove.
All of these are predistributive because they prevent value extraction rather than trying to claw it back later.
Banning Surveillance Advertising
Canada could ban the collection and sale of consumer data outright. This would choke off the supply chain for surveillance advertising, reducing the market's ability to generate the profits that platforms currently extract.
This is fundamentally different from dictating how companies use data after collection (a redistributive approach). It prevents the data economy from existing in the first place.
Tax Policy Reform
Rather than implementing digital services taxes that Trump can threaten to counter with tariffs, countries could simply make it harder for companies to evade taxes in the first place. The problem isn't that we need new taxes—it's that companies like Google claim headquarters in Ireland to avoid paying existing ones.
Why Predistribution Works
The key insight is that predistribution doesn't rely on Big Tech's cooperation. It changes the legal framework so that Canadian courts can't be used to shut down Canadian competitors.
When Canada tries to fine Apple billions, Apple can refuse to pay. When Canada orders Apple to open its App Store, Apple can refuse. But when Canada legalizes alternative app stores, Apple can't use Canadian courts to stop them.
This matters for trade negotiations. Trump has threatened to invade Canada and has broken off trade talks. Getting a fair deal from the US government is as unlikely as getting tech companies to voluntarily stop spying.
The solution isn't better trade agreements—it's building domestic tech capacity that captures value currently extracted by American companies.
The Broader Pattern
This predistribution approach applies beyond media and app stores:
Gaming consoles: Legalizing alternative stores would rescue game companies from Microsoft and Nintendo's 30% cut.
Smart devices: Repealing anticircumvention would allow blocking surveillance on smart TVs, doorbells, and other connected devices.
Streaming services: Alternative clients could mix results from Canadian media companies and archives like the National Film Board, while blocking platform surveillance.
The Political Reality
The EU's GDPR demonstrates that even strong privacy laws fail when companies refuse to obey. US tech giants claim Irish headquarters, and Ireland captures the regulatory process. The result: companies simply ignore the law.
Redistribution assumes we can force compliance. Predistribution assumes we can't.
This isn't about letting Big Tech off the hook. It's about recognizing that the power imbalance is so extreme that traditional regulation can't work. When a company is larger than most governments and has captured the political process, you can't rely on that process to constrain them.
Instead, predistribution removes the legal protections that currently shield American tech exports from competition. It allows Canadian companies to disenshittify American products without fear of lawsuit.
The Trade War Context
Trump's threats against Canada create urgency. But the response shouldn't be capitulation or better trade terms. It should be building domestic alternatives that capture value currently flowing south.
The goal isn't to win a trade war through negotiation. It's to win by making American extraction impossible while creating Canadian alternatives that generate Canadian jobs and keep Canadian money in Canada.
This is the difference between protectionism and political will. Protectionism shields domestic companies from competition. Predistribution removes legal barriers that prevent domestic companies from offering better alternatives to American tech exports.
Conclusion
Redistribution has consistently failed because it operates within a system designed for extraction. It asks courts to enforce orders against companies that have captured the political process. It taxes theft rather than preventing it.
Predistribution changes the rules of the game. It recognizes that we can't force Google, Apple, or Meta to behave better, but we can remove their ability to use our legal system against our own competitors.
For Canada, this means repealing Bill C-11. For other countries, it means similar reforms. The specific policies vary, but the principle is universal: stop harm before it happens, rather than trying to fix it afterward.
In a world where tech companies are larger than governments and have captured the political process, predistribution isn't just more effective—it's the only approach that doesn't require their consent.
This article draws from Cory Doctorow's analysis of Big Tech regulation and the limitations of redistribution-based policy approaches.
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