Pluralistic: 06 Apr 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Full Title: Pluralistic: 06 Apr 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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URL: https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/06/foia-be-damned

Highlights

“IP” was a deliberately ploy, undertaken by the world’s largest, most aggressive corporations, who hated the existing terms of art, like “creators’ monopolies.” You can see why: it’s hard to ask a legislature to strengthen your monopoly without provoking giggles, but “Help me defend my property”? That’s an appeal to the American state religion. IP bundles together a mismatched basket of legal concepts: trademark, copyright, patent, trade secrets, and weird and exotic beasts like “database rights” and “broadcast rights.”
But a couple years ago, I had a revelation: in the context of global capitalism, IP has a precise meaning. When a business person says they have – or want – IP, what they mean is “any law, rule or standard that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers.”
trade secrets have quietly expanded and expanded until they were able to swallow accountability, public safety, and good government whole. Again and again, judges have interpreted trade secrets laws in the broadest terms, with grave consequences for worker rights, the environment, good governance and the fundamental workings of the justice system.
a trade secrets claim is illegitimate is an expensive, arduous, fact-intensive process, which leads to “greater deference to secrecy.” Contrast this with patent and copyright, which require disclosure before they can be claimed. And unlike patents or copyrights, trade secrets don’t need to be vetted by and registered with a government agency. Thus: “something is a trade secret because someone says so.”