4 ms·

I guess you're right, that's a big loophole. In any case, I actually don't like trade secrets either. If anything, they are completely against the logic of free

I guess you're right, that's a big loophole. In any case, I actually don't like trade secrets either. If anything, they are completely against the logic of free market (free choice).

johncolanduoni 11y ago
My guess would be that abolishing copyright would lead to every commercial program being run as SaaS with most of the code on a remote server, so changes in trade secret laws wouldn't help.
njharman 11y ago
How come the choice to keep my sauce secret is less than any other choice? All trade secret laws do is if you make efforts to keep secret and some one steals it, you can punish them.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  > How come the choice to keep my sauce secret is less than any other choice? Because this "choice" restricts freedom of other people. You don't just want it to be a secret (then all you have to do is not to tell anyone), you demand that other people to respect and enforce it to be a secret (restricting other people's choices by restricting information). If I give you three choices A/B/C, and don't tell you which is which, do you have a choice or not? I would argue that you don't. You need to understand what's behind each choice to be able to "have" a choice.
  - johncolanduoni 11y ago
    > Because this "choice" restricts freedom of other people. It restricts the freedom of your employees to sell/give your company's private information to other people, and the freedom of competitors to use them to obtain it or take it for themselves. If you come up with the same technology through legitimate means, then the fact that someone else holds it as a trade secret doesn't matter. It's not like patents; if someone gets there on their own effort, they're not encumbered by trade secret laws. It's also important to note that trade secret protection laws do not generally cover reverse-engineering. Protection from that (if any) comes from copyright/patent law. Asking people to honest does restrict their economic choices, but so does asking them to not rob banks.

I guess you're right, that's a big loophole. In any case, I actually don't like trade secrets either. If anything, they are completely against the logic of free market (free choice).

johncolanduoni 11y ago

My guess would be that abolishing copyright would lead to every commercial program being run as SaaS with most of the code on a remote server, so changes in trade secret laws wouldn't help.

njharman 11y ago

How come the choice to keep my sauce secret is less than any other choice? All trade secret laws do is if you make efforts to keep secret and some one steals it, you can punish them.

asgard1024 11y ago
> How come the choice to keep my sauce secret is less than any other choice? Because this "choice" restricts freedom of other people. You don't just want it to be a secret (then all you have to do is not to tell anyone), you demand that other people to respect and enforce it to be a secret (restricting other people's choices by restricting information). If I give you three choices A/B/C, and don't tell you which is which, do you have a choice or not? I would argue that you don't. You need to understand what's behind each choice to be able to "have" a choice.
- johncolanduoni 11y ago
  > Because this "choice" restricts freedom of other people. It restricts the freedom of your employees to sell/give your company's private information to other people, and the freedom of competitors to use them to obtain it or take it for themselves. If you come up with the same technology through legitimate means, then the fact that someone else holds it as a trade secret doesn't matter. It's not like patents; if someone gets there on their own effort, they're not encumbered by trade secret laws. It's also important to note that trade secret protection laws do not generally cover reverse-engineering. Protection from that (if any) comes from copyright/patent law. Asking people to honest does restrict their economic choices, but so does asking them to not rob banks.