Let's make sure we unite to make these companies known yah?

Sadly legal settlements prevent talking about such things usually.

There's a time-tested solution to this: one of the functions of these sorts of organisation could be to provide legal representation for their members. Unions, for instance, will often supply professional advocates (i.e. lawyers, negotiators etc.) to members in employee-employer or even professional-industry legal disputes.

It's often said on HN that skilled software developers are more akin to 'craftsmen' than they are to 'employees'. There's a number of good reasons why craftsmen have, almost invariably throughout history, formed guilds, unions or 'professional associations'...

You either organise or you accept being exploited.

Yeah but law isn't magic, you can take away their options by planning ahead.

I really disagree with this. The law is a type of magic.It's socially constructed. The idea of blind justice is sort of a fairytale. Reality shows us that some of the most powerful get away with murder while the people least able to defend themselves take plea deals rather than fight charges.

At the very least, the law is subjective:

http://khanism.org/security/legality/

You may be technically correct (the best kind of correct, of course), but companies do love their options. And for you to be able to take them away, you need to have some kind of negotiation leverage. If you're Geoffrey Hinton, you've got what you need; if you're Joe Schmoe, chances are you don't.

No you can't. Anyone can sue you any time for any reason, and then it's just a matter of how badly you are going to lose: because even "winning" means you wasted tens of thousands of dollars, at minimum, paying lawyers to defend you.

Your only defense, as a small player, is not to be noticed.