partitionman

My point is that it's still intellectual property even if it isn't copyright, because it says that you can hold on to secrets and that secrets are protected like property.

Go back to the beginning of the thread:

> "Intellectual property" is fundamentally different from classical property because information is not an exclusive good. If I hold an apple, you cannot hold the same apple, but we can both hold a digital copy with the same information.

The same thing applies to these secrets. It's just a subtype of intellectual property. In the US, too, trade secrets and copyright violation are handled under different sections of the law. They are different acts, just like in Germany (hence the different name - copyright vs. trade secret).

But they're both intellectual property and the arguments against work against both.

Ah, I see, so we could abolish IP law by renaming it to Conditionally Shared Secrets and keeping all provisions the same? No, that would be ridiculous. The concept of intellectual property is obviously unaffected by the implementation of the enforcement regime.