Felony Contempt of Business Model
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What it is
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Cory Doctorow's phrase for laws and legal threats that treat unauthorized interoperability — reverse-engineering, scraping, building compatible tools without permission — as a serious offense, effectively criminalizing actions that would lower switching costs.
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Intuition
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It's not illegal because it harms anyone directly — it's treated as illegal because it threatens a company's business model by making it easier for customers to leave.
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How it works
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A company builds a platform where switching away is difficult.
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A third party builds a tool that interoperates with the platform to make leaving or independent access easier.
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The platform responds with legal action (IP law, computer-fraud statutes, terms-of-service claims) that shuts the tool down regardless of actual user harm.
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Because this is legally risky and expensive to fight, few attempt it, preserving lock-in.
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Example
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The article notes Facebook sued a company that built a tool to help Facebook users leave — mirroring how Facebook itself once used bots to import Myspace data to help users switch to Facebook.
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