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I’ve thought for a while that trademarks should be non-transferrable, and should be voided on change-of-control of a company. Their primary purpose is to let the consumer know the origin of goods, and to allow companies to build a reputation around intangible properties of their products, like longevity, quality, and craftsmanship. Selling a trademark is fundamentally betraying that trust in exchange for a monetary reward, which wouldn’t be acceptable behavior in other settings.

Very interesting. Is this your own idea or has it been more widely discussed?

I don't recall hearing it from anywhere, but it's the sort of idea I'd expect to crop up from time to time. I haven't done any research to find out if anyone else has seriously suggested or investigated it.

Would you consider company going public as change-of-control that should trigger voiding trademarks?

Defining what represents a change-of-control is probably the trickiest part of moving this from an interesting idea to a real proposal. Probably, the key factor should be whether or not the senior management and/or the board membership stays essentially the same; new management should be required to earn their own trust from customers that might not follow company news.

Realistically that means no brand lasting longer than about ten years, and the total elimination of lots of century-old brands that people have fond relationships with. It's a stupidly excessive hammer that fails to address the real problems. And it's probably going to suffer the obvious free speech challenges.

> lots of century-old brands that people have fond relationships with.

That's the problem being discussed--the fond relationships are built with entities that no longer exist, and it is argued that current brand practices are deceiving for the consumer side of the relationship and abusive on the producer side.

"Free speech" is a ridiculous charge to level at this. The concept of a government-protected trademark is itself a restriction on free speech in the first place, as are all consumer-protection labeling laws.

> senior management and/or the board membership stays essentially the same

Defining "essentially the same" sounds hard, especially if a series of "small" changes happen over a period of time. Ship of Theseus, anyone?

A series of small changes gives consumers time to react and the value of the brand to naturally evolve, so arguably that's not a problem.

>so arguably that's not a problem.

As soon as you try defining "small changes" and the period of time on which they can occur, it is arguably a problem that will lead to loopholes easily abused by the legal departments of any big corp.

The purpose here is also likely to be very different for different use cases. You might not want the Apple trademark to be transferable as the management changes because you care about their approach to privacy. On the other hand, a consumer who thinks Diet Coke is tasty probably doesn't want to have to look up what brand name they were forced to change to when the CEO quit just to keep buying their favorite soda at the grocery store.

The purpose of trademarks is to capture value for their holders, not consumers. That it is why it is the holders who are awarded damages.

That's a brilliant proposal.

I kind of disagree with this. If a company publicly claims to follow certain principles and vows to have mechanisms in place to protect user privacy, people on the inside are able to judge if those principles are being followed. The larger a company is, the lower are chances that everyone would stay silent in case of a (systematic) breach of those principles. So in a sense, it's much harder for larger companies to secretly do things simply because larger groups of people are worse at keeping secrets.

If we were to outlaw NDA's and dramatically beef up whistleblower protections for corporate whistleblowers, that might work. But those are wildly implausible proposals! And while people are bad at keeping nefarious conspiracies secret, they're quite capable of keeping quiet in general - which happens to protect the less egregious but more relevant kind of grey-area, pushing the boundaries that slowly evolves. Just look at all kinds of corporate and governmental malfeasance stories to see that it's pretty normal for ethically dubious behavior to go on for years if not decades before it comes out. Most of it probably never comes out.

People can't keep crazy conspiracies secret very well, but are completely capable of keeping eroding standards quiet.

But history has proven this wrong. e.g, how did the entire German population wilfully engage in something that they now consider very wrong and ashamed about (WW2)?? (Quite a generalisation I know, but it's an example of a lot of people going along with something they may not entirely agree with, not comparing Apple to the Nazis BTW, nor am I saying that every single person went along with it).

I am merely saying that if it is possible at a national level, it is possible at a company level. If it is a culture where you work you can quickly become swept along with it.

WWII is somewhat different in that it was not secret what was happening. Speaking up on the inside is a much bigger step than just talking to outsiders.

What? The Holocaust was definitely kept under wraps from the general public until the concentration camps finally got liberated. Sure, some members of the public heard rumors, but it wasn't like Nazi Germany was doing it completely out in the open.

> The Holocaust was definitely kept under wraps from the general public

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard suggests otherwise.

For example, in a huge company lie Boeing it would be impossible to have a coverup of gross violation of the corporate principle of safety first, and as a consequence no one will ever be killed by a 747 Max 8 simply falling out of the sky taking hundreds of lives.

> The larger a company is, the lower are chances that everyone would stay silent in case of a (systematic) breach of those principles

that's wildly wrong hypothesis. the complete opposite of these ideas are uncontested knowledge in academia, and in popular culture as well.

see Hannah Arendt's work. (which doesn't even include profit and personal gains!)

It just strikes me as funny that in response to an argument against trusting large companies with sensitive information you say that "larger groups of people are worse at keeping secrets". I mean, isn't that just corroborating GPs point?

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html

But the proposed solution in the U.K. and Australia is worse for privacy and is only subject to the scrutiny of the citizens of that country compared to the scrutiny of the entire planet for Apple and Google. Ultimately, if you don’t trust them, don’t take your phone out with you. Because any one of Apple, Google, Amazon, Huewai, Samsung or whoever could start tracking you with a simple software update at any time. Likewise don’t drive a car made in the last few years.

Correct. I'm an avid Apple product user (a dozen Apple products in the house actively used at the moment), but it's obvious that "privacy" was a PR push against rivals that had little or no impact on their bottom line.

If Apple relied on private info for revenue, the warm smile would be the same but the wording would be very different.

Still, the problem is more along the axis of technology. Even if Apple open-sourced their entire stack, we'd still have to take their word for what was running on our phones at any given moment. Encryption protects us but also ensures we can't know what information is sent from our phones to Apple. Hardware security, which protects us as well, turns our phones into a black box.

Are Apple good guys? Well, we could have a whistleblower come forward with evidence that they're not but a lack of whistleblowers isn't evidence that they are. If the entire stack isn't auditable by 3rd parties then we're just going on faith.

Personally, I'm ok with it. I like the aesthetics of Apple products more than their rivals. The threat to me, if it exists, isn't large enough for me to worry about.

If I were a criminal, I wouldn't trust my iPhone for a second.

>a lack of whistleblowers isn't evidence that they are.

It is, actually. It reduces the number of possible worlds in which Apple is an evil company, while leaving intact the number of possible worlds in which it is saintly.

It's only weak evidence, to be sure.

+1

Well put. Corporations aren’t people no matter what Citizens United “says.” Their goal is maximizing shareholder profit at any cost. They do nothing out of the goodness of the hearts they don’t have and they certainly are not guided by ethics the way individuals are.

As you said, if Apple “cares” about privacy more than Google or Facebook it is not because it is a more “moral” or “just” company, it is simply because its business model is not, and never was, based on hoovering up and monetizing personal data.

It’s not like a conscious decision was made by Tim Cook or Apple’s shareholders to do things differently than the aforementioned two companies.

Pointing out how Apple “cares about your privacy” is simply a PR (read: propaganda) move designed to gain some extra positive publicity which, of course, helps the bottom line. It’s the kind of thing companies do all the time. Taking these pronouncements at face value requires a certain naïveté (or a wilful suspension of disbelief).

And while Apple might not traffic in its customers’ personal data, the company recently revealed that it scans content stored on its servers, e.g. your iCloud Photo Library, because of “concerns” over child pornography.

This suggests privacy isn’t quite as sacred to Apple as its PR department would have one believe.

(Never mind that there is no evidence whatsoever that mass surveillance reduces incidence of child sexual abuse or decreases the production and distribution of child porn. Which begs the question, why <i>is</i> Apple spying on its paying customers’ personal content?)

Whenever a company, or a government, deploys the cliché “think about the children!” argument as a pretext for increasing internet surveillance, you can bet this reason was chosen because if anyone objects on privacy grounds they can say, “what, so you’re on the side of the child pornographers/suicide trolls/cyber bullies?” It’s a discussion stopping tactic.

Yeah, corporations are definitely not people, they are not your friends and they do not care about you as a person. That in 2020 this even needs to be said is a testament to how thoroughly corporate propaganda has been woven into the fabric of western culture.

> Once a company reaches a certain size, any power that individual employees wield will have been diluted to microscopic levels, and even founders' altruistic motivations tend to fade or get drowned out by the basic profit motives of an increasingly large group of shareholders.

I couldn't agree more. But at the same time, I'm completely baffled that while this sentiment about companies is widely agreed upon on HN, people around here don't expand this from companies to much more powerful and dangerous orgs: governments.

Regarding Apple's relationship with privacy, I implore you to take a gander at these pages:

https://apple.com/privacy (45 second read)

https://apple.com/privacy/features (many minute read with links to whitepapers)

I believe this goes well beyond following instinct, and at least for me does lead to a strong semblance of trust.

They really did a doozy by not being upfront about Siri's contractors (I already knew so it didn't affect me personally), and they're hemming on E2E iCloud backups (perhaps for Availability, perhaps for China), but they continue to push the envelope on what usable security and usable privacy looks like.

In addition; the iPhone 5s from 2013 is still getting security patches, as recently as March 24th.

> I think the notion of trusting any company over a certain size is crazy

I'd go the reverse. The bigger they are, the more I trust them.

> I wish people would stop anthropomorphizing companies that way.

But anybody who trusts them for that reason is indeed crazy.

Maybe out definition of trust is different. For me trust means predictability. Do I trust the sun will rise in the east or a stone will roll down the hill? Do I trust my mother will tell me off if I growl at my sister? Do I trust my father will ask me how the finances are going? These things are all predictable - so I trust them. To a lesser extent do I trust these people to keep their word? The answer is sometimes - if my mother promises to look after the kids then definitely, but if she promises not to buy them presents then I'll trust her a little less.

Companies are also predictable in some ways. Bigger companies more so than smaller ones, simply because it takes a lot longer to change the direction of a bigger ship. In my book predictable means trustworthy.

One of the things you can absolutely have faith in is a bigger company is driven by money. (A small company is more likely to be driven by idealism of its owners.) Money means users, so if a good record on privacy attracts users you can be pretty sure they will do their best to have a good record. Not surprisingly Apple and Google do have an extraordinarily good record on keeping data they store secure - far better than most governments for example.

It does not surprise me at all both companies are making a song and dance about how they are safeguarding your location data, and I trust them to do everything within their power to make good on that promise. Unfortunately they aren't gods - if they receive a court order to cough it up, they will. So trust has limits.

> I'd go the reverse. The bigger they are, the more I trust them.

that is just silly.

> bigger company is driven by money

Follow that money. Figure out who pays. Are you the customer?

That's a good writeup and a good practice.

Agreed. When it comes to corporations and privacy the rule of thumb is guilty until proven innocent.