Abolition means that brute power corporatism rules the day
Borghi 23, PhD, Full Professor of Commercial Law at the Department of Law, University of Turin (Maurizio, “Commodification of intangibles in post-IP capitalism: rethinking the counter-hegemonic discourse,” European Law Open, 2.2)//BB
While reliance on protective structures and strategies developed during the IP expansionist age, such as open source licences, may still be locally effective to counter intellectual enclosures,Footnote71 a truly counter-hegemonic research agenda can no longer be based solely on traditional public-domain-enhancing doctrines. When de facto powers and self-enforcement mechanisms become functional equivalents to IP exclusivity, and control of essential factors of production can be almost entirely determined by unilateral action no longer mediated by law, lawless commodification supplants the IP regime as the primary determinant of commodification of intangibles. Probably for the first time in history, capitalism can now govern the processes of extraction and accumulation of capital in the (quasi) absence of law and legal institutions, such as formally recognised property rights.Footnote72 In this scenario, legal principles that ‘weaken’ IP rights have mainly the effect of expanding the ‘no man’s land’ where brute power is the only currency. It is therefore no surprise that the (once) counter-hegemonic discourse of ‘weak IP’ has been eagerly co-opted by dominating IT corporations and successfully used as a lobbying tool. Footnote73 Even less surprising is the co-optation of language and tools of ‘openness’ by rampant capitalism, from big pharma’s hijacking of ‘open science’Footnote74 to big tech’s appropriation of open-source software code under the guise of endorsing ‘open innovation’.Footnote75