Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

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I agree on the market access point, to an extent. There an assymetry that can't stand forever, given the size of China's economy today. But, free trade has never really been free. There are tons and tons of caveats, exceptions, special rules and bad faith. So, I think it's misleading to represent china as "closed" and other countries as "open."

On the second point, I disagree.

IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it?

At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents.

Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents.

Meanwhile, the benefits of a patent system are contraversial, even dubious (imho). Lots of intelligent peoe think they do more harm than good. The billions spent by tech companies on patent lawyers are a case-in-poiny.

I do not think we (globally) are best served by a global IP monolith. This is one area where we can benefit from a diversity of rules.

> IP is not some basic, natural law. It's a relatively recent invention, ostensibly invented to promote certain economic incentives. Why is china morally obligated to respect it?

> At any given point in time, the biggest effect of an IP system is how it affects the current portfolio of patents & copyrights. That's what tends to dictate the rules. When copyright law is updated, it's the impact on Disney's IP asset portfolio that's considered... not future works that will be created. It's a similar dynamic for patents.

> Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents.

To an extent I agree with you. There are a great many problems with the current state of "Intellectual Property" law and I there's some merit to the argument that it would benefit humanity as a whole if it were scaled back drastically or even eliminated entirely.

However, China not only does not enforce US patents and copyrights but also engages in extensive industrial espionage to steal trade secrets. Even if we did not have copyright and patent law, such actions would and should still be illegal. Qualitatively, I think there's a big difference between reverse-engineering and making your own version of some company's product, and hacking into their servers and stealing the data to make it or paying an employee of theirs to exfiltrate the source artifacts for you.

Chinese companies do both. The former is sometimes permissible, at other times may violate patent or copyright law, which may or may not be seen as a bad thing depending on your views of the matter. But the latter should be rightfully condemned.

There's also the argument that even if patents are granted too freely and abused, and copyright extended far too long, that if China wants to engage in the world economy then they need to play by the same rules as everyone else, and that if they do not play by those rules then other countries are entirely justified in retaliating.

Wasn't it the case that Facebook, one of the biggest American companies, bought Onavo precisely to spy on other tech companies and steal their business?

There is a HUGE difference between doing analytics/business intelligence (albeit a bit of a sketchy app, though users consented) and directly hacking into competitors with the express intent on stealing IP, which is more of the issue at hand.

According to whom?

I find them different ways of accomplishing the same thing: securing a business edge

Onavo, a VPN that secretly did device-wide spying, doesn't count as a "hack" because...?

That last one is a dangerous argument, imho. There're versions of that argument applied to labour laws, environmental laws, corporate law... It's often made by the radical EU-left. Yanis Varoufakis, most notably.

Unless you play by the same rules, free trade is unfair.

That argument is extremist, imo. It creates a dichotomy between trade or sovereignty. Want your own environmental laws, liability laws, pension schemes, oh&s rules? No trade for you.

It leads to both conflict, and the extension of the massive and very problematic trade agreements into every every facet of legislation.

IP laws can stay local. I agree on the middle point. Whatever the case for china making its own IP laws, they need to follow their own rule of law. Hacking/stealing is not justifiable. Deciding that pharma patents are not valid in China is.

You've got to be trolling with your statement:

>>Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents.

Is is fine if I steal from you because I don't have as much money as you do?

Or, would you prefer that I don't "subscribe to" your notion of money in your pocket as wealth because I don't have as much and therefore it is perfectly moral to take yours?

Come on - let's have a rational discussion here.

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