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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

No-one has yet, but what's the problem with it?

America stole Britain's intellectual property for a leg up a century or two ago, now a different country is doing it to them.

It's just the normal cycle, and America have long had a lot of artificial legal protections in place to try and stop it and limit the rest of the world's prosperity.

The harsh copyright laws and IP agreements they've bullied the rest of the world into accepting are beginning to fail, and these sort of articles are a direct consequence of that, why wouldn't we discuss it? It's an intellectually interesting effect.

There's also the other question of is it really stealing? America still has the knowledge, after all. Copyright laws were supposed to encourage innovation, but as many here have argued, have gone too far, what's the surprise now a country has enough power to say No to America, they're saying No.

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America stole Britain's intellectual property for a leg up a century or two ago, now a different country is doing it to them.

There's a difference between copying from open source patent database and reverse engineering versus blatantly engaging in industrial espionage, which is a whole another kettle of fish.

Or claiming to be playing by the same set of rules but blatantly violating them.

Patent systems should be considered harmful to nations that enforce or implement them, but that's another story for another day.

I think you need to read up on your history. Here's an easy place to start.

https://www.google.com/search?q=america+stole+britain+intell...

There's plenty of documented evidence that America illegally stole tons of IP, often paid for by the state no less, otherwise known as industrial espionage.

I'm sure they did it to all the European powers of the time too, probably plenty of examples of stolen tech from Spain, the Dutch, etc.

As I'm sure Britain, etc. did to the civilizations more advanced to them in the centuries before too, you can bet there were proclamations about not taking technology out of the cities that had monopolies on them, and were smuggled out illegally or simply attacked for them.

Too much effort? America llegally stole tons of IP, otherwise known as industrial espionage.

What about it? That was over a century ago. It still doesn't make China's industrial espionage ethical or right.

Let's put it this way, if American companies had their way, china would still be low-education hoard of manual labors with no advanced industry. Obvious no country wants to end up in this situation.

Let's promote actually good things like free speech, privacy, etc., and not draconian IP policies that just allow the same rent seeking giant corporations everywhere to fuck us all over everywhere. If we tie everything together, we'll loose all of it.

Why would companies want "low-education hoard of manual labors with no advanced industry"? There would be no way they could buy American products.

Because they can sell them to American consumers at high margin.

Companies have been neglecting the demand side for ages now. Increasing American household debt bought them some time, but isn't a very sustainable resource.

The point is that, with hindsight, we can say that this espionage was a good thing. It allowed the industrial revolution to spread to America, creating a major driver of global prosperity. Perhaps mankind should repeat this highly successful experiment.

From the US point of view, it was freeing knowledge from the hands of backwards aristocrats, who for too long had lived on the backs of the common classes. The US felt it needed to be on par with Europe or risk having itself reconquered.

From the Chinese point of view, it is freeing knowledge from imperialist powers that previously conspired to divide its country, drug its populace with opium, set up rape camps for the mere “comfort” their soldiers. It feels that it must be on par with these counties or risk having atrocity after atrocity revisited upon it.

No one feels they are evil, and even when you “cheat” it’s always because you were cheated first.

And America's ever increasing IP and copyright laws conveniently only last a century, don't they. Funny that, strange coincidence.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'ehtical or right'. It really depends on your perspective, and probably the place you were born.

People are dying that could be saved, right now, today, because of America's IP laws.

How is that right or ethical?

You could argue that without those IP laws, more would die in the future. But with how fast tech moves today, I think even a 10 year copyright/5 year patent length is perhaps too long to really justify that.

> What about it? That was over a century ago.

...and more than a century before, the UK successfully sent a spy to China to smuggle out tea seedlings (which was illegal in China). It's the circle of (IP) life: upstart plays fast & loose with IP laws until they grow into the incumbent, then they get really conservative on IP laws to stay on top. In a hundred years, China will be just as rigid as the US is now.

Pointing out patterns is intellectually interesting by itself - I think those who say "It's different this time: we are civilized now" are the ones who are being less than honest with themselves; the laws and morals didn't change in 100 years, only the side certain countries occupy on the upstart/incumbent fence flipped.

> As I'm sure Britain, etc. did to the civilizations more advanced to them in the centuries before too

From China, for instance. Porcelain manufacturing and some other things.

Except they aren't saying "no", they're trying to have it both ways by violating both the spirit and letter of their agreements. The subtitle of the story points out that the Chinese were the ones doing the actual patent filing in this case.

And this story of western development as some kind of capital-hoarding process is completely off. A country is developed and wealthy if and only if it has skilled labor producing so much wealth constantly. In the US it was $20T last year, and it will be another $20T the next year (ok maybe a bit less this year). You could be nothing but hired guns producing for contract, and become the richest country in the world. I'm no fan of IP, but its a sideshow here. And if anything I'd say it's far worse for developed countries than developing ones.

Were you trying to be ironic? You have presented exactly the problem OP is complaining about...

I'm explicitly saying it's not a problem as he claims and should be discussed, and deliberately gave the reasons why it's an interesting discussion.

That's not irony.

Not interested in that discussion? You can collapse the thread using the [-] button.

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