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Comment by daneel_w | Hacker News Reader

What's missing is the culture of respecting other nations' IP, on both commercial level and individual level. Their laws on enforcing IP are practically unilateral in the context of intl. relations.

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A way to test the hypotheses are, check if Chinese companies generally respect other Chinese companies IP? Seems like that would be the most convenient to copy, so if they DO respect their peers then it IS targeted at foreign people.

Don't forget Rule of Acquisition #17.

I’ve always wondered if the Ferengi were based on the Chinese

Well... some have speculated differently. https://gamerant.com/star-trek-ferengi-anti-semitic-stereoty...

so what happens when chinese investors discover patent trolling and start purchasing western IP portfolios to sue american and european companies over in western courts? and what if they start winning?

"wait, no, not like that"

What happens when western government will demand level playing field regarding IP, either by China upholding the IP protection, or by West dropping all the IP protection of Chinese companies?

> West dropping all the IP protection of Chinese companies

what IP? don't they just steal everything?

And that's going to be exact reasoning to get this level playing field going.

so in other words, the state of things being how they are, is the reason they are going to be different?

this is amazingly devoid of any meaning, even for the dumb smart people on HN.

Can you give an example of powerful country that respects other nations?

Is this a stupid trick question where, if I respond with a list of nations not known to engage in industrial espionage and IP theft, you respond by saying "well country X once did something-unrelated-to-this-topic to country Y, so your argument falls flat"?

I'll humor you. Germany and France are not known to engage in systematic industrial espionage and IP theft. Not towards China, not towards European peers, not towards the USA. Please don't move the goalpost by talking about France' colonial epoch and stay away from WW2 and Hitler.

Even French media would disagree with that

https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

Austinites have joked about the French Ligation being a spy base for 50 years.

That's weird, I've lived in Austin a long time and never heard that. Not saying you're wrong, though I am curious where you heard that? I'm also generally curious about bits of obscure local history.

You're not wrong in the general case, but France does/did a lot of industrial espionage in recent history

Can you give a few examples on this? France is not known for industrial espionage so your claim is the counter to the common narrative

My knowledge of this comes pretty much entirely from non-public sources (namely American graybeard incident responders), but here are a few I dug up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#France_an...

https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-france-leads-russia-c...

https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/france-intellectual-p...

Hmmm where might have they learned that strategy? [1][2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_the...

So the argument is somewhere someone did it before we had international conventions and agreed upon bylaws like WTO, etc., but nevermind, someone some time ago did it, so it's okay?

Indentured servitude is still openly practiced in some countries, so that would make it okay for every country to do it now? Amazing!

Way to equate indentured servitude with copying. There's no arguing with such ridiculous histrionics.

people do not get that copying does not equate to stealing. The copyright trolls have done their work well.

I believe the problem is that it's expected of a developing nation, but once a nation is considered developed it's looked down on. Similar to a person acting childish when an adult. China want's to have their cake and eat it too in almost everything, it's "look how powerful we are, how strong our economy", until it's time to respect patents then it's "no we are still developing, you can't hold that against us".

It’s because China has two faces which are often being viewed simultaneously by foreigners and locals alike. It wants to project peace through power outwardly and put on its best diplomatic display but internally they are training their children to want to kill Americans.

> internally they are training their children to want to kill Americans.

histronics

You can say that again. Yes, obviously these people sending their kids to communist army camps are histrionic but its the type of performance the CCP is looking for. I can send you sources if you aren't aware of what I am talking about.

Well, the argument is that these conventions are exploitative (copyright basically forever) and therefore do not have moral force. Also that certain countries used copying to go up the economic ladder and then kicked the ladder.

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