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.
You mean all the developed nations’ operation to export almost all production capabilities to China for profit? Cause everyone knew exactly what they were doing when they signed onto those joint ventures that were barely disguised force tech transfers.
We made our bed. No point in accusing China when we made it ourselves.
Invest that jingoist energy into doing something about it!
So I'm not a moral relativist, like, at all. But in this case, it seems like we westerners have constructed one particular set of norms for encouraging innovation, where we decide that it's possible for ideas to be owned. It's not like there's anything intrinsically wrong with copy-pasting code, it's just that we have a legal framework where we've traded away the right to freely copy-paste code so that we can grant a temporary monopoly to its author. We do this in the hope that more useful code will be written than otherwise. But if the people of China decide that that's not a trade-off they want to make, then I don't think we westerners get to say that they've committed a moral wrong in making that decision. It's just that they have a different way of doing things.
Like I said, I'm not a moral relativist at all. Murder is still wrong in China, imprisoning people not convicted of any crime is still wrong in China, lying is still wrong in China. But I just don't see how copyright infringement is universally an immoral act.
Getting downvoted by the group-think majority. Just know I tend to agree with you. Our country does not get to dictate how the world operates no matter what our beliefs are. And the idea of intellectual property is just a belief, and a bad one at that.
Operating under a different set of rules doesn't change the fact that they violate ours. They can be simultaneously right under their own standards and wrong under ours. We can and should judge them under our moral standards.
Naw... it's just the hypocrisy. If any other company/country were doing it, they should be called out too.
If you actually stop doing the wrong thing and decades later complain about others still doing it (the Western world can complain about slavery) that's moving up and on, but complaining about TikTok maybe being banned when FB/Google/Twitter and TikTok itself are banned in your own country?
Same with copyright... it's not like China's government doesn't issue copyrights and enforce copyrights, it's just that there's not really rule of law since it's enforced so haphazardly. There's little plan other than individuals "what can I get right now".
OK, no, it's not intrinsically or uniquely western. Any person who has an idea has no obligation to share their ideas, that's universal. This revolves around the expectation set at the point of sharing their ideas, under which they say, effectively, "Here's something I came up with. I'm sharing it with you in exchange for your agreement that you will attribute it to me and not take the idea and publish it as your own." The ownership and control under closed source could (somehow) be argued in the way you're suggesting, but for open source it's a matter of blatant disrespect and refusal to adhere to and of the requirements set by the initial sharers of their ideas.
It's one of the ways countries bootstrap. Not right or wrong, just is. Once they've climbed the ladder the US climbed, they'll suddenly start caring about IP too.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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