Businesses use IP laws to protect their own property rights. Whether you call the property owners "winners" is up to you, but that doesn't change the spirit or letter of IP laws.
>The ship carrying Francis Cabot Lowell and his family home from England in the summer of 1812 was intercepted by a British war squadron, which held the passengers and crew for some days at the British base at Halifax, Canada. Lowell’s baggage was subject to several intensive searches, for his captors had been warned that he may have stolen designs for power textile weaving machinery, a serious crime in England. Lowell, indeed, had done just that — but, aware of the risk, had committed the designs to memory.
Incidentally, US Foreign policy (as well as that of any nation) even in 2020, when you take justifications, stunningly aligned with US national interest. Make of that what you will.
I don't think so, and would actually prefer we take on something closer to the Chinese approach of leasing land in the same way we encourage people to put ideas in the public domain for a guarantee of a period of market monopoly. Though there are many reforms about current US IP law that I would love to see.
>US Foreign policy (as well as that of any nation) even in 2020, when you take justifications, stunningly aligned with US national interest.
I disagree - most nations advocate for their self-interests, otherwise we would be the United States of the World right now rather than the United States of America. Similarly, many countries have a foreign policy favorable to China because of economic incentives with a voluntary relationship between them. Are all countries or localities as equally 'autonomous' as China or the US when deciding with whom their most beneficial economic relationships are? No, though I don't think "dropping IP law" is a particular benefit to increasing that autonomy either.
Asides from Afghanistan and Iraq, are there any states you can name that are advocating for almost objectively US aligned policy?
I'm not making a claim as to what we should do, I'm just saying that our current IP system has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with Western power and interest.
Personally I think a system such as the one you described is preferable too, but I'm just explaining the Realist (and by extension Materialist in the Fuerbachian sense, and thus Marxist, and thus Chinese) perspective on why laws are the way they are (which is incidentally correct), by contrast with the Idealist narrative that States tend to use to justify their interests.
Property rights are neither a question of morality nor a question of realpolitik. They are an economic construct. Property is the only so-called natural right that does not exist at birth. We are born with life, and we are born with liberty, but we are not born with property.
Also, private property simply isn't a natural right, not even by the definition of Hobbes. The right of exclusion of something you don't use is neither natural nor universal in most early human civilizations, it just simply isn't a natural right.
And intellectual property in particular is perhaps the opposite of a natural right.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/23/business/japanese-executi...
As for the spying: it's relatively common knowledge that the chinese government really likes to use the fact that someone might have relatives in mainland china to convice people that they should spy for them. So my guess is that people doing this just for the "prestige" don't even need this kind of stuff...
The U.S. government killed thousands of civilians in the Middle East over the last decade with taxpayer money.
So if you don't support killing civilians, stop paying taxes?
Sometimes it's not as easy.
> So my guess is that people doing this just for the "prestige" don't even need this kind of stuff...
I get your point, but maybe "prestige" isn't the right word. If it's easier to function in society if you're a member and does not require you to commit anything immoral (at least not directly), would you join? My bet would be on yes.
And yes, maybe handling certain people on both sides of the aisle as what they are (e.g. war criminals) is indeed what foreign people should do. In theory, the domestic issue in the US could be solved by voting for a non-drone-killing executive – in China: good luck voting!
> would you join? like I said, we had this with the nazi-party. People joined, afterwards they knew nothing, which might be true in their view because of domestic propaganda. Maybe we should wake up and tell the people clearly that they are supporting a 21-st century government actually building concentration camps. And yes, if you tell them that you have a problem with that side of things (e.g. you are only targeting politicians vanity not "the economy"), in a country as big and dense as China (they've always had their purges, yet always some opposition rose) opposition would eventually form.
It's not mandatory. But lots of things are not mandatory. You staying overtime when your team does. It's not mandatory, but is strongly implied that maybe you should stay too.
All am saying is that being a member of the CCP probably should not be the (sole) deciding factor when you're letting someone in. In fact I'd think that spies would explicitly make sure to NOT be members.
For more please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24145915 elsewhere in this thread, as well as these past explanations:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Personal attacks are not ok. Smears like this are particularly not ok. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The truth is that the HN community is diverse and divided, with plenty of people on all sides of this issue. Attacking people personally (let alone nationally, ethnically, or racially) simply because they disagree with you is the epitome of what we don't want here. This is not a China issue, it's a Hacker News issue, an internet issue, and frankly a human issue.
Plenty of past explanation here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
The U.S. used to steal from Europe while it was developing, now suddenly IP matters a lot.
The Japanese used to steal quite a bit of IP, yet Nintendo is now super hawkish to protect its own.
Chinese companies will get overly protective of its own IP once they sufficiently develop.
All in all, is a well known circle that may signal it's time to rethink how IP is currently structured and enforced around the world.