Re:TikTok to be banned from US app stores from Sunday
by pwinnski on Friday September 18, 2020 @11:07AM
(#24517708)
On Monday, will you be able to download TikTok in the USA? If not, how is that not an issue of liberty?
You may be willing to give up liberty in exchange for some leveling of economic advantage, but you cannot also say that you are not, in fact, giving up that measure of liberty.
I don't actually use TikTok, btw.
Re:TikTok to be banned from US app stores from Sunday
by JumpCrisscross on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:19PM
(#24518687)
If we recognize the government's ability to enact boycotts and sanctions, we must recognize its ability to ban foreign companies with connections to adversaries. If we reject the former, we have to make an argument that incorporates its centuries of precedent. (In the United States. Millenia, more generally.)
China currently has that---it ignores IP laws, when it suits them, but enforces them when it suits them. It forces ownership requirement rules on foreign companies within China, but encourages Chinese-backed take over of foreign companies outside of China.
It bans foreign products within its country, to protect homegrown companies (or steals the IP, then bans the competition if it can't buy out the devalued company).
In the case of trade between two multi-trillion dollar economies (US & China), if one side never retaliates over bad faith, and always is more permissive than the other then that side is bound to lose out.
The way China is behaving, and has behaved for the past 30+ years, is unfair and detrimental to US companies and trading partners. It may sting in the short term to be denied Chinese financial support, and Chinese products but in the long term this is the only way to either force China apply parity and fairness in its own rulings, or stimulate a local economy that isn't wholly dependent and subordinate to Chinese interests.