And it's quite disingenuous for IT people to make a fuss about it. EVERYTHING in tech started with some sort of piracy, of music, of web content, of videos, of books, of hotels, of taxis, it's persistently the right strategy. And that's good, the world can't hang onto gatekeepers forever.

It matters because people who take risk and innovate should be rewarded. When that fails, theres no point for anyone to take risks and release new products.

And yet somehow the result has been a vast acceleration in the rate of improvement of robotic vacuums. It isn't evident that we are in the right here.

The result is also all of the innovative product ideas that never see the light of day because two weeks after launch there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price making it impossible to recoup R&D.

That’s a big reason behind the push to SaaS and server based solutions.

  > there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price

cheaper, faster, better... sounds like... innovation?

What about copying someone else’s design, making minor improvements (often regressions due to incomplete RE), and having a lower cost basis sounds like innovation to you?

well, i guess it depends... there are cases where something is totally copied 1-1 then maybe costs cuts are in labor, or they are in quality

in the case of worse quality, wouldn't the market just filter out such inferior products via competition? same with labor practices and bad pr from that.

additionally, if the 'minor improvements' are what people want (sometimes as a trade-off to quality) then thats what the market has signaled it prefers...

if the originating company doesn't meet that preference or demand, why should some admittedly state-provided protection (some might say monopoly) of intellectual property be able to protect them from competitors who will?

Facebook stealing from snapchat. Youtube stealing from instagram who stole from tiktok , stealing from vine etc etc. I don't think it stopped other people from taking risks.

This is the moral theory behind patent laws, and I’ve never seen definitive evidence that it actually helps, and a lot of examples where IP law completely hampers innovation or at least adds layers of bureaucracy.

I’m glad we don’t have to deal with this issue as much in software. I can’t imagine that a world where all the companies actually tried to enforce their software patents would be better for anyone but the lawyers.

As a consumer, I don't give a damn about these companies copying each other, I just want better products. But yeah, if I worked at iRobot I would be annoyed.

Well, it looks like that didn’t stop these guys from innovating, even though it was stolen after.

I shouldn't be commenting this deep into flame but...

That's a demonization argument. If anything china-related is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends where it starts. What comes after "tyrannical, genocidal, geopolitical rival" in a sentence doesn't matter.

If talking IP/Patents... I think the american position is somewhat blind. Consider:

(1) Patents are a recent invention, not a longstanding or inevitable institution

(2) There are some decent (IMO) arguments for patents being bad in general, economically, technologically and morally.

(3) China has been forced to adopt this "western" patent system, under which it owns almost no patents. They play very loose with the rules, but they still exist within that legal framework.

The US' no. 1 priority in trade deals and foreign policy generally was and remains patent enforcement, US-like contract enforcement and other commercial law stuff... "Governance" is the categorical euphemism. The US is as serious about this stuff as China is about Taiwan. China, and almost every other country abides it, whether or not it's compatible with their interest, values, etc.

(4) Those American companies made those investments, and have enjoyed the returns. They knew the rules going in and chose to comply over decades. Are they US companies? Aren't they "global companies?" That's the approach the US itself has been evangelising for 40 years.

Is the "fair" scenario you imagine a world where US companies produce their products in china, without local technology transfers and spin off industries? That's total nonsense, and outside the (advisable) scope of a legal system to enforce. US companies take the lion's share of profits, offloading the high turnover, low margin sectors... Like the Apple/Foxconn thing. Well... everything has consequences.

You really imagine a world where china builds all the vacuum cleaners, but can't build vacuum cleaners by itself?

Exactly, our patent system is causing innovation in the US to happen on a cycle similar to the life of the patents themselves. Things don't progress until the patents expire and other companies can copy them (see also, the segway mess, electric unicycles, onewheels, or... vacuums).

It isn't at all obvious that patents are more helpful than harmful in this space.

China is a totalitarian state—the Chinese government can coerce its corporations to take any action for any reason at any time. If the Chinese government is an enemy of the US, and Chinese companies function as an extension of their country's government, then we must treat those companies as enemies. The people who work in those corporations are mostly average Joes like you and I, but the CCP can harvest their organs at any time, so we are forced to be wary.

>That's a demonization argument. If anything china-related is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends where it starts. What comes after "tyrannical, genocidal, geopolitical rival" in a sentence doesn't matter.

Yes, we shouldn't be supporting China in any way. They are an enemy and don't share our values, and it's an unfortunate consequence of poor policy that we do business with them at all.

  > They are an enemy and don't share our values

wow... i assume you dont have any chinese friends or family then?

You mean like USA did in the 1800s? https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

You know what the US also had in the 1800s? Slaves. Doesn’t justify for anyone else legalizing slaves in this day and age. That’s why whataboutism is a fallacy. Past history is not a moral argument.

> Past history is not a moral argument.

Sure it isn't if it doesn't suit you, very convenient. Yet we live in very world completely and utterly in pure 100% mathematical way defined by only our past.

All the crap happened/happening/will happen in middle east and africa? Consequence primarily of european colonialism. Sure we can argue that enough time has passed, entire generations. Yet the places are as fucked up as ever, I would argue even more so.

Or you can explain this to germans who as a nation are still traumatized by what their ancestors did in WWII (shows how decent the core/soul of that nation is... imagine russians in similar situation, they would just blatantly lie about it and imprison/disappear anybody saying differently, like ie Katyn massacre).

Past is a moral argument, like it or not. It isn't a tool to justify anything and I am not commenting on current topic of intellectual theft (which is a rather pointless tea time effort) but ignoring it won't you any good since you won't be able to grok why people or nations behave as they do.

Not sure how I’m deciding certain standpoints when it’s convenient for me. There’s a big difference on acknowledging the past as a understanding of where we are today compared to justifying your actions of today morally based on the past decisions of others. The difference is this, “People in our past did some really shitty things, we acknowledge it, and it put us in our current position” vs “Someone in the past did shitty stuff, so it’s totally cool for me to be equally shitty”. Once again, your argument is textbook whatsboutism. Why it’s a fallacy is because all your examples is trying to deflect your moral deficiencies on the basis of others. The conversation should be steered to on the morality of IP theft. Not whether others have done it or not.

I’m curious what you consider a legitimate moral conversation to look like. When I hear that I think “philosophy before 1800s” where you can appeal to moral absolutes via God (yet still end up in unsolved debates. It seems even harder today.

Basically every culture has had genocidal endeavors. Does this mean we can justify genocide currently, or in the future? Me thinks not. Do you want to act morally now, or use some past action as an excuse to not do the right thing?