Comment by pjc50
4 days ago
That's basically it. The Chinese government views the rest of the world through Hobbesian self interest, but in the late 20th century financial way. They want your money, but lawfully.
The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
> Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
Probably about the same as the US when it was a developing nation. "How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright":
> From the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works by authors who were not citizens or residents of the United States. U.S. publishers took advantage of this lacuna in the law, and the demand among American readers for books by popular British authors, by reprinting the books of these authors without their authorization and without paying a negotiated royalty to them.
* https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol39/iss1/7/
Patents (what protects inventions) have nothing to do with copyright.
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Nice. IP is one thing that has ruined many things. Unless you are WIPO and Oracle Fan.
All current AI companies are closed. What benefit?
Most things from Uni are published openly.
BTW, did people in US pay royalty to China for inventing paper?
Yeah, people forget that IP is a social construct, and there's no reason a different society can't simply have different constructs. Open source / Free software is a different social construct too; and Stallman would have us live in a world where nobody is enriching themselves with proprietary technology they exert unfair control over.
Problem has always been ensuring that people who have brilliant ideas get appropriately rewarded for their contribution to humanity - but not disproportionately.
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Taking your China comment in good faith: the copyright term on paper has long elapsed anyway, even if there's Mickey Mouse drawn on the paper in question.
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When was paper invented again?
Also does China publish it's companies IP publicly or is it just a one-sided relationship?
Intellectual property as it exists and is used today overwhelmingly is used to stifle competition and lock down monopolies. It's used to project power internationally by deputizing foreign countries to protect American business interests. It's a far cry from how it's popularly presented as a way for the "little guy" to protect their inventions.
I see you’ve never invented anything that you’ve risked having stolen
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"stolen" should not be used in conjunction with IP, "infringed" if you like.
To steal is to deny the original owner access to their property. That is true for physical objects, if I steal your wallet or your car you no longer have it.
But if I illegally copy some of your IP you still have access to it. Sure you may experience some financial prejudice from that but you still have it.
Agree.
The fact that IP is unnatural and relatively new is probably the reason why so many people can't seem to apply the proper terminology around it.
Japan did the same in the 70s/80s while growing their homegrown tech companies, over time it seems they've been forgiven. In the end we all benefitted with better products from Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, and many others.
IP and copyrights slow progress, their expiration should be greatly limited
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Germany did the something similar at the beginning of the 20th century
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Their train industry was built on ripping off companies they forced into poor agreements. They have wrecked industries with technological theft. I suppose it’s lawful from the CCP perspective.
I do not want to claim that two wrongs make a right, but it is funny that you mention "being forced into poor agreements": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaties
> forced into poor agreements
Couldn't the poor companies have simply chosen to not do business in China?
Yes yes, poor western executives forced to sell their IP portfolio and workforce. Those evil chinese. Lol
Probably around the same amount of IP that US citizens stole from the UK in the 19th century. We stole loads of inventions during the Industrial Revolution.
Does it surprise you to find out that a lot of old money families in the US made their money smuggling opium and other similarly unethical things? We are a nation of crooks and thieves and always have been.
I ask anyone reading this comment to please study history more frequently, it will help you understand the world better.
> How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
As it's often said, "There is no honor among thieves":
https://www.nber.org/digest/mar18/confiscation-german-copyri...
How did the USA end up with the UKs jet engine/radar/other tech? Oh yeah, it was the only way to get the USA's support for the UK during WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/america-once-stole-ideas-f...
How many resources did the European and American steal from others?
How many humans were stolen by USA alone?
Does it make it better? No.
But that's it. Everything is shit but while USA got rich through manufacturing in the past, now it's China turn
Ask every American AI company what they think of IP protections. Apparently all intellectual property is fair game now.
IP was useful in its time, but it is obsolete in this age.
Well, I mean, the US is straight up demanding money from its allies (in the form of an "investment agreement" exclusively controlled by the Trump government), and threatening them with economic doom if they don't comply.
Stealing IPs from universities almost look quirky in comparison.
They play things according to their own rules, but at least they have some.
No they don’t. Source: me, lived/worked in China for 6 years. There are two rules: 1) to the strongest (doesn’t matter how you get there, 2) make/keep the right connections (guanxi) that will “apply” regulations to your benefit. Most cut-throat place I’ve ever worked.
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I suppose Rule of Force is still a rule, so you aren't wrong per se
What rules. China famously flaunts the law everywhere they operate, including in foreign countries.
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You may have a good point but this shows how badly America's reputation has been damaged: it's now viewed as much worse than China.
Wasnt hollywood set up simply as a safe space to flog camera patents?
IP is unnatural and cannot be "stolen".
And thanks to genAI, it will soon be obsolete.
The Chinese can just request IPs from APNIC too, you know. Or are you referencing the shenanigans with AFRNIC? That still isn't stealing them from companies and universities though. Is there some ongoing mass BGP route hijacking I'm not aware of?
Eh, patents are a silly idea to start with. Can’t expect everyone in the world to get onboard with stupid ideas like that
> How many IPs have they stolen
Oh no, the poor trillion-dollar multinationals and multi-billionaires, whatever would they do?
Fine, I’ll bite. What exactly did China steal in 2025, who did they steal it from, which authorities did the victims approach in China for redress, where did they report failing to get redress?
You would have to know all the above for it to be real.
>The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
The thing about China is that they are basically hard on the up slope of their advancement as a society/economy/nation, just like US was post ww2.
US on the other hand, has flatlined to the point where we think stuff like trans athletes in sports are a drastic enough reason to elect a president who is a convicted Felon.
China is def gonna outpace US in the next 10 years as the strongest economy, but the interesting thing is gonna be is if they are gonna fall in the same trap as US does in 20 or 30 years.
I still remember the trans hormone experts who don’t understand tariffs.
The US definitely peaked a long time ago, and we're in the slow demise phase of its empire, but I think China has already peaked as well. They have the same obesity and consumerism crises that have plagued the US. Add to that a demographic implosion, and I think the best they can do is hope for 20 more years.
Next 20 years is when PRC will really start cooking. In that period, PRC going to be doubling/tripling skilled workforce more than they have now (currently slightly above parity with US), this is already baked in from past 20 years of birth and current tertiary trends. That workforce, the greatest high skill demographic dividend in recorded history, will hang around for another 40+ years. They will have 40-60 years of operating with as much high end talent as OECD combined within a coordinated system. Past 2080, unless they sort out TFR, things could go bad, but for relevant timeframes, i.e. most of our lifetimes, they're going to be peaking.
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What they don't have is rule by the extraordinarily wealthy. They have rule by the party. I guess we'll find out which one is worse.
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>US on the other hand, has flatlined to the point where we think stuff like trans athletes in sports are a drastic enough reason to elect a president who is a convicted Felon.
This is very one-sided and unfair. The trans stuff is indicative of a larger social movement. For example, in the U.S., it would be illegal to use IQ tests to hire employees while in China, that's practiced. China is far more meritocratic. The U.S. is driven far more by ideology, and the trans stuff is an example of that.
And someone on the other side of the aisle would point to the prosecution of Donald Trump as politically motivated, where opponents found an obscure law that he violated and charged him with 34 counts based on the 34 forms he submitted with the expense mislabelling.
> China is far more meritocratic. The U.S. is driven far more by ideology, and the trans stuff is an example of that.
I'm guessing you never lived and worked in China before? People who get jobs because of guanxi are not rare, even today, and ideology is far more important in China than in the US, it is just that the ideology is very different from what people are used to in the states.
China definitely relies on ideology quite a bit, the difference is the government controls that ideology because they understand correctly that the people can't be trusted.
It is absolutely not illegal in the US to use IQ tests to hire. This is a persistent Internet myth.
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The Chinese government’s territorial claims in the South China Sea show near-total disregard for international law. China has constructed heavily militarized artificial islands roughly 200 kilometers from the Philippine coast — and more than 1,000 kilometers from the Chinese mainland — in order to assert control over waters that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and a binding 2016 ruling by an international arbitral tribunal, lie squarely within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. China lost the case on the merits and simply rejected the ruling.
had to look it up:
Hobbesian self-interest refers to the idea that human actions are primarily motivated by the desire for personal gain or advantage. This concept is central to Thomas Hobbes' political philosophy, where he argues that without a strong governing authority, individuals would act solely out of self-interest, leading to a chaotic and violent state of nature.
lawful in the sense they value stability. their stability.
To me there is an even more important point than economics and geopolitics: the Chinese government is thinking about the long term sustainability of its population, and given how large it is it makes quite aligned with the rest of the world. Environment, health, education, science, etc. when comparing the trajectory and future plans of China and the US it is quite telling. Here are a few excerpts, guess if they come from Project 2025 or Xi Jinping 14 commitments:
- Adopting new science-based ideas for "innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development".
- Improving people's livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development
- Coexisting well with nature with "energy conservation and environmental protection" policies and "contribute to global ecological safety".
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You know who else was shipping firearms illegally to countries in North America? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
(Obama administration, although not personally his fault)
We could also discuss the provision of Armalite rifles to terrorist groups in the UK, Iran-Contra (an early accountability failure paving the way for pardon abuse), and so on.
The actual reason was lobbying from US companies that were completely losing the competition because of the much lower price for the same or higher quality. But of course, we can try to come up with stories that don't hurt the patriotism ego.
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The US? No, Trump.
That’s the point. Unless the system of checks and balances starts working again, there is no practical difference.
Yep. I don't know if anyone is interested in anecdotes, but looking from Europe, I will do my best to avoid any kind of US dependency until US has a) overhauled the legal system starting from the Supreme Court and b) gotten rid of the de facto two-party system. (No, one-party system does not count.)
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> The US? No, Trump.
No, the US, through its government (which is not just the executive branch) as chosen (in theory, via election) and, in practice, tolerated by its population at large.
It's not just Trump. If the US decided not to follow him he would have no power.
In the second Trump term, the rest of the world is justified in viewing the US as the kind of country which will, for the foreseeable future, periodically elect this kind of kakistocratic leadership.
The lesson is finally sinking in, in ways that it did not during the first Trump term. People wanted to believe that is was a one-off. During the first Trump term the argument could be made that it wasn't, but it was debatable. But during the second Trump term it's simply an observable fact that it's not a one-off.
Economic decoupling is a rational response.
Europe is just as susceptible to right wing populist takeover. Already happened in the eu for example Hungary.
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Other country only sees that US elected Trump. So, yes, the US.
This is a point in time for the US and there are institutional paths to change. The comparisons to China forget that China does not have the same mechanisms for change. China is an immutable state outside of revolution or the administration just deciding to transfer power.
If they are successful in destroying democracy, I will reevaluate my view. We don't know what's going to happen in the midterms or 2028.
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14% of the US elected trump.
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