Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says

The common argument "copyright period should be shortened from 95-120 years down to 10-20 years" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities took place in less than 10 years.

The common argument "there should be no anti-circumvention provisions" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would violate other provisions besides anti-circumvention provisions.

The common argument "patents should be weaker" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would be illegal due to copyright laws, trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. It's not even clear if there were any patents involved in this situation.

The less common argument "copyright should be abolished" could still be compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities could be illegal due to trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws.

I don't often hear criticism of trade secret laws or trademark laws.

Perhaps make an argument using some data. Do Chinese companies engage in IP theft or corporate espionage at a higher rate than other countries? Is there a cultural point of relevance rather than race? We don’t hear of many stories of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans or Taiwanese doing this sort of thing — when it comes to Chinese, it’s almost exclusively related to mainland, Communist China. Is it racial to point out that there could be some validity to the argument that mainland/communist Chinese engage in this sort of behavior at a higher rate than Indians or pretty much every other Asian country? Do we know that not to be true?

I’m not looking at data, so I don’t know the answer, but dismissing an apparent cultural/political tendency to engage in IP theft or espionage as “racist” is simplistic. HN loves to generalize about Americans and American companies and their practices, yet to do that with China is somehow racist? Regarding Chinese students — how do you think they get permission to study in the US? Chinese people don’t have unlimited freedom of travel. You have to be “approved” before they’ll let you study abroad. That “approval” has a lot to do with the political reliability of that person. So while it is fair to say all Chinese don’t agree with this sort of thing, it is fair to say that the Chinese that end up in US graduate programs represent a set of those who have demonstrated adherence to the CCP mindset.

Race doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion; it’s a cultural-political question and, culturally, mainland communist Chinese have a different viewpoint than international IP law upholds.

You rarely hear of a British person stealing secrets or British companies blatantly stealing sensitive IP. Is that because it happens far less frequently or because it doesn’t get reported?

It seems as if the Chinese way of doing business supports these sorts of situations and it seems that the Chinese cultural attitude towards IP is at odds with the very idea of IP. It’s fair to point that out. Flagging a legitimate story because you don’t like the racial implication is itself racist — you seem to be suggesting that we ought not to discuss this if the perpetrator is of a certain nationality because it might reflect badly on the country and it’s people. Censoring something because you object to the conclusions that might be fairly drawn is to limit the range of intellectual discussion.

Despite the seeming cooperation, China views the US as an adversary. It would be naïve to discount the critique of Chinese practices as simple racism.

Understand how people from a certain culture do things typically have nothing to do with racism.

There was an article a while back about Chinese cultural attitudes. That might have been tangentially related to "concerns about Chinese people." This article has nothing to do with Chinese culture, it has to do with corporate espionage. It just so happens that this fellow is Chinese and was moving to work at a Chinese firm. That's it.

Occam's razor suggests that the person was motivated by greed, either his or the new firm's. Somehow, cultural attitudes about "cheating" being somehow explanatory here is absurd but that has become a key topic in this section. Why?

A) I never claimed to have that position (I probably do, but take exception to your intimation that I do or should)

B) I find nothing morally wrong with the idea that the company that finances, and the dozens of engineers that build an industry leading hardware appliance should be the ones who profit from it’s sale. I also don’t find any moral problems with the idea that an ongoing intelligence feed requiring the work of 6-8 highly trained specialists in their field also generate money solely for those engineers and the company.

Both of the above statements completely ignore the fact that this was an incident of trade secret theft. I don’t believe I ever mentioned copyright, nor do I see that as a primary violation here.