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The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

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Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#301

Post by jariel »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #125
nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

Exactly. All's fair in love and war... Provided you play by our rules, is what the companies are espousing. Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.

Completely false.

1) The 'rules' are agreed upon and mutual.

2) Providing 100's of millions of people with jobs is not 'plunder' it's a win for both sides.

"is just being woefully ignorant" - your comment.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#302

Post by dmoy »

tatrajim wrote: post #134
dmoy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US theft of UK IP back in the day (early 19th century textiles especially) was a big deal.

Why not mention the rest of the story: that the U,S. and Great Britain engaged at the time in two bitter wars? Are you claiming that China is justified is stealing U.S. IP because the two nations are at war currently?

The specific timing on your allegations is off. A lot of the IP theft occurred in peacetime. The US and UK were at war for a total of like 11 years, and there was a period many decades of IP theft. It wasn't as state sponsored as it was during the period between the two wars, but it still happened.

Hell as late as 1850 the US straight up didn't recognize copyright of non US citizens. I forget exactly when that changed.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#303

Post by djrogers »

totalZero wrote: post #239
djrogers wrote: post #218

About a dozen years ago I was working for a small-ish hardware company ($350-400M revenue), which was acquired by a bigger company. BiggerCo had a Joint Venture with Huawei (let’s called it JVco). About 6 months Post acquisition one of our employees found that Huawei was selling a 100% complete rip-off of one of our products. JVco had access to some of our development resources, but Huawei was never supposed to see a…

Kind of makes you wonder why Boeing would build a finishing plant in Zhoushan and Apple would put so much of its iPhone production in Zhengzhou and Shenzhen.

Whoa there - you're making an implication I didn't make. At no point in my story did I claim that all Chinese people or companies were slimy, just one.

That culture may or may not be more pravalent in China than it is in the US, but this particular story doesn't claim either way.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#304

Post by jvanderbot »

chillacy wrote: post #238
jvanderbot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is with this argument that US did it 150 years ago (or X years), so it must be OK for China to do it? Is that how it works at work? Where one person steals your credit and therefore you feel it is OK to forever steal their credit? Is it what you would teach your children or how you would expect the criminal justice system to work? (Oh, everyone seems to break the law, so we'll just ignore laws in your case).

Hmm no but if everyone in MLB did steroids to get to where they are then I’m not going to be that surprised when I find out the rookie is juicing.

You wont be surprised, but you'll punish the rookie or anyone else who fails a drug test just the same. Im not surprised corps and countries steal from eachother, but I expect them to be punished when caught.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#305

Post by mauflows »

addicted wrote: post #282
Fragoel2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because its cheap, if you only look at the immediate profit without considering the long term implications

The long term implications have been that American companies are richer than ever before.

What about longer than that. In GPs case what if Huawei outcompetes with stolen IP?

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#306

Post by sangnoir »

johnchristopher wrote: post #229
sangnoir wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.

It all depends of what you make of that comparison. Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ? What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?

> Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ?

Yes and no - it depends entirely on whose perspective you are arguing from (upstart vs. establishment), and even that changes over time. For the US, it used to be okay, but no longer is. Also it's not "others" who did it before, but the very same nation-state that is now screaming blue murder.

> That it shouldn't be debated ?

Oh, it should absolutely be debated, but the US has no moral high ground when making its arguments. Turnabout is fair play

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#307

Post by chrischen »

jvanderbot wrote: post #186
chrischen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how everyone developed their own nukes... the moral of the story is that if someone copied your product and can beat you, then your product is not defensible in the first place.

The allegation is not copying, the allegation is fraudulent agreements with US companies, and dishonest corporate espionage. Can anyone really develop new technology, bring it to market, have it immediately brought by a competitor with zero R&D investment, and expect to compete? Is there something that is supposed to be magical about US technology that this scenario does not apply?

The articles cites some of the examples as "taking a photo of a disassembled circuit board" and "copying source code."

While I agree copying source code is bad, but doing so and maintaining someone else's code is a monumental task.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#308

Post by chrischen »

stevens32 wrote: post #275
chalst wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse engineering is a legal form of IP imitation everywhere.

Isn't some engineer opening up a box and taking pictures something mentioned in this indictment?

That was one of the simpler ones. They are also alleged to have stolen router firmware. But frankly if you've ever tried to just "take over" even an open source project it's not a trivial task to just take someone's source code and be able to master it.

In fact it's a standard open source business model to make money off the expertise on the open source code base.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#309

Post by oh_sigh »

mattmanser wrote: post #277
oh_sigh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a difference from wholesale copying of blueprints, design docs, and millions of lines of software, and someone remembering how things work and going somewhere else.

No, read about it if you want. Yours really is another ironic comment. The British at least tried to stop it by making it illegal to take the machines out of the country The Americans sent the machines to China themselves to save a few bucks on labor.

I have "read about it", and nothing I read has seemed to justify China's wholesale tech stealing extravaganza.

Modern export restrictions are akin to making it illegal to take machines out of a country.

Even if it was somehow exactly the same thing happening, saying "you did this 200 years ago so I'm going to do the same thing now" isn't any kind of acceptable reasoning. Mauritania can't say that they are cool to have slaves because America had slaves 170 years ago. Or rather, they can say that, it just isn't very convincing.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#310

Post by njarboe »

secfirstmd wrote: post #288
Fragoel2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because its cheap, if you only look at the immediate profit without considering the long term implications

Aren't Tesla also building in China?

They are, but the factory is fully owned and operated by Tesla, not the usual 51% Chinese 49% American joint venture that was the norm until the recent trade fight.
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