China Files Case Against Intel's Wireless Network

Krishna Dagli writes "China has launched a case against American chipmaker Intel's near-monopoly on encryption standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment, state press reported Monday."

Comments

Open standards

[Nerdfest]

... and in 2003 tried to force multinationals wanting to sell wireless computer equipment to support its proprietary and secret encryption standard called WAPI.

Exactly how is it better to replace one proprietary standard with another. If they were serious about this, perhaps proposing an open standard would be a bit more constructive.

Re:Open standards

[stevew]

The thing is - the WAPI standard was a "secret" while the IEEE standard simply isn't. Intel and other multinationals would have to yield their intellectual property to chineese companies to support the WAPI standard. THAT is what the
companies gripped about.

As for the IEEE - it ISN'T just an American body. The truth is that it has an American aspect (that is certainly large and powerful), but IEEE is an INTERNATIONAL organization. How do I know? - I was a member for 15 years. I've even been involved in IEEE standards creation slightly. This is usually done by company representatives. So if Chineese companies were to send representation to IEEE standards efforts, they would have some influence in same.

You're as likely to Siemens or Alcatel, etc involved in these bodies as you are to see Intel, etc. It is more appropriately a mechanism mostly staffed by professional engineers representing their company's interests that create IEEE standards.

Re:Can we?

[PRC Banker]

FTFA: It is about abuse of a monopoly. Could have a lot of beef, or could not, but to answer your question:

China has accused the makers of the technology developed by the chipmaking giant Intel of unethical behaviour and has asked the International Standards Organization (ISO) to review the case, Xinhua news reported.

It says that the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), actual makers of the technology, broke ISO rules when its national bodies voted on new technology to mend security loopholes in the WLAN standard.

China now wants the ISO to investigate the fast-track process to determine "whether the ethical and procedural rules and principles have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations".

That is what has been done, it chose new technology and in doing so apparently broke rules on voting for procedures.

Re:Suit against intel?

[hyfe]

Stands to reason, any country that kills its own populace certainly would do something like this.

Yeah, it's about time they grew up and started killing other countries' populace like the grown-ups are.

Grow up.

[Lally Singh]

Note to slashdot repliers: Enough with the ad hominem attacks. If you don't like what China's doing, talk about what they're doing, not what you like/dislike about China.

We've all got our personal opinions on politics and the politics of technology, but if our words are to mean anything, we've got to appeal to higher standards.

Re:Suit against intel?

[eraser.cpp]

Reverse engineer? 802.11i is an open standard, and it seems like Intel was defending that in the face of what would have been a proprietary standard that China would stand to benefit from.

Why the surprise....

[ibm1130]

Of course they're upset since it means they can't foist their backdoors on anyone without an immense amount of difficulty. Would you trust Beijing gummint encryption?

China Really Shouldn't be Complaining

[CodeBuster]

The US Government should tell the Chinese that we will start giving a damn about whether an Intel monopoly hurts their homegrown wireless industry when they start giving a damn about all the software piracy and intellectual property theft going on in their country.

Re:china? whaa?

[JulesLt]

Intel hasn't (to my knowledge) killed anyone protesting against it, in full view of the world's cameras, just because it can.

Re:china? whaa?

[Gadzinka]

Others have already pointed out that this case has nothing to do with patents, but I'll answer this question anyway:

since when does china care about patent law?

Since about the same time as US.

As long as the international balance on Copyrights, Patents etc disfavoured US, it had blissfully ignored them. But as soon as it looked that the trend is reversing usians started to cry foul and became the biggest proponent of the Intelectual Property in the world.

We have this stupid saying in Poland: "Kali steal cow, good did, cow steal from Kali, bad did"[1].

Robert

[1] grammar intentionally bad, as in Polish original, since it comes from novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz and was supposed to emulate African speaking broken Polish

Can we all get along?

[amightywind]

Note to slashdot repliers: Enough with the ad hominem attacks. If you don't like what China's doing, talk about what they're doing, not what you like/dislike about China.

Because you reply to no post in particular, and because there is variation of opinion on this topic one could argue that your predictable appeal is ad hominem as well. Strong well supported opinions should be welcome on this forum. "Can we call get along" pablum such as yours just takes up space.

I personally find China's accusation of collusion to be laughable. China cannot easily establish technical standards because (deservedly) no one trusts them.