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Chinese Man Gets 30 Months For Fake Cisco Sales
alphadogg writes "A Chinese man was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a US prison this week for trafficking in counterfeit Cisco Systems gear. Yongcai Li, 33, will also have to pay the networking company nearly $800,000 in restitution after being the conduit for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer hardware, the FBI said Friday. Prosecutors said he procured the fake gear in China and then sent it to co-conspirators in the US. His alleged co-conspirators have not been charged. Li was arrested by FBI agents on Jan. 9, 2009, in Las Vegas — while the annual Consumer Electronics Show was taking place there. Two years ago, the FBI claimed to have seized more than $78 million worth of counterfeit equipment in more than 400 seizures."
2.5 years is not 30 years, it’s 30 months.
[insert witty comment here]
And why not? These guys should be getting just as much time as the other dude.
Good thing he didn't download a music album instead. He might of ended up with 3 times that fee.
China has apparently decided to get stricter about dealing with counterfeits. This may signal that China is more willing to cooperate with other countries and large corporations. However, as China produces more and more of its own goods, it has a direct economic incentive to cooperate with counterfeiting issues since that will encourage reciprocal behavior in other countries. Moreover, according to TFA, the FBI and the US government in general have been trying in particular to deal with counterfeit Cisco products. So this still took lots of pressure and activity. And Cisco does a lot of business in China, so that's yet another reason China might crack down in a case like this. This thus isn't similar to a situation like that with Google that fits in with China's broader policies on censorship and how it runs its political system. It shouldn't be surprising that China will occasionally cooperate when it has a direct economic incentive and doesn't risk tainting its people with democracy or free speech.
The question is, what counts as counterfeit hardware? Is he taking, say "genuine" Cisco hardware (as in, made in the same factory just not with the Cisco name on it) and selling it as real Cisco hardware, is he taking inferior components to make his hardware, is the hardware functional?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Farm out production to cheap labor in a country that has little regard for IP. Cisco wins
Get FBI and US justice department to enforce and foot the bill for counterfeiting under the guise of "National security". Cisco wins
In both cases, Cisco wins and in all cases the US citizens lose. We foot the bill, lose the jobs, get Chinese made equipment in our government and pay with tax dollars to support Ciscos business decision.
About 13 years ago, the government of China contacted Cisco through its Hong Kong office and said "China has been very good to Cisco. Now it is time for Cisco to be very good to China." They forced Cisco to open factories in China, and China started a company later known as Huawei, run by some army generals. The Internet was becoming a major communications component of their country, both private and government, and they did not like the idea that their infrastructure would be made in America. Once Cisco opened their Chinese factories, someone in China began almost immediately cloning Cisco hardware. I wonder who? The clones were so close that they even had the same bugs.
Cisco seemed to put up with this for a while, since almost all of the hardware was kept within China. Then, sometime in the last ten years, I can't remember when, Huawei started selling Cisco-like hardware worldwide. At that point, Cisco sued and forced them to stop all international sales of the disputed products. Later, Huawei rewrote its router code and even licensed code from another American company.
So, what to do with all that surplus manufacturing capacity?