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Judge Rules Against China In 'Green Dam' Suit
An anonymous reader writes "About a year after Cybersitter sued the Chinese government and several Asian OEMs for allegedly copying its code to create the 'Green Dam' software, a US federal judge has allowed the $2.3 billion suit to proceed. Judge Josephine Staton Tucker, a California district judge, entered a judgement of default against the People's Republic of China on Wednesday, after PRC officials failed to respond to the ruling. Although the PRC's embassy sent a letter to the US State Department protesting Cybersitter's suit, such a letter did not qualify as a formal response."
I wonder if we can knock $2.3b off our debt to China, then?
"The Chinese side hereby expresses strong concern over it and firmly rejects it" Does that really work in China?
It's not like he'll ever see a dime. Does he really expect the Chinese government to cut him a check? At best he's gotten a moral victory and a big bill from his own lawyers.
So, the West shoots first -- IP litigation against the Chinese government. Will China respond in kind? There could be full-scale nuclear-patent warfare coming soon between China and the rest of the world...
like the sound of all us gun nuts blowing them way.
That is most impressive example of full-blown egocentrism ever seen! /. is not like that, but sometimes I still eel the need to write some PROTIP comment.
No wonder they go around, playing world police. They actually think they are!
I know
BTW: How many users are we here on /.? I mean, looking at Egypt, it doesn even take 5% of the population of a country, to change things. And I think the amount of people needed to topple a government is not propotional to the amount of people in a country. If 2 million come attacking your government main building, and shooting some does not stop the rest, you don’t do shit. Period. :) :) :)
They only have to be very sure of themselves and their own values. Something smart people are (scientifically proven) notoriously bad at (they underrate themselves, while dumb people overrate themselves). But now that we know we underrate ourselves, we can account for that.
How about we fix things too? (I recommend an autocracy with the government replaced by open source software automation [= 100% representing its people, and by definition no own agenda.] Oh, and for the US, a split in the United States of Catholibans, and the educated rest [still USA] could be realized in the process.
and write an update that simply disables/uninstall the software on any machine that requests updates from China (Green dam asks for updates to Cybersitter website).
That could have been really interesting to see...
isn't there some law against suing foreign governments? At the very least, the judicial branch can't possibly imagine having the power to demand money from foreign nations.....can they?
... you mean it's possible to sue other countries in a U.S. federal court? Is there anyone you can't sue in the U.S.?
wouldnt be the first time china was found to be doing something unscrupulous. maybe it is in their culture?
they say they are quite scared of an american court passing judgment on them.
Read radical news here
The full title of this software is actually GREEN DAM YOUTH ESCORT.
For guarding of the youth, to making safe and happy social harmony. Great and capable software for glorious ten thousand year nation. Code is not stolen; developed by brilliant engineers at November 23 People's Collective Software Refinery.
Candidly speaking, say the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff, what then? What possible outcome could occur such that PRC is forced to pay any or all of the suit?
If anyone is versed in international law (if that is what this is called), I am genuinely interested what the possible (albeit unlikely) outcomes could be.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
it is one of those "blabla 2.3 billion blabla" things...
google seach for "2.3 billion china" and you will find
2.3 billion people in China to go home by train this year. ... ... ... ... ...
China's Red Cross gives 2.3 billion yuan for reconstruction in
Macau January casino revenue grows 33% to us$ 2.3 billion
About economy: China's Workforce is 2.3 Billion People: Are you
Chinese firms buy 2.3 billion dollars IT products from US(14/01/04)
hktdc.com - China National Travel Service to issue RMB 2.3 billion
China: 2.3 Billion Earthquake Museum Global Voices
China: Rongsheng Heavy intends to raise $ 2.3 billion in an IPO in
my guess is that they use a smaller number for a smaller country...
Good luck getting China to pay
Sig is for Signature, so you don't have to manually sign every post.
China has not been honoring ANY of their treaties. They have their money fixed to the dollar. They have trade barriers in place. They subsidize and dump on the market. They steal IP all over. Per their treaty with Japan, they are required to have scrubbers on all of their power plants. W SHOULD have taken care fo this last decade, but did not. So, now, America decides to address just a little bit of the issues, and you think that China will start a nuke war over it and that America is to blame?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Green Dam was a piece of software that was designed to block porn by analyzing contiguous flesh-colored regions. However, a really fatal bug in the software is that it kept on blocking pictures of pigs.
If the do not observe our Ownership and insist on copying then we should do the same. Take care trying this because our own GOV has been bought and paid for by China and our bastard of a Congress will make sure your made an example of. Didn't we go through a period of this with Japan and Taiwan...maybe this will all blow over (fat chance).
As a result, Cybersitter's suit against the PRC, Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering Ltd., Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Ltd. and PC OEMs Sony, Lenovo, Acer, Asustek, BenQ, and Haier, may proceed.
I don't believe that it would make much difference if there were a judgment against PRC, b/c there is no way to enforce a US court's judgment against another sovereign.
Also according to TFA, Sony tried to remove the case to China's courts, but . . .
The court denied Sony's motion, but did state in its ruling that China itself would qualify as "as an adequate alternative forum" for trial, instead of the United States.
It is unlikely that Sony (and the other defendants) would've paid for their lawyers to try to remove the suit to China unless they thought that the outcome would be more favorable for them there; most likely that means that the lax protection for IP infringement there would have negated any recovery for Cybersitter.
The ironic result is that by this decision Cybersitter is going to get its best/only shot at the most it could hope to recover from this suit.
Is someone going to fix the /. thresholds or not? There should be a way to see +5 responses to +2 comments without browsing at +2.
In one of Alastair Reynolds' SF novels, an entire space-faring civilization traces its roots back to /.
Ha ha ha. We can't even get remotely accurate summaries or web software that works right.
They were to busy laughing....
This comment seems to sum up the arrogant stupidity of so many posters here so well. I'll grant the poster below that probably the US army could nuke away the red army (though remember China has nukes too, and has been specifically targeting US military systems for a while, so we can assume they have at least some secret systems to do so effectively). The idea that a bunch of gun nuts interfering is going to do anything except slow down the bullets from mini-guns is so stupid that the only comparable stupidity is that of people telling the country that invented toilet paper, most of the basic vegetables you eat, gunpowder that you need for your wars and a bunch of other things that you just expect to use without thought that they own you for your "intellectual property" because "we say so".
China's development is likely to slow down lots; They have environmental problems beyond belief which are going to mess up their economy whether they try to ignore them or not. Building them up into a magical dragon about to eat the world is not going to help you in dealing with this. On the other hand, just a little bit of respect for your fellow intelligent human beings would really really help you to develop into some kind of civilization. Failing to underestimate your potential opponents will also help you avoid problems like the Battle of Unsan. If you could show some kind of consistent respect for the Chinese at the same time as not continually selling out your industrial secrets and industrial future for cheap plastic toys.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
like the sound of all us gun nuts blowing them way.
Holy shit! You're an American! All this time I actually thought you were Chinese yourself! No offence intended, seriously.
Well, judging from your reply you are clearly not Chinese. What's more, it seems the two of us are on the same side (if not the same soil).
Posting as AC because I'm feel like being anonymous.. which I guess makes me a coward.
The Chinese gov. will not recognize this coming from a) a small state court, maybe and MAYBE only supreme court.
b) they would not recognize allegations against them from a nation that is guilty itself of doing the same, and also of a country
that when confronted with the truth about its invasion of iraq, was neglecting to show any proper information of WMDs.
This would be like being brought to court by a crack whore who says you broke into her house and stole something, the credibility is just not there...for the rest of the world anyways....as for this small court house in xxx, I really feel bad for the judge who agreed to review this case, he will become a laughing stock no matter what his ruling.
"China doesn't get paid"
This is absolutely brilliant! We don't have to monetize the crap out of the dollar through profligate printing at the Fed. Instead, we lawyer up and sue the crap out of the Chinese in our courts and in their arrogance, they do diddly squat like the consolute did in this case. They lose judgment after judgment by default, and then when they come to claim California, Oregon, and Washington states, we serve the execution writs on the many judgments and then they only get California instead of the whole damn West Coast.