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3 Foxconn Employees Charged For Leaking iPad 2 Design
syngularyx writes "Three employees from Taiwan-based Foxconn Electronics' (Hon Hai Precision Industry's) plants in Shenzhen, China, have been charged with leaking the iPad 2's design to outside accessory companies in China, according to a Chinese-language sznews.com report. Several online shopping retailers in China were able to sell iPad 2 protective case products before the iPad 2 was even launched, leading Foxconn to suspect that there might have been some employees leaking the design of iPad 2, which it reported to the local police."
there was a foxconn employee who lost a prototype or something .
he told several people that he was tortured.
he later committed suicide.
of course, if he had been on facebook and 'bullied', his case would be on Oprah and celebrities would be filming bizarre public service ads about 'how to stop bullying'.
but since he was just another replacable chinese worker, instead his case gets shouted down by mac fanboys who try to minimize what Steve Jobs and Foxconn are complicit in - Dickensian working conditions in a repressive police state.
'Leaking' is a bullshit phrase used to invent 'spies' when most 'leaked' information is either leaked by accident, incompetence, or higher up managers who are being payed. Every fucking case of espionage it works like this, from Aldrich Ames (ten+ years of spying, but he was a high up official so nobody got him until some old ladies at CIA decided to go after him) to Wen Ho Lee ( a low level nuclear weapons simulation programmer who was accused of 'espionage' for backing up his programs to tape... his persecution turned out to be entirely motivated by politics and the media cycle in washington, and had nothing to do with him ever leaking anything)
its all fucking PR, bullshit, and lies. do not fucking drink the fucking koolaid.
you are a free human being, and you have natural rights. one of them is to talk. another is to be free from inane prosecutions by incompetent bureaucrats and clueless officials. by drumming this idea into your head that 'leaking' is a 'crime', they are trying to destroy free speech by brainwashing you into thinking it doesnt really exist. it does exist. its as free as the air and as free as the mind god gave you.
A few months ago, China threw a girl in a labor camp for being sarcastic on twitter. BEfore that, they threw a guy in prison because he ran a website about the poisoned baby-milk scandal. Recently they have thrown artists and others in prison for similar bullshit reasons.
This is the system that is trying to make you believe that 'leaking' is a 'serious crime'.
the only thing criminal here are the systems themselves, and the nooses they keep tightening around the necks of humanity.
Dear /.
Is there a way to report fucktards who want to turn /. into a nanny-state, thin skinned, politically correct retard bin?
I find the goatse stuff as distasteful as the next... and a lot more than some I'm sure. But I would rather have those moderated below my threshold than see a nanny site.
So, what is your solution for Apple's dilemma? They're trying to release their product, and not be ripped to pieces by cheap chinese knockoffs from companies who never had to eat the costs of design and R&D. Should the government subsidise them for their losses? Should they just refrain from releasing hardware in the future? Should we allow people to voluntarily enter into contracts to not talk about certain aspects of their working life? Without some actual solution to the problems that arose to present this situation, you might as well argue that time travel is a moral imperitive; you may make a pursuasive argument, but the argument itself will produce no positive change, and the argument is practically worthless.
Also, on a more personal note, I find arguments like this leave a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. It seems that the source of pursuasion comes not from demonstration that your position is right (or that their position is wrong), but from making people feel uncomfortable for believing the opposing side. If I believe that leaking private secrets is immoral, you are trying to implant the idea that this is because I have been brainwashed by companies, thus making me feel stupid or used for that belief, instead of convincing me that the belief is wrong. Who knows? Perhaps this idea that companies are implanting in our minds is 100% correct? Nothing in your argument addresses this, rather it preys off the ad hominem fallacy: that if someone as bad as corporations want us to believe it to be true, then it must be false.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What this ignores is that there are more options, such as fair pay and conditions. However this would cause prices to rise which is why people dont like it and dismiss it as an option.
You know what is a REALLY bad strawman? To put up an alternate reality that is not possible and claim it is a "choice" that is being ignored.
Lets say magically you convinced a company to pay workers at a chinese assembly plant the same wages they would get in the U.S. Who would hire that plant? You have all of the downsides of interacting with people very far away, and for the same cost you could just build the thing at home.
So you mythical company with full pay has no customers, and goes out of business. The people with supposedly "fair pay and conditions" instead find there is no job at all.
From there you have to start sliding backwards away from "fair pay and conditions" to meet reality. The reality that you ignore that for China, the amount people working at places like Foxconn get IS "fair pay and conditions", because in fact the other choices they have are far worse. By trying to raise either side of that equation you drive companies to other parts of the world and instead of helping, you are putting people out of work. Other people have noted elsewhere that the supposed suicide factory of Foxconn has a lower percentage rate of suicide than the U.S., something which should be making you re-think assumptions about what is fair, what is a good rate of pay, and how exactly you help people without screwing them over.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley