18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases

decora writes "Loretta Chao of the The Wall Street Journal reports on three people in China who were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months in prison for a plot to make iPad 2 protective cases before the tablet's official release. The plan allegedly involved R&D man Lin Kecheng of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company (FoxConn) selling image data to Hou Pengna, who then passed it to Xiao Chengsong, a manager at MacTop. The charges? One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.' The decision was handed down by the Shenzen Baoan People's Court on June 16."

Comments

Bribe Fine

[rtb61]

!8 months prison for failure to pay the appropriate bribe.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Lisias]

Palocci?
  É você?(It's you?)

Re:Bribe Fine

[vivian]

That's what happens when you cross business interests in a fascist state.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Hognoxious]

I wonder if the prison has a "glorious people's correctional work for the purpose of moral education"[1] program? He might end up making the real thing.

[1] Not slave labour at all. No no no. Entirely different thing.

Re:Bribe Fine

[TheInternetGuy]

I thought they were Communists, just a moment ago?

Re:Bribe Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

China was communist in the 60s. No longer. They've long since sold their souls to the bourgeoisie. There is nothing about China today that works to protect workers rights. China is now on the opposite end of the spectrum.

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[Man On Pink Corner]

They're something else now. I don't think there's a word for it, unless it's "Borg."

I'm a lot more afraid of what they are now than I was when they were Communists. What they're doing now just might work.

Re:Bribe Fine

[KiloByte]

You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.

If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.

[1]. An uncle of my grandfather, an uneducated factory worker, was promoted to "senior worker" which was for people with no formal training but with work experience who proven they have a clue how to do their job. That was enough to be labelled "an agent of the bourgeoisie" and be taken away by the DHS^H^H^H UB never to be seen again.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mikael_j]

You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.

You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.

That doesn't really sound like communism to me. Besides, Animal Farm was not a critique of the ideology, it was a critique of the aforementioned implementations and their totalitarianism, Orwell himself was a socialist.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

They never were communists in any other way than the name.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

That is absolutely the case. The "wheels of justice" in China only turn that quickly if you've run afoul of a well connected (government cadre) earner. Given the size of Foxconn and the amount of money involved, it's got to be someone (or a number of people) VERY high up in the CCP food chain....hence the harsh and fast sentence.

Anyone making this out as some attempt at enforcing IP laws is kidding themselves.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Cockatrice_hunter]

The guy committed an actual crime. In fact, I'm sure he'd be punished in the states had he done a similar thing here. Or were you saying that he could have gotten away if he'd paid a fine?

Re:Bribe Fine

[TheRaven64]

No one has ever successfully implemented a communist society with more than about 50 members. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't scale, except possibly in a post-scarcity society.

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[KiloByte]

You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

There were around 100 or so implementations of communism. If every single of them was "not the TRUE communism", perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology?

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[PopeRatzo]

The "wheels of justice" in China only turn that quickly if you've run afoul of a well connected (government cadre) earner.

Here in the US, the only turn that quickly if your skin happens to be an unfortunate shade.

Right here in Illinois in fact, if you happen to be that unfortunate shade and are caught with non-Pharma-approved drugs, you are 500 percent more likely to do jail time then your more pale counterpart.

Re:Bribe Fine

[MoonBuggy]

Even in the states, there's a fairly sharp change in a person's treatment if they piss off someone rich and (somewhat) powerful.

Re:Bribe Fine

[rjstanford]

18 months in prison for corporate espionage. In the US, the penalty can run up to $500,000 and 15 years imprisonment for individuals, $10,000,000 for corporations. Why do you think this has something to do with China being bad? Or with commerce being corrupt? The idea behind these penalties was, believe it or not, to reduce corrupt business deals.

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[Attila Dimedici]

The distance between communist and fascist is very narrow, both are variants on progressive ideology. China crossed over from communist to fascist in the late 70s/early 80s (although it is still officially Communist).

Re:Bribe Fine

[silanea]

Yes and no. Communism is like a completely secure operating system: Awesome in theory, virtually impossible to implement if the outcome should still be usable in the real world with real people. That does not make it a bad idea to try to build a secure OS. The issue lies in how much and in what way you implement security. So far any attempt to build a secure OS that is still usable in day-to-day work has failed miserably, but each such failure has given insight into why its particular way failed, so that others can avoid its mistakes and implement those parts that did work. The difference is that so far the failed attempts at building the OS have cost much less lives.

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[mikael_j]

I'm not saying "classical" communism is workable in real life (certain anarchist twists of it have shown themselves to function on a smaller scale but to my knowledge not on a national or international scale), I'm saying that just because someone calls something communism doesn't make it communism no matter how many of your friends and relatives were killed by them. By the same logic all germans are racially pure übermensch and Pinochet's regime was "liberal", because that's how they described themselves at the time.

Now, the eastern-european countries that called themselves communists did use a lot of elements from communism but they also failed to implement a lot of things so in the end it just became an oligarchy with a politic and military elite ruling the people (under the guise of "the dictatorship of the proletariat").

As for China, these days they're knee-deep in the free market and the way the treat dissidents is very close to how fascists like to treat dissidents (not to mention that this is part of the fascist ideology, criticism of the leaders is considered a Bad Thing(tm) under proper fascism, by the reasoning that there is no need for democracy if you have strong leaders).

Re:Bribe Fine

[stewbacca]

The problem with your statement, however, is that Communism doesn't live in a vacuum. All communism becomes some form of totalitarianism. Unless you can point to the "book answer" version of Communism thriving in the wild...

Re:Bribe Fine

[ThreeDeeNut]

Well Sort of... The only problem with this argument is that the secure system does work.... China seems to be one of the richest nations and has no signs of relenting in its growth. Sure they may cart a worker or two off and you never see them again but the people at the highest echelons certainly don't mind. We here in america house more prisoners than anywhere in the world and have prisons where you can be put without a lawyer, without a charge, without due process of any kind (just like our love/hate relational brethren the chinese). We run one of the most effective propaganda machines in history and have forged forward into war on a number of ocassions due to lies to the people. So in effect we too are not far behind such terrible words like facist and communist. The people at the top never seem to mind how "bad" government is so long as it's profitable (to them). Facist, communist, capitalist and just about any other type of governmental theory slowly will go from a great idea to a slave state eventually... especially if the people stay asleep and allow it. The one thing that keeps america different is the bill of rights and the constitution. Unfortunately that too has been eroded (due to a sleeping people and clever politicians) and like communism which started as a great idea has now ended up with the powerful oppressing the weak. In the end it is all just human nature on a very large scale.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Nidi62]

Or were you saying that he could have gotten away if he'd paid a fine?

No, he's saying that, had these guys paid the appropriate bribes to the appropriate people, they would have been fine. Remember, a lot of what China produces for domestic consumption has been acquired through "illegal means".

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[LordLimecat]

Here in the US, the only turn that quickly if your skin happens to be an unfortunate shade.

Noones going to say "coorelation, not causation"? Or point out that more people with skin of "an unfortunate shade" get free money and handouts from the government than their "pale counterpart"? Or that a good number of the most powerful men in the government, in all branches, have skin of an "unfortunate shade" (given their percentage of population vs representation)? Or that inner city cops actually tend to BE that "unfortunate shade"?

Yea, the man is totally getting african americans down. Oh wait, the man IS african american. Whoops.

Is it at ALL possible that the linking causal agent is that more blacks tend to live in the inner city and be poor (for whatever cause-- possibly cyclic reasons), and that there is more crime in the inner city (always, through history), so blacks are more likely to be involved in crime simply based on economic and locational reasons?

Re:Bribe Fine

[Hatta]

No one has ever successfully implemented a capitalist society either. It's a nice idea, but it turns into plutocracy rapidly.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

True.

And so does capitalism.

Re:Bribe Fine

[tehcyder]

You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917. You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

There were around 100 or so implementations of communism. If every single of them was "not the TRUE communism", perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology?

The main problem, from the French Revolutionaries of the Eighteenth Century onwards, has been the implacable hostility ofthe outside world towards regimes which espouse communist ideals. This inevitably leads to a deteriorating spiral into paranoia (because everyone is out to get you). If, to choose a popular example here, the US had just left Cuba the fuck alone and allowed it to trade normally with the rest of the world, it would have turned out a different place.

Re:Bribe Fine

[tehcyder]

it just became an oligarchy with a politic and military elite ruling the people (under the guise of "the dictatorship of the proletariat").

That phrase does not mean what you think it means.

Re:Bribe Fine

[tehcyder]

OK, so what's the "book answer" of a purely capitalist/free market society?
That's right, there aren't any in reality.

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[cavreader]

"where you can be put without a lawyer, without a charge, without due process of any kind " Please elaborate on this shocking situation. "Facist, communist, capitalist and just about any other type of governmental theory slowly will go from a great idea to a slave state eventually" Well we might as well jump ahead to anarchy and institute a system based on survival of the fittest. The large and still growing world population could use some pruning.

Re:Bribe Fine

[stewbacca]

I never claimed there was. Thanks for projecting, however.

Re:Bribe Fine

[tehcyder]

No one has ever successfully implemented a communist society with more than about 50 members. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't scale, except possibly in a post-scarcity society.

There is not a black and white definition of communism either in practice or theory. It can be argued (and is argued by libertarians) that any taxation is just the first step on the road from pure free markets to communism. It just depends how far along that road societies travel.
Just because you don't ever end up with absolute equality doesn't mean that you can't aim towards it, and improve society by doing so. The Mondragon Cooperative in Spain limits manager's wages to (IIRC) three or four times that of workers, so thy are not absolutely equal, but they would still be classed as at least socialist if not actually communist.
I personally like the idea of living in a society where I pay quite high taxes but receive along wih everybody things like free education and healthcare and decent cheap public transport and a living pension. That is certainly socialist, and from an Ameican point of view virtually communist. This model, with substantial public ownership of the means of production, has been tried to varying degrees in Europe without the world ending.

Re:Bribe Fine

[tehcyder]

The distance between communist and fascist is very narrow, both are variants on progressive ideology.

And the difference between fascist and conservative is narrower still, so by your logic all conservatives are practically communists.

Re:Bribe Fine

[silanea]

China is not the secure OS. They cart off prisoners, they have higher echelons who stuff their pockets etc. China is not communist. This is the "impossible to implement if the outcome should still be usable in the real world with real people" part of my post. China is the secure OS that only allows Lynx and shoots users who install other browsers.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

Facist? Wrong end of the spectrum; the Chinese are communist. In communism, government controls industry. In facism, industry controls the government.

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[Attila Dimedici]

No, that is not true, at least not by U.S. standards. In the U.S., conservatives do NOT favor central planning of the economy(a basic concept of progressive ideology). This is a basic misconception that was developed by progressives. Progressives created a political continuum that extended from fascism to communism, thus taking all non-central planning concepts off of the table. Fascism is but one more ideology that favors government control of all aspects of the economy, conservatives in the U.S. oppose all but the most minimal government involvement in the economy.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Sabathius]

Either that, or mining gold on World of Warcraft. No...no really.

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[Grishnakh]

Where are these mythical U.S. minimal-government "conservatives" you speak of?

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

The best example is Gitmo.

Also, in Illinois and probably other states, domestic battery will have you jailed overnight without bail, without seeing a judge, and you're usually released the next day, innocent or not. I endured this even though I was the victim and didn't defend myself and I was the one to call the cops, and the "domestic partner" wasn't my girlfriend and didn't live there. Even a single 24 hour period in jail is punishment; jail ain't fun at all.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

I don't think "Borg" applies to the Chinese, I think it fits the US better. After all, we're the ones who seem to want ethe whole world to be like us.

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[hamburgler007]

You should take care not to mistake communism as totalitarianism or despotism. While communism may not be a feasible form of government, I don't think what China calls communism is exactly what Marx had in mind.

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[Eggbloke]

From Wikipedia: "Communism is a sociopolitical movement that aims for a classless and stateless society"
Sorry it really annoys me when people say Communism especially in regards to the Soviet Union and China when in fact they were/are Socialist.
I think the spectrum is more of a circle anyway. Totalitarian Socialism, what most people think of as Communism tends to be very close to Fascism.

Re:Bribe Fine

[morgauxo]

Umm.. so all that killing and oppression should be repeated and 'learned from' until somebody gets it right and then we will have a communist utopia? Is that what you are saying?

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

I live in Illinois, and that just isn't the case, although it seems so. What looks like racism is actually classism. More blacks than whites are incarcerated because the poverty rate is higher among blacks; rich people seldom get arrested for anything here, poor people regardless of color are scared shitless of the cops, whether the poor person is a law abising citizen or not. In Springfileld it's mentioned that blacks are pulled over more often than whites, but what I see is that a late model car can zoom past a Springfield cop doing twice the speed limit, while a hooptie will get pulled over for the slightest excuse, and the color of the driver is irrelevent in either case. My daughter's first car was a beat up, rusted out hooptie and she was pulled over constantly, despite the fact that she's lilly white. When that car died and she got a more respectable one, the traffic tickets stopped.

Nobody would mind Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey living next door to them, but nobody would want anybody from Springfield's east side, white or black, to be their neighbor. It isn't race, it's class.

Racism is a tool of the rich to keep the poor at each others' throats, preventing them from attacking the rich. When Bush said "I don't want to hear about class warfare" I thought "well, he should stop waging it then."

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[mcgrew]

You are correct except for one fact: there are more white people collecting food stamps and medical cards than black people (look it up). Of course, the reason is that there are more white people. Government isn't at war with "people with an unfortunate skin color", they're at war with people with an unfortunate lack of money.

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[mcgrew]

1984 was about comminism, Animal Farmn was about facism (the other end of the spectrum).

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[silanea]

No. By now everyone involved should have gotten the memo saying "Killing and oppressing people != communism". So they should abandon their experiments before they reach the point where they have to dig mass graves. When you burn your hand in a flame once, you are expected to learn from this experience and not hold your hand in it again. Unless you are incredibly stupid.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're also more likely to commit a violent crime if you're not white. Statistics prove it. More violent crime is committed per capita by blacks than whites. So it's good for society to lock them up when they enter the legal system.

Re:Bribe Fine

[RichardMaciel]

ROFL!

Re:Bribe Fine

[Attila Dimedici]

At the Tea Party rallies.

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[cavreader]

You intimated in your post that people were being randomly rounded up without charge or recourse which is an exagerated claim used to mislead and and support your opinion that the US justice system is the same as the Chinese. Gitmo detainees are foreign nationals classified as enemy combatants. The Supreme court has ruled that a US citizen detained as an enemy combatant must be allowed to challenge the accusations in a US civilian court. Getting arrested and held while the justice process runs it's course is not denying you your rights. Depending on the offense the police need time to file charges and process the paper work. The court representives need time to review the charges and request clarification if needed so a determination can be made on whether to proceed. In other words it is basically an administration and processing delay. However, there are hard limits and legal recourse available for anyone held without charges or indictment over a specified length of time. That time period can vary depending on nature of the offense. If you get detained for DUI they will not release you until you sober up and by that time the woill have probably towed your car away. If involved in a domestic dispute the police have the right to hold you until the threat of immediate continued violence is abated. They are not going to arrest a husband for beating the shit out of his wife and then release him 15 minutes later. The police have descrectionary powers in incidents such as this. However, you can not be held without charge indefinitely or denied access to legal support. If these rights are violated you have legal recourse to challenge the arrest and detainment and seek damages for your trouble.

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[Snarky McButtface]

Why is this modded troll?

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[Grishnakh]

Tea Partiers are morons. They'll talk about "small government", but then they'll vote for people who push for more foreign wars, a bigger defense budget, etc.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Snarky McButtface]

This Tea Party? The same group of people who believes that no one deserves any money from government programs but them?

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[PopeRatzo]

Even in the states, there's a fairly sharp change in a person's treatment if they piss off someone rich and (somewhat) powerful.

Ain't that the truth. Especially in the 'States.

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[Attila Dimedici]

Do you personally know any? Or are you basing that comment on what the Democratic Party Press (ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post, etc) tells you?

Re:Bribe Fine

[PopeRatzo]

Or point out that more people with skin of "an unfortunate shade" get free money and handouts from the government than their "pale counterpart"?

Sorry, friend, but that's just not true. Most of the recipients of government handouts are white. Most welfare recipients are white. Most food stamp recipients are white.

Is it at ALL possible that the linking causal agent is that more blacks tend to live in the inner city and be poor (for whatever cause-- possibly cyclic reasons), and that there is more crime in the inner city (always, through history), so blacks are more likely to be involved in crime simply based on economic and locational reasons?

But how does any of that explain the fact that a black or hispanic male is FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT more likely to get jail time than a white man for the same crime?

So you wasted such an energetic and deeply-felt racist diatribe when it has absolutely nothing to do with my original statement.

Good job, though. It's helpful to have gotten to know your views on race. As the character Aldo "The Apache" Raines said in Inglorious Basterds, "We like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot 'em just like that."

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[Attila Dimedici]

You do know that Paul Ryan is a Tea Party hero? That Ron Paul and Rand Paul are well received by members of the Tea Parties? None of these people are considered to be strong defenders of the status quo of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So, what government programs are the Tea Partiers supposed to be defending that they profit from?

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[KiloByte]

1984 was about comminism, Animal Farmn was about facism (the other end of the spectrum).

Napoleon = Joseph Stalin
Snowball = Lev Trotsky
Squealer = Viatcheslav Molotov

Animal Farm is based on the history of soviet Russia, and on relations between the Party and the masses.

Re:Bribe Fine

[PopeRatzo]

I live in Illinois, and that just isn't the case, although it seems so.

No, it is the case that blacks are 500 percent more likely to face jail time for a drug crime than whites convicted of the same crime. Simply googling "Illinois drug sentencing racial disparity" will show that's true.

Also, it shows that there has historically been a much higher rate of facing the death penalty for murder among blacks than among whites convicted of murder.

I know we're on the same side of this discussion, mcgrew. Did I fail to make my point clear originally?

Re:Bribe Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

probably the military-industrial complex and a few other publicly subsidized, privately profitable welfare states.

Re:Bribe Fine

[Snarky McButtface]

From the first link:

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

From the second link:

According to this poll, 91% of Tea Partiers want a smaller government with fewer services. Despite this hostility to big government, 62% of Tea Partiers believe that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are worth the cost (apparently no one bothered to tell them that Social Security and Medicare are evil Godless socialist programs).

No matter what the heroes of the Tea Party think or say, the majority of the members believe otherwise. Even a majority of conservatives reject Paul Ryan's budget plan.

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[mcgrew]

You intimated in your post that people were being randomly rounded up without charge or recourse

I have no idea what you saw in the comment that intimated that anything was random. The folks in Gitmo weren't charged with crimes, held as POWs, or given access to legal assistance.

The Supreme court has ruled that a US citizen detained as an enemy combatant must be allowed to challenge the accusations in a US civilian court.

In fact, a US Citizen was held for over a year before the Supreme court ruled that, and the Constitution applies to everyone, not just US Citizens. No where in the Constitution does it say one has to be a citizen to enjoy these God-given rights. The constitution doesn't grant rights, it merely protects them.

Getting arrested and held while the justice process runs it's course is not denying you your rights.

The seventh amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

No charges were filed, no judge was seen, no witnesses were called. I was not allowed to see anyone. I was imprisoned for twenty four hours with no recourse whatever.

The eighth amendment:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

No bail was in fact offered, and in fact Illinois law says bail can't be granted.

My rights certainly WERE violated, and I didn't even break any laws at all. I was the victim, and missed work the next day! If you think this was right and proper, I just don't know what to say, except I hope it never happens to you.

Re:Bribe Fine

[scot4875]

No. They were both about totalitarianism; Animal Farm was also a commentary on Orwell's experience with communist regimes.

--Jeremy

Re:Bribe Fine

[Snarky McButtface]

That sounds a lot nicer than chain gangs.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

Also, it shows that there has historically been a much higher rate of facing the death penalty for murder among blacks than among whites convicted of murder.

Yes, that's so, but I'm not convinced it's racial. A rich man can get away with murder -- remember OJ? But I'm sure you're eight in some jurisdictions -- Texas, for example. They finally did away with the death penalty in Illinois after it was proven that half the men on death row were innocent.

Also, did you notice that almost no women get executed, regardless of race or economics, even in Texas?

I know we're on the same side of this discussion, mcgrew. Did I fail to make my point clear originally?

It's possible.

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[shutdown -p now]

Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.

The reason why November 1917 even happened is because the majority of workers in Russia at the time supported Bolsheviks.

And yes, early on it was all about protecting workers' rights, even explicitly at the expense of others. The electoral system that was initially set up by Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia was class-oriented - districts where workers were the majority (i.e. cities) got more deputies from their councils per citizens than districts where peasants were the majority (i.e. countryside) - the former had 1 deputy per 25,000 citizens, the latter had 1 deputy per 125,000. This was very much intentional and Bolsheviks didn't hide it, either.

And yes, councils did participate in decision making in early years of the Soviet state, so it wasn't just sham democracy.

If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country

I was born in a Communist country, and saw a glimpse of it for myself (it crumbled in my early school years), and have plenty of stories from my parents. My great-grandmother was deported to Kazakhstan during WW2 (she was half Volga German), and my great-grandmother perished in the camps.

But I still have my own brains to separate fact from fiction, in propaganda that comes from both sides (Soviets weren't the only ones who employed major amounts of bullshit; and anyone who thinks that Solzhenitsyn's books are a reliable source is as much a blind believer as any guy parading with Stalin portrait today).

Re:Bribe Fine

[Man On Pink Corner]

You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

It doesn't matter what communism is. If you have to stick a gun in peoples' backs to get them to practice it, it's wrong.

Re:Bribe Fine

[LordLimecat]

Good job, though. It's helpful to have gotten to know your views on race.

Such a compelling argument. Because I believe the "race card" is way over used, and because I believe that there is a coorelation to being poor in the inner city and crime, I am racist.

FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT more likely to get jail time than a white man for the same crime?

Still not clear here, are you stating that blacks are being kept down by the black-run executive, and by a police force that has at least a large minority of black officers (at least here in DC)? Im not sure I get how that works, entirely.

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[CheerfulMacFanboy]

No one has ever successfully implemented a communist society with more than about 50 members. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't scale, except possibly in a post-scarcity society.

There is not a black and white definition of communism either in practice or theory. It can be argued (and is argued by libertarians) that any taxation is just the first step on the road from pure free markets to communism. It just depends how far along that road societies travel.

There is no need for taxes in Communism and thus no taxes. Gee, could the "libertarians" be wrong - again?

Now, to make their head explode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_communist

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[PopeRatzo]

Still not clear here, are you stating that blacks are being kept down by the black-run executive, and by a police force that has at least a large minority of black officers

The president really doesn't have a lot to do with the local drug courts, and nothing to do with state drug courts.

What's the percentage of black judges on the criminal courts there in DC where you live? Are there different sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine and powder cocaine?

And do you really believe that street cops are the ones sentencing drug defendants to jail time?

Im not sure I get how that works, entirely.

That doesn't surprise me.

Re:Bribe Fine

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I wonder if the prison has a "glorious people's correctional work for the purpose of moral education"[1] program?

Why should a Chinese prison be different to an American one?

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.

You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

True communism never came to life. Marx envisaged a society where a temporary government would be disbanded as soon as it formed a framework for workers' self-management, and then the whole society would be run by workers (and on a Global scale, too, not on national scale). Unfortunately, no Communist country felt like taking care of this evolution after revolution.

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

There were around 100 or so implementations of communism. If every single of them was "not the TRUE communism", perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology?

It's those damned hardware manufacturers that won't release specs so people can write drivers.

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

"where you can be put without a lawyer, without a charge, without due process of any kind " Please elaborate on this shocking situation.

So how's it going down there under the rock? It seems you've build a nice house in there for yourself too. Good show!

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

Umm.. so all that killing and oppression should be repeated and 'learned from' until somebody gets it right and then we will have a communist utopia? Is that what you are saying?

Where do you people learn these things?

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).

It doesn't matter what communism is. If you have to stick a gun in peoples' backs to get them to practice it, it's wrong.

I fail to see the point of this comment.

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

In facism, industry controls the government.

Dude, that sounds totally like the US.

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

Also, it shows that there has historically been a much higher rate of facing the death penalty for murder among blacks than among whites convicted of murder.

Yes, that's so, but I'm not convinced it's racial. A rich man can get away with murder -- remember OJ? But I'm sure you're eight in some jurisdictions -- Texas, for example. They finally did away with the death penalty in Illinois after it was proven that half the men on death row were innocent.

Also, did you notice that almost no women get executed, regardless of race or economics, even in Texas?

I know we're on the same side of this discussion, mcgrew. Did I fail to make my point clear originally?

It's possible.

Just shows how irrational the judicial system is in general.

Re:Bribe Fine

[nagnamer]

You're also more likely to commit a violent crime if you're not white. Statistics prove it. More violent crime is committed per capita by blacks than whites. So it's good for society to lock them up when they enter the legal system.

Statistics never prove anything. You might demonstrate something using statistics, but nobody has created flawless stats to date. For example, if you show that 5/10 non-whites committed a violent crime versus 3/10 whites:

1. Is the difference significant enough to draw conclusions?
2. Was the sampling done in an unbiased way?
3. How do you define a violent crime to begin with?
4. How do you value the violence level? (e.g., you can't compare 3 serial murders to 5 assaults that resulted in minor injuries, although both could be considered violent)
5. Is the 'violent' crime the only crime that hurts the livelihood of the society?

and so on. There are many factors that can ruin the accuracy of the information.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

Sadly, you're right. Amazing that we are becoming what we fought WWII against. My uncles who fought in that war are probably spinning in their graves.

Re:Bribe Fine

[LordLimecat]

And do you really believe that street cops are the ones sentencing drug defendants to jail time?

Last I checked, it wasnt the judges who initiated the legal process, it was the cops.

What's the percentage of black judges on the criminal courts there in DC where you live

Stats like that are hard to come by; I have been unable to get an accurate "police force racial breakdown" for example. Anecdotally, my one experience in DC with a judge (traffic) was black. My experiences in Virginia have all been with white judges (2-3). Cops have been mostly black in DC, white in Va. Make of that what you will; but absent any real figures, we're stuck with the anecdotal "court system looks diverse".

Are there different sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine and powder cocaine?

I honestly have no idea. I do know that there is a large black population in DC (56%), and presumably they vote, and presumably the people they vote for put these laws into effect; so any issues there would presumably be caused by them continuing to vote for people who push for such laws.

Re:Bribe Fine

[PopeRatzo]

I do know that there is a large black population in DC (56%), and presumably they vote, and presumably the people they vote for put these laws into effect

Sadly, No.

You should google "DC + home rule".

Re:Bribe Fine

[cavreader]

"The folks in Gitmo weren't charged with crimes, held as POWs, or given access to legal assistance." They are officially classified as an enemy combatants and specific charges have been filed and they do have access to legal assistance. Their treatment and the question of whether they have protection under the Constitution is still a much contested point that is getting handled on a case by case basis for the most part. They are not US citizens and their offenses were in a foreign country during an official military engagement. This is a rather unique set of facts that do not fit perfectly into the existing justice system. They aren't exactly criminals or POWs. Congress and the Supreme court has tried to define what changes need to be made to accommodate this area. The process takes time to work and a lot of the existing detainees would have been released by now if any country would accept them. Even the countries where they originate are not willing to repatriate them so this creates just one more problem needing to be resolved some how. "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" The definition of a speedy trial is defined by each state. A Speedy trial, especially a jury trial, could be as long as 3 months to 6 months depending on the complexity of the sace. Just because you define a speedy trial as 15 minutes doesn't make it so or violate your rights. "I didn't even break any laws at all." You are not the first person arrested that was innocent. The police can hold you as a suspect long enough to determine if a mistake was made. If after investigating it appears you are blatantly innocent they can release you. Of course like I mentioned above the administrative process takes time.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

They are not US citizens and their offenses were in a foreign country during an official military engagement

One was a US citizen in Chicago. He was finally released TWO YEARS after his imprisonment. Calling them "enemy combatants" is just semantics; they are indeed POWs and should have been treated as such. Calling them "enemy combatants" is nothing but Orwellian doublespeak.

As to the guy from Chicago, he could have been charged with treason, as well as several other crimes, and could have been easily convicted and executed or held in prison for life.

Six months for a "speedy" trial isn't unreasonable, but two years certainly is.

Re:Bribe Fine

[cavreader]

They are not POW's. To claim POW status requires participation in a act of war sponsored by a recognized nation state involved in the conflict. Declaring these guys POW's would bring them under the Geneva Convention which allows the states engaged in hostilities does allow summary execution of anyone captured on the battlefield with no identifying insignia. This rule was put into place to discourage spying. Of course it didn't actually stop spying it just added a penalty harsh enough to make people think twice about doing it. "Enemy Combatants" is not symantics. It is clearly defined classification that deals with situations not covered under any existing rules of war or criminal statues. "Speedy" is not explicitly defined in any rights declaration. It is a subjective term that can changed by the circumstances of the case. A defendant does have the ability to demand court review of the situation and there have been many cases where a person was released because the prosecuting authorities did not indict or present any evidence to support the charges. "could have been easily convicted and executed or held in prison for life" But he wasn't. You can not use anecdotal evidence to declare an entire system unjust.

Re:Bribe Fine

[mcgrew]

To claim POW status requires participation in a act of war sponsored by a recognized nation state involved in the conflict

You mean, like Afghanistan?

Good

[msobkow]

It's good to see China taking IP seriously for a change.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Where it doesn't matter and uses useless minor irrelevant cases like this one as a poor example they do good things.

Its funny they don't apply the same rule to weapons manufacturors, heavy industry manufacturors etc, the "big boys"... would be akin to shooting itself on the head. Better off to point it at poor and those between poor and middle class trying to make a living and make a big media fuss on them scum for making plastic paded cases. Those really put a dent to the economy monopolies right?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

nothing new

[asscheese]

This goes on all the time Im sorry they have to be locked away but I think as a whole were far to consumed with consuming and it makes nothing safe. I just find a lot of chinas business practices to be money over EVERYTHING and somehow the world has to get a hold on it, and themself

Re:nothing new

[Rakishi]

The US has been a consumerist society for decades and decades. People have been saying it will ruin us all for just as long.

One thing you learn from reading old science fiction is that "modern" problems are anything but modern.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been saying it will ruin us

'It' already has. Our representatives kowtow to the Chinese on command lest they decide we should experience some 'austerity.'

Re:nothing new

[X.25]

The US has been a consumerist society for decades and decades. People have been saying it will ruin us all for just as long.

Well, it did ruin you.

Hopefully, you see/realize that.

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

It has ruined you. If you're posting on /. as an educated geek with a good job and a comfortable life then you are one of the few winners of the system. Most of the West is miserable with no voice loud enough to be heard.

The media in every regime give the impression that almost everyone is content with that regime, from the US through the USSR all the way to DPRK. Spend time providing help to or even stopping to have a conversation with the homeless, the chronically sick, the nonviolent prisoner. Then move on to the non-smart - it sounds mean, but half the population are intellectually below average and likely have extremely limited opportunity for it. You'll find that people are struggling and miserable. Not yet at the stage of mass consciousness and disloyalty, but that's yet to come.

I'd summarise our problem in three words: reliance on corporation. We suck at supporting ourselves for our own sake, whether that means individually or at a community / region / national level. Since the '50s local community has deteriorated, and since the '80s we've lost a sense of national community. We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.

In short, we're lazy and we suck. We so far following the progress of every other civilisation (read the original, check out how well he'd predicted the next half-decade through analysis of other civilisations, and identify where the West is now) into destruction.

Re:nothing new

[icebraining]

We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.

Oh please. Even letters were always dependent on some organization to deliver them. Ditto for the "open Internet". And the majority of people never built their own radio set.
People didn't change, technology did.

And that abused labour has seen their wages raise in the double digits per year. If it wasn't for their manufacturing, they'd still live in an oppressive country, but living in even worse conditions.

Re:nothing new

[caramuru]

Half the population is below the median, Hazel. It is below the average if and only if intelligence is normally distributed. So, while you condescend the lower half of the population, get your statistics right.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the population is below the median, Hazel. It is below the average if and only if intelligence is normally distributed.

No. It is "if and only if" the intelligence is distributed symmetrically.

Re:nothing new

[L4t3r4lu5]

Every single bell-curve for IQ I've seen has been almost perfectly symmetrical, maybe with a few 1/10ths of a percent difference in each half of the percentiles about the median. It's almost as though the IQ test was designed to give a value of 100 most often, and the rest of the population is arbitrarily given more or less points based upon the current most frequent count of correct answers. It's uncanny.

Forgive me if my use of certain language is inaccurate; It's been a while since I studied stats.

Re:nothing new

[dogmatixpsych]

IQ tests were designed with normal distributions and if results did not fit a normal distribution, they were conformed to one. They did this so we can use good old parametric stats with IQ test scores. So yes, IQ tests (at least the most widely-used one in the U.S.) were designed to have average at 100 with standard deviations of +-15.

Every once in a while new versions are created with new normative samples because the test changes but new generations of people tend to have higher IQs than the previous one (the Flynn Effect) and so the tests are re-normed to force the mean back to 100.

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

Oh please. Even letters were always dependent on some organization to deliver them.

What sort of organisation is needed for you with your horse to provide a service taking a letter from A to B?

Ditto for the "open Internet".

The Internet was an end stage, but it was still much better when it was about distributed autonomous peers rather than a few private backbone providers and Facebooks.

And the majority of people never built their own radio set.

But many people could and many people did. And if you couldn't yourself, there'd be someone local to fix yours.

People didn't change, technology did.

The patented automatic ass-wiper was built and, even though it never really worked as well as the human hand, people forgot how to wipe their ass.

And that abused labour has seen their wages raise in the double digits per year.

Stop regurgitating soundbites from Slashdot and pay attention to what is happening in China.

If it wasn't for their manufacturing, they'd still live in an oppressive country, but living in even worse conditions.

"We treat the slaves better than the previous master, thus our slave trade is justified." Also, when you dismantle the security of the state - you may recall that China was once fairly socialist in the way it provided for its people - then of course people will end up in worse conditions and have to flee to exploitation in the city.

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

caramuru, if you're offended by the bare and harsh fact that half the people are simply not that bright (and that you can't base a society, say, on assuming that those people simply need to try harder), at least write a decent defence. In particular:

(i) I don't know about your country, but in mine "average" isn't synonymous with "mean". To know which measure of central tendency is being selected, you observe the context. In my case, by the fact that I've used a definition based on 50% being below, I must be referring to the median;

(ii) Anyway, most measures of intelligence seem to be symmetrically distributed. Which, of course, is sufficient for mean to equal median - it doesn't matter whether the distribution is normal.

Thank you come again.

Re:nothing new

[PJ6]

but half the population are intellectually below average

No. It's more like 20% of the population has 80% of the brain power. Contrary to what IQ stats say, intelligence is not a normal distribution.

Re:nothing new

[BasilBrush]

The Internet was an end stage, but it was still much better when it was about distributed autonomous peers rather than a few private backbone providers and Facebooks.

No it wasn't. Today's internet is better than it's progenitors in the 1960s and 70s. It's better then the internet of the 1980s - heck it didn't even have the web back then. It's better than the 1990s and it's HTML 1.0 and animated GIFs. It''s better than the 2000s as we get ever more sophisticated web apps and usability by devices other than PCs...

All the time, we've got more speed, more bandwidth, more information providers and services and more users, making it better and better.

And in 10 years time it'll be better than it is now.

You might prefer the original ideas of the internet to the evolved ideas of today. But it's ridiculous to say the internet was actually better back then.

Stop regurgitating soundbites from Slashdot and pay attention to what is happening in China.

Inflation may have been 5.5% last year, but wages rose by 16%. In fact where wages are rising rapidly there is bound to be significant inflation of prices.

Re:nothing new

[bws111]

You are drawing arbitrary lines and saying everything before them was good, and everything after was bad.

Did you make your own paper and writing implements to write that letter? If so, did you use only tools and raw materials that you yourself made or collected?

That early internet sure sounds great. I guess people built their own computers (using components and tools that they themselves made), and connected them using wires made from the copper each end user mined for himself, right?

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Then move on to the non-smart - it sounds mean, but half the population are intellectually below average and likely have extremely limited opportunity for it.

Half the population are below average intelligence, and half are above? One guy out there is 'average'?

Sorry, most people are of average intelligence. That's precisely why its 'average.'

I'm also not convinced that intelligence and opportunity are so closely related. If positions of power and responsibility are gated by intelligence, I see little evidence. I'd say there are much more important factors that determine the opportunity of an individual.

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

It's better than the 1990s and it's HTML 1.0 and animated GIFs. It''s better than the 2000s as we get ever more sophisticated web apps and usability by devices other than PCs...

I recall first browsing the web while mobile around 1998, sitting in a McDonalds in London with a Psion Series 5. It was perfectly usable on a handheld device in the late '90s before the bloat of nascent Web 2.0 and reliance on Javascript made sites too heavy and complex. We're only now creeping back to where we once were in terms of usability on less powerful devices.

Also, cloudy web apps are a horrible idea, both technologically and in terms of all the freedom arguments RMS has already made about them. But if you don't already agree with this then you're hardly likely to change your mind right now.

Inflation may have been 5.5% last year, but wages rose by 16%.

Are you slow? Concentrate on inflation of essentials, which is what all those desperate people that capitalism has saved with slavery will be wanting to buy. Next consider whether the wage rises have been across the board, whether they've been engineered, etc.

In fact where wages are rising rapidly there is bound to be significant inflation of prices.

You're the one touting the rise.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

He already said that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

You're missing the point entirely. It's OK to use other people's services, but that's entirely different from relying on multinationals.

(1) In one case you're choosing to give someone else the task but you could still do it yourself, even if you don't do such a good job of it. In the event that the other guy becomes unavailable and/or your stuff develops a fault you could still fix it;

(2) Relying on businesses in the local community isn't the same as relying on a large corporation, particularly when it comes to bargaining and balance of power.

One hundred years ago you could plot a small sphere round where you are and stuff would carry on even if every man outside that sphere stopped working. Today your sphere is going to have to cover the world. The modern man is the very model of enabled impotence.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

The average IQ is 100. 85 is considered below average and 115 above average.
86-114 is called "Average" because it's close enough to 100, but to be precise the average is 100. You're talking about the label "Average" not the average of 100. Few people have an IQ of exactly 100; in theory it is the most frequent score, but the number of people who have an IQ of 100 is nothing compared to the number of people who have any score except 100. So if you're talking about a score of 100 when speaking of the average IQ, almost half of the population is below average (I guess 49%).

Re:nothing new

[instagib]

we've got more speed, more bandwidth, more information providers and services and more users

Agreed. Quantities have grown exponentially.

making it better and better

I disagree. Qualities went down: it got more superficial, more commercial, and much more censored.

Re:nothing new

[mcgrew]

wages rose by 16%

Bullshit.

Re:nothing new

[Rakishi]

One hundred years ago you could plot a small sphere round where you are and stuff would carry on even if every man outside that sphere stopped working. Today your sphere is going to have to cover the world. The modern man is the very model of enabled impotence.

And because of that we can achieve what a man 100 years ago could only dream of.

You have a twisted and distorted view of history. Like many people who pine for the "good ol' days" you don't see why we moved away from them.

We work fewer hours than the average man 100 years back could imagine. Women are no longer slaves of the household thanks to devices that shave hours off of household tasks. Our standard of health would make a person from the early 1900s weep in joy, especially if they have a toothache. We live in much greater comfort and can travel around. The mentally ill aren't locked in dark asylums and the poor can even get government funding (rather than the historical option of starving to death or begging a rich person for help). The average person can learn more than they could ever before and practical access to education is less restricted than ever before.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stop regurgitating soundbites from Slashdot and pay attention to what is happening in China [bbc.co.uk]."

So ... you're saying that if they had not got into manufacturing, and their wages had not risen an average of 12% per annum for the last decade, that this would not have happened? That's a mighty big assumption on your part.

Re:nothing new

[mcgrew]

Mean and median aren't necessarily the same; e.g. the median income in the US is lowerlower than the average (mean) income. However, in the case of IQ, they are the same.

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

And because of that we can achieve what a man 100 years ago could only dream of.

A small proportion of us can achieve it. And much of what we can achieve does not reduce the suffering of man.

We work fewer hours than the average man 100 years back could imagine.

No, we don't. The organised labour movement which actually reduced working hours is older than you seem to think. Pay attention. Just before WW1, people were working around 50 hours per week, depending on area of employment. Now I don't know a soul today who works less than 40-45 hours a week. Add to that the fact that ongoing education is effectively compulsory to get and maintain any sort of steady job today, whereas back then it was a luxury for the privileged few, and you'll find that we're spending more hours per week toward the practice of wage slavery than one hundred years.

Women are no longer slaves of the household thanks to devices that shave hours off of household tasks.

Obvious sexist thinking. Women are no longer "slaves of the household" because war killed lots of men, not because they no longer had to wash the dishes. Compare improved worker conditions following the Black Death.

Our standard of health would make a person from the early 1900s weep in joy, especially if they have a toothache.

It's true that universal healthcare services have provided analgesics to more people. The progress of adult medicine is consistently overrated, though - life expectancy improvements have mostly been about reducing infant mortality.

We live in much greater comfort

Define "comfort".

and can travel around.

So what?

The mentally ill aren't locked in dark asylums

Well, not always. Today we have "care in the community", a euphemism for making them walk the streets until they commit some crime and can be locked up. I know it's difficult for people who have swallowed the fallacy of the rational human mind to believe it, but some people are a danger to themselves or others and need residential care, sometimes involuntarily.

But thanks to privatisation of certain residential care facilities, we witness precisely the abuse of a hundred years ago.

and the poor can even get government funding (rather than the historical option of starving to death or begging a rich person for help).

Sometimes. Laws since the 1980s across the Western world have severely restricted support for the poor.

The average person can learn more than they could ever before

If they have the time, and are not distracted.

practical access to education is less restricted than ever before.

What is "access to education"? Do you mean availability of books? It's far harder to get a good university education in the UK than, say, 30 years ago, when university access was granted on merit rather than requiring loans etc.

Re:nothing new

[BasilBrush]

We're talking about China, not USA.

Re:nothing new

[BasilBrush]

I recall first browsing the web while mobile around 1998, sitting in a McDonalds in London with a Psion Series 5.

Funnily enough I was a software engineer working on EPOC32 at the time, and I was dating the head of the Web App team. She'd be first to admit that the Web browser was very primitive compared to today's mobile web browsers. And as that was well before McDonalds had WiFi, you must have been connecting via IrDA to a mobile phone at, what, 9600 baud? And paying for GSM data rates.

Now you'd have the full web, in colour, delivered at 10s or 100s of megabit rates via free wifi.

The past really isn't as rosy as you remember.

Are you slow? Concentrate on inflation of essentials, which is what all those desperate people that capitalism has saved with slavery will be wanting to buy.

Slow, no. Just fair. You want to take a particular slice of inflation that suits your argument, and compare it with a particular slice of wage rises that suit your argument. Pushing inflation up and wage rises down.
Oh, and by the way I'm not much of a fan of capitalism. But there's enough real things to attack without accepting people like you distorting the facts.

You're the one touting the rise.

Google is your friend. (Back in 1998 not so much. Google hadn't hit he big time, and most search engines were being gamed by metadata spammers. And there wasn't nearly so much financial data and news published on the web anyway.)

http://blogs.forbes.com/russellflannery/2011/03/18/china-faces-years-of-double-digit-wage-increases-currency-appreciation/
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/06/chinas_wage_inf.html

Re:nothing new

[Rakishi]

No, we don't. The organised labour movement which actually reduced working hours is older than you seem to think.

It'd be interesting to see how much of that depends on modern transportation and communication system that you decry so much. You cannot claim massive corporations are evil but then expect every other large organization to function just as well as before.

Obvious sexist thinking. Women are no longer "slaves of the household" because war killed lots of men, not because they no longer had to wash the dishes. Compare improved worker conditions following the Black Death.

Wow, you seriously underestimate the effort needed to maintain a household before modern appliances and conveniences don't you.

It's true that universal healthcare services have provided analgesics to more people. The progress of adult medicine is consistently overrated, though - life expectancy improvements have mostly been about reducing infant mortality.

The average male age 20 can expect to live for an extra 15 years compared to the 1900, the average female for an extra 20 years.

Define "comfort".

Air conditioning.

So what?

Many people consider this one of the most valuable parts of living. So congratulations on showing that your definition of a "good life" is not in sync with that of many people.

Not only are you are looking at a distorted view of history that you think you'd enjoy living in but then you're claiming that everyone would be better off.

Well, not always. Today we have "care in the community", a euphemism for making them walk the streets until they commit some crime and can be locked up. I know it's difficult for people who have swallowed the fallacy of the rational human mind to believe it, but some people are a danger to themselves or others and need residential care, sometimes involuntarily.

But thanks to privatisation of certain residential care facilities, we witness precisely the abuse of a hundred years ago.

There are failures but nothing is perfect. I know quite a few people who now lead successful lives due to treatment but a century ago would have been locked up. That's not countering the ones who would have been locked up for "female hysteria."

Sometimes. Laws since the 1980s across the Western world have severely restricted support for the poor.

Yet it is nonetheless much better than it was a century ago.

If they have the time, and are not distracted.

You point being?

Re:nothing new

[Hazel Bergeron]

Wow, you seriously underestimate the effort needed to maintain a household before modern appliances and conveniences don't you.

Justify that statement. I want to know what it is I do that should be taking all day every day if I didn't have a modern appliance.

Your belief is typically chauvinist: to think that women were chained to the kitchen or the washroom until some clever men saved them with their cunning automated substitutes for women. But it was the dearth of men during war and a consequent change of attitude both by and toward women which brought them out of the house. Then employers saw that they could drive down wages with a labour market twice the size, and what was temporarily a choice became an obligation if you want enough money to run a household. Most women have now lost the opportunity for a full motherhood, and we have pride in motherhood substituted with a pride in "juggling work and family" - about as safe for society as "juggling piloting and small-bore rifling".

The average male age 20 can expect to live for an extra 15 years compared to the 1900, the average female for an extra 20 years.

It's convenient to choose "just over 100 years" because then you get to factor in all the deaths of WW1, the influenza pandemic, etc. For the US, compare the white male at 1920. He gets around 10 more years. All the pain of modern living just for 10 more years at the end of your life? No thanks! And not even 10 more years of living, because religious mores the laws on which they are based mean that in almost all developed countries we don't prolong life based on quality of life but based on the idea that life must be preserved.

(Also note what's happening recently, perhaps using more recent data.)

Air conditioning.

That's it? That's what you have to offer? Fucking air conditioning? One side of our family has an apartment on the top floor of a block in a certain Mediterranean city. It's no longer the permanent home, but that generation have (the fates seemed to decree) always had a top-floor apartment. And never with air conditioning. You know what you do when it's hot? You don't sit in direct sunlight, you take some clothes off and you open the window. Or you cool yourself with water. It's free and it takes advantage of the fact that you're an endotherm.

Many people consider this one of the most valuable parts of living. So congratulations on showing that your definition of a "good life" is not in sync with that of many people.

I asked a question. Well done on reading it as an assertion. Are you sure that the yearning for travel is not something engineered into us by alienating us from those living next door and by constantly pummeling tourism adverts at us? Is it actually human nature to want to move around the world? The question is far more subtle than, "Do people today say they want to travel?"

(If you don't believe that such programming occurs, consider asking a white man in apartheid South Africa, "Do you agree with the system of South African apartheid?" Ask the same question in England. If you're born into and develop in a society with a particular strong opinion, and you're taught that the opinion is to your advantage, you take on that opinion.)

I know quite a few people who now lead successful lives due to treatment but a century ago would have been locked up.

Have you ever heard of the LA county jail being called the "largest de facto mental hospital in the world"? Then people were identified as insane and locked up. Today we regard people as free to behave as they please, hold them responsible for their crimes, and then lock them up. If your friends now lead successful lives it is either because they had the benefit of loving intervention or they didn't experience

iclone

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was !pad2 cases, not ipad2 cases.

To be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice some of you saying "good," or "serves them right" and the like.

I guess this just goes to show how stupid and misplaced our sense of justice and propriety are in world where social consciousness primarily revolves around whatever soulless corporate brand you identify with.

Re:To be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are afflicted with the disease of only brand loyalty, even then I don't think you would care about someone somewhere making some third-party unlicensed accessories for your brand because you can just buy the official products and ignore cheap knock-offs.

The people saying "good" here do not merely have brand loyalty, they are members of a religious cult with the same drives as Islamic extremists who blow up aircraft and buildings. They may not themselves ever commit acts of terrorism, but they see anything outside of their cult as dangerous - especially when their one true corporate cult may be suffering a miniscule dent in their profits because someone is making unlicensed accessories.

Apple fanbois are part of what they consider to be a holy jihad against everyone else, their's is the one true way and all outsiders are infidels.

I'm already at an age where I've lived more days than I have in front of me and whilst I am lucky enough to have good health and happiness, I realise that each day there are more and more people in this world who are selfish materialists who care only about money and have no regard for their fellow man - as such, it makes eventually passing on from this life less scary because I really wouldn't want to live in the world these people are creating.

When dictators like Qaddafi commit genocide on his own people, those idiots won't bat an eyelid - but the moment their religion is attacked, that's a different matter.

The Shenzen Baoan Peoples Court

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are about to witness is real. The participants are not actors.

They are the actual people who have already either filed suit or been served a summons to appear in a Chinese Military court. Both parties in the suit have agreed to dismiss their court cases and have their disputes settled here, in our forum: The Shenzen Baoan People's Court!

Re:The Shenzen Baoan Peoples Court

[Anonymous Coward]

Jùdà ynjng Jùdà ynjng Jùdà ynjng

Re:The Shenzen Baoan Peoples Court

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that was funnier in your head.

Not quite.

[Narcogen]

This is not China taking IP seriously as a matter of principle.

This is China taking the needs of Foxconn seriously, and in this case, Foxconn's need is to demonstrate to its clients that it can be trusted with their sensitive commercial materials, such as the specifications of as-yet-unreleased products.

Re:Not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is the same thing, really.

Re:Not quite.

[georgesdev]

I second Anonymous Coward and msobkow, this is China taking IP seriously.
Whatever their motivation is.

Re:Not quite.

[second_coming]

The motivation being, if they don't crack down on it then big business will pull out of China and go somewhere more 'trustworthy'. The likelihood is lots of foreign business will pull out of China over the next few years anyway due to the huge increase in production (ie. wage) costs.

Re:Not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a selfish, materialistic idiot sat in your comfortable little world where clearly you need something more important to occupy your time a little if all you have to care about in your life is your corporate allegiance.

You are PATHETIC!

Re:Not quite.

[martyros]

This is China taking the needs of Foxconn seriously

From the summary, I don't see anything particularly wrong with this decision. One company gained an unfair advantage over its competition by engaging in illegal industrial espionage. If the problem is selective prosecution, then surely the solution is to complain about others who are not prosecuted for espionage, rather than to complain about those who are prosecuted?

Re:Not quite.

[wildstoo]

Hey Mr. AC, it just so happens that Corporate Allegiance is the fastest growing religion in America.

You know what happens to people who threaten religious freedoms, don't you?

How gives a shite

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a shite, they are just ordinary people living by the laws of their country. If they don't like the laws they live by they should change them.

Re:How gives a shite

[tqk]

Who gives a shite, they are just ordinary people living by the laws of their country. If they don't like the laws they live by they should change them.

Do you ACs get paid to post crap like this? This's The People's Republic of China we're talking about, not just any other "their country."

A small number of Chinese entrepreneurs are being crushed for the economic crime of noticing, seizing upon, and capitalising on an opportunity. Nobody was harmed in the process, but they're being crushed anyway, either for stepping out of line or for not paying the correct bribe.

Hearing that this stuff still happens crushes my soul. You should be ashamed for not feeling the same (never heard the term "empathy"?).

Spent any time in the Bamboo Archipelago lately? Their lives will not be much fun in the next few years, and for what? So some Chinee bigshot can tell Steve that his secrets are safe. Yay. If I were Steve, I'd be slapping Foxconn exec heads for creating yet another unnecessary employee relations debacle.

Re:How gives a shite

[mcvos]

They can't; they live in China.

Re:How gives a shite

[gnasher719]

Do you ACs get paid to post crap like this? This's The People's Republic of China we're talking about, not just any other "their country."

This is not the People's Republic of China we are talking about, this is the CEO of a not very large company bribing Foxconn employees, and a Foxconn employee working in Research & Development allowing himself to be bribed to give confidential information to outsiders. You'd go to court and probably to jail in any western country for the same crime.

So some Chinee bigshot can tell Steve that his secrets are safe.

Most idiotic thing I've seen posted here. Do you think Apple has no right to ask suppliers to not give details of future products away? And do you think suppliers then don't have a duty to tell their employees? And do you think that employees who are told that part of their job is to not talk about their customers' future products then have the right to sell exactly that information to the highest bidder?

Re:How gives a shite

[tqk]

... This's The People's Republic of China we're talking about ...

This is not the People's Republic of China we are talking about, this is the CEO of a not very large company bribing Foxconn employees ...

BS. The PRC has *total* and *complete* control in China. If you think the PRC doesn't control the strings in China, you're the one who's avoiding reality.

... give confidential information to outsiders. You'd go to court and probably to jail in any western country for the same crime.

For the dimensions of an iPod?!? Why the fsck would that be $SECRET?!?

Re:How gives a shite

[TheRaven64]

For the dimensions of an iPod?!? Why the fsck would that be $SECRET?!?

Because a lot of the competition in the tablet market at the moment revolves around thickness. Your product being 1mm thinner than the competition is seen as a real differentiator. Knowing how thick Apple's next iPad (not iPod, read the title, even if you don't RTFA) can give you a commercial advantage, because you can then create a marginally thinner one, and you can start the development aiming for this before Apple's version is released. Also, if you know the dimensions then you can make a pretty good guess at the power dissipation (heat) and the size of the battery, which gives you a lot of useful information, if you're one of Apple's competitors.

There's a reason that companies try to keep information about unreleased products private: they lose a lot of the first-mover advantage if the competition can release something better two weeks later.

Re:How gives a shite

[rjstanford]

For the dimensions of an iPod?!? Why the fsck would that be $SECRET?!?

So you're saying that it should be up to the employee who agrees not to disclose a trade secret whether or not it really is a secret, and if in the judgement of the employee it is not, they should be immune from prosecution when they share that trade secret?

Yeah, no problems there...

Re:How gives a shite

[tehcyder]

A small number of Chinese entrepreneurs are being crushed for the economic crime of noticing, seizing upon, and capitalising on an opportunity. Nobody was harmed in the process, but they're being crushed anyway, either for stepping out of line or for not paying the correct bribe.

So who gives a toss then?. If it's just about making money why weren't they clever enough to pay the fucking bribes?

Wait...

[MrEricSir]

How is this bad for Apple? Isn't having cases available a good thing?

Re:Wait...

[RivenAleem]

I can see the headlines now:

"We only leaked the OS Source Code so that people could make better apps" while trying to justify how there's precedent existing for the making of cases.

Apple did not comment, so we don't know who brought the charges, it would seem that Foxconn found out that employees were leaking confidential information, for which they surely signed non-disclosure agreements, for the purpose of lining a friends pockets with money, by being the first company on the market with covers available.

I don't think that this so much affects Apple directly in any way, more so it's a straight forward case of stealing information to give your friends an unfair advantage. Likely Apple had it's own contract with a specific manufacturer to give them the specs of the unit to make cases for them. If they _don't_ prosecute these people then their contractor feels that their exclusive deal with Apple, which they may have bidded for, is not so exclusive anymore.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure that stealing (fine, copying information) from apple isn't good for apple. Certainly not for a device surrounded by secrecy, pre-release.

Re:Wait...

[Zorque]

They don't get to charge exorbitant license fees on unlicensed products, of course. Such a tragedy!

Re:Wait...

[TheRaven64]

Yes, it's probably a good thing, but were they the only people who got access to the trade secrets? Once they'd got the dimensions, did they also let Samsung know, for example? If so, then that would have been very useful information to the team designing their next tablet: they would know the dimensions that they had to beat and, since they knew roughly what the specs were already from what chips they were selling Apple, they'd know exactly what hardware their chief competitor was about to ship.

Industrial espionage

[Alioth]

When I lived in the United States, one of our contractors was arrested and sent to prison for industrial espionage (I think the charges were probably mail fraud and the like). He was trying to sell our source code to a competitor, the competitor called the feds, and the feds set up a sting operation while the competitor "played along" as if it were going to pay him for our source code.

They arrested two of our people (both contractors), one was quickly let off though because it turned out he had been duped by his "friend" into lending him a mailbox for a supposedly innocent purpose (the mailbox was to be where the payment would be delivered). I don't remember what was handed down to the guilty person in the end other than it involved some jail time.

apple should intervene.

[markass530]

Dunno if they could, but am I the only one who thinks this is a over the top punishment?

Re:apple should intervene.

[jklovanc]

Eighteen months for stealing thousands of dollars worth of information so someone can make tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit is not overkill in my book at all. Apple is probably selling the specs for the case to manufacturers of covers. This one decided to steal the information rather than buy it.

What would you have suggested as a sentence?

Re:apple should intervene.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rainbows and unicorn hugs of course.

Re:apple should intervene.

[ScentCone]

It's theft of something very valuable. Just like when you decide to steal cash, or someone's car, etc, that's also worth thousands of dollars. Prison is the right thing to do with people who think it's cool to put a bunch of money in their own pocket by violating someone else's privacy and carefully held secrets under the circumstances like those involved in this story.

What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[YesIAmAScript]

These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.

Why make it out like they are victims?

They didn't get time in prison for making iPad 2 cases, but instead for stealing the secrets necessary to make them before the iPad 2 even came out.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[syockit]

Why make it out like they are victims?

Which part made it look like they are victims?

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[syousef]

These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.

Yes, and they should have been punished but years in prison? You realize these weren't military components for a nuclear missile right?

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee oh I dont know maybe all the 'quotes' in there?

Let me demonstrate.

A man and a lady went to the bathroom.

A man and a 'lady' went to the bathroom.

See how the quotes changed the meaning and implied something...

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[dbIII]

It's "might makes right" in action - that stuff the cogyright groups in the USA and the Libertarians are pushing hard for instead of that pesky idea of the rule of law.
It's about who you piss off and not how important the thing you did to piss them off is.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.

Yes, and they should have been punished but years in prison? You realize these weren't military components for a nuclear missile right?

If it had been military they'd be talking decades not months. 18 months isn't out of line since it could result in millions of dollars lost. They were cheating and got caught. This wasn't a couple of kids with a lemonade stand selling homemade iPad 2 cases it was a business deal and what they did was wrong and illegal. In the US they may have gotten a year and done three months but it's not the US and the sentence isn't out of line or inhumane. Don't cheat or break the law and you won't have to worry.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[jebaneer34]

Not so. You need to understand that rule of law does not function in China (though it appears as convenient in some cases). People are arrested, tried, and incarcerated primarily out of political convenience. In many cases verdicts are known ahead of time. In short, the justice system as well as all other government-esque structures function as tools of the Chinese communist party, not as independent entities with some forms of checks and balances.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

They committed a "crime" against a huge, faceless corporation, they did not rob, rape, murder or affect any individual human being in any way whatsoever.

Therefore, that makes this a civil matter, not something that should IN ANY WAY involve law enforcement officials or carry any custodial sentences.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

The AC above is a fanboi.

The AC above is a 'fanboi'.

Nope, can't see a difference.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...that stuff the cogyright groups in the USA and the Libertarians are pushing hard for...".

Do you even know what a libertarian is? Pickup the largest dictionary you can find and ask someone to hit you on the head with it...

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...that stuff the cogyright groups in the USA and the Libertarians are pushing hard for...".

Do you even know what a libertarian is?

Yes, a libertarian is a bozo who hasn't grasped that Ayn Rand wrote fiction.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

They committed a "crime" against a huge, faceless corporation, they did not rob, rape, murder or affect any individual human being in any way whatsoever.

Therefore, that makes this a civil matter, not something that should IN ANY WAY involve law enforcement officials or carry any custodial sentences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Espionage_Act_of_1996#Trade_secrets

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[dbIII]

Go ask some of them, especially Koch, about their ideas on law and order. "Might makes right" sums it up in three words. "Small Government" in many cases is just shorthand for no rule of law.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Would you suggest a fine? If the punishment is fining, it simply becomes part of the cost of doing business (each business dos a cost vs. benefit for breaking the law, based on financial incentives and disincentives). In America, this comes with a 24-month sentence, and Australia is up to 15 years, so it isn't entirely out of line with what other parts of the world do.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just reminded me of a joke that illustrates the importance of capitalization though... "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse"

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[ScentCone]

Right, because the people that get together to form and run companies aren't actually people, or anything like that.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why make it out like they are victims?

Because China is bad, and we haven't had our daily dose of propaganda yet.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally.

A corporate employee (or any human being) who is robbed of personal possessions is the victim of a crime and the perpetrator of the crime worthy of a jail sentence.

A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime.

Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Reality Master 101]

You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally. A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime. Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?

This really isn't that difficult of a concept, and your arrogance is misplaced. Corporations are OWNED by citizens, either privately or by shareholders in a public company. They are the victims of this crime. Value was robbed from the corporation, and thus from the owners of the corporation. No one is arguing that a corporation is a living entity. You're somehow trying to argue that if someone breaks into a warehouse owned by a corporation and steals widgets, it's only a civil action since corporations aren't living entities. That's just silly. Theft is theft, and someone owns what was stolen.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[flimflammer]

Do you know what trade secrets are and how misappropriating them is looked at by law?

Here in the States, it's a federal crime, regardless of who the victim is. It's probably similar in China, and when we're talking about a victim like Foxconn, the government is going to make an example out of these people.

Whether or not you feel doing things to a corporation should not be anything but a civil matter, there are catches and they're not necessarily out of line.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[19061969]

So what you are saying is (and please bear with me):

If I steal a book from a neighbour, it's a criminal offense, but if I steal a book from a bookshop owned by a corporation, it is not a criminal but a civil offense?

or:

If I break the windows of a residential house owned by a person, it's a crime; but smashing the windows of a Starbucks is just a civil offense because they're owned by a non-living entity?

So I can go into any shop that is owned by a corporation (e.g., Walmart) and steal what ever I want and the law enforcement authorities cannot arrest me for theft because the entity being 'injured' is non-living and any such injuries against such entities can only be decided by civil courts?

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[gr8_phk]

These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.

One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.'

Violating company "privacy policy" is not industrial espionage, nor should it be a criminal matter. Getting the information through illegal means is. Causing "huge loesse" through competition... Hmm did they actually sell any? before the product launched (i.e. the could have designed it anyway)? I'll give you the industrial espionage, but that's not what they were charged with. Or maybe it was just lost in translation.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Unkyjar]

Yeah, I mean we only give sentences that short to corporate executives...wait a second.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just a few months in prison?

What world do we live in that iPad cases are so sacred, you spend over a year in prison for doing something wrong with them. It's just stupid plastic cases. And if it's an issue where Apple wants to keep them secret until release, then it should be up to Apple to protect the secret, the government or law should not interfere; should Apple fail to keep the secret they should have only themselves to blame.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[tehcyder]

They committed a "crime" against a huge, faceless corporation, they did not rob, rape, murder or affect any individual human being in any way whatsoever.

Therefore, that makes this a civil matter, not something that should IN ANY WAY involve law enforcement officials or carry any custodial sentences.

So if I steal a billion dollars from XYZ Corporations's bank account, there's no crime involved? Cool, then I can just fly off somewhere abroad with my ill gotten gains as you can't be extradited to defend civil actions as far as I'm aware.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[tehcyder]

You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally.

A corporate employee (or any human being) who is robbed of personal possessions is the victim of a crime and the perpetrator of the crime worthy of a jail sentence.

A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime.

Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?

Your view is too simple to match with reality.

If I rob a bank, that is a crime in actual fact, and if I am caught I will go to prison (regardless of whether I harm an actual human being in the process).

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[tehcyder]

Libertarians like the idea of there being no criminal acts, only civil ones, because it means that in their Ubermensch fantasies they will be effectively untouchable, as they can sue any opposition into penury.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[jklovanc]

It is not about a "stupid plastic case", it is about the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars profit that the thieves will make instead of Apple. It is the same as if the thieves stole cash from Apple (or any company for that matter). It's not a game; theft of information costs companies millions, if not billions, each year. The fact that Apple was involved probably made it a story. Anything the happens with Apple in China gets reported very well. I doubt very much that this is the only case of trade secret theft that has garnered prison time in China.

Lets replace Apple secrets with your car.

And if it's an issue where you want to keep your car until you get rid of it, then it should be up to you to protect your car, the government or law should not interfere; should you fail to keep your car then you should have only yourself to blame.

How about a bank with cash?

if it's an issue where a bank wants to keep cash, then it should be up to the bank to protect the cash, the government or law should not interfere; should the bank fail to keep the cash they should have only themselves to blame.

By stealing the information and making covers the thieves deprived Apple and anyone who legitimately paid for the trade secrets of income. The thieves could sell their covers for less and therefore have a competitive advantage. It is the same as stealing your car or cash from a bank; theft is theft be it information or hard goods.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

Correct in both cases.

And because it is a civil offence (against a thing rather than a person), it carries no custodial sentences. By all means fine the perpetrator, take away their house and sell it to recoup losses, but there needs to be a clear distinction in our society that acts against a person are far more serious than those against a corporation.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

If you rob a bank at gunpoint and a bank employee has suffered mental stress or health issues as a result of you pointing a gun at him/her, then you get a custodial sentence.

I don't see what is so difficult to understand in a concept whereby damage to a "thing" is a much lesser offence than damage to a person.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[syousef]

Would you suggest a fine? If the punishment is fining, it simply becomes part of the cost of doing business (each business dos a cost vs. benefit for breaking the law, based on financial incentives and disincentives).

In America, this comes with a 24-month sentence, and Australia is up to 15 years, so it isn't entirely out of line with what other parts of the world do.

Yep, lets take these small time crooks and send them to prison where they can associate with other criminals and learn more criminal skills. Then lets mark them for life with a criminal record so that they are penalised to begin with and have very little to lose by committing further crimes. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[ScentCone]

I don't see

Exactly. You don't see.

You don't see that if I start a company, and incorporate it so that it can continue to function even if I get hit by a car, that it's still me, or my fellow owners (and/or investors, and staff, and customers) that you're hurting when you steal from the company. Steal from a company, and you're stealing from the people that make up that company. Of course you know that, and you just want license to steal. I'm guessing it's an elaborate mental construction you use to make yourself comfortable ripping off movies and music you don't feel like paying for. That's a common bit of intellectual laziness.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I know that I'm feeding the trolls here, but these are not "small time crooks". These are people who are guilty of industrial espionage, for the purpose of manufacturing. They didn't steal bread so they could feed their family, or cigarettes to feed an addiction, they stole sworn secrets so that their factories could undercut a legally held protection, and they could make millions because they are greedy, dishonest, criminals. They were then caught, and then sent to jail. Even the jail sentence is roughly similar to the jail sentence for this crime in the rest of the world.

These are not "small time criminals", they are "industrial spies/saboteurs". You're damned right that I'm going to mark someone guilty of industrial espionage with a criminal record.

Also, "very little to lose by committing future crimes"? You know that you eventually get out of jail, right? They didn't take away the right to have a family, work a job, save money for retirement, enjoy hobbies, travel the world, or anything permanent. They put them in jail. For crime .

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[syousef]

You do realise that emphasising ideas by putting them in bold doesn't make them any more true don't you? Nor does repeating your argument with almost identical wording at the start of two paragraphs. ...and you're calling me the troll. Is that your standard ad hominem any time you dislike what your opponent in an argument says? Take a good look in the mirror. Only one of us is trolling.

So my responses are going to be brief and final.

- These are the shells of a product which would be copied anyway the moment they are released. Primary advantage gained here is not over Apple but over other copycat bottom dollar manufacturers. People who want to buy copied cases aren't going to spend extra on genuine product.

- I did not say these people should not be punished, but this punishment is asinine.

But this part is my favourite piece of drivel from your post:

Also, "very little to lose by committing future crimes"? You know that you eventually get out of jail, right? They didn't take away the right to have a family, work a job, save money for retirement, enjoy hobbies, travel the world, or anything permanent. They put them in jail. For crime .

- Giving someone in their line of work a criminal record does in fact take away their livelihood. No one will hire them. They'll be lucky to even get manual labor jobs with such a record. Whether or not it is deserved or appropriate punishment, it does affect their ability to feed their family, save money for retirement, and travel the world. You are aware that many countries will not let you enter if you have a criminal record in your country of origin, aren't you? That's for business or pleasure. And please explain what their family is suppose to do for income while they are in jail? More potential for crime right there. A society that makes it harder for a criminal (and his family!) to reform than to increase their crime is setting itself up for a viscious cycle. Not smart!

What you are talking is just plain incorrect foaming at the mouth drivel that makes no sense.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[pandrijeczko]

I'm not denying you're hurting the company, you can even continue to call it a crime if you want.

But it's a civil issue and should not come with jail terms - human well-being far outweighs corporate well-being.

Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[ScentCone]

So, when you steal from the husband and wife while they're in the small dry cleaning shop they started and run for a living, that's different than waiting for them to be out on the sidewalk, walking to their apartment, and stealing from them there, instead? Are you even listening to yourself?

The Right to Sew

[Compaqt]

Following up on The Right to Read, posted in relation to a story yesterday, maybe we also need someone to write a parable about the right to sew.

OK, so somebody "stole" the length/width/heigth (sic) of the iPad.

But the right to sew is imperiled by the fashion copyright bill.

Only One Guy Got 18 There Were Also Monetary Fines

[eldavojohn]

From my submission last week:

"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers ... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"

And only one was sentenced to 18 months ... unless the associated press article I quoted was wrong.

hi

[fastformation]

New Offer http://goo.gl/iTmFR

You would get a similar results in the US

[Edmund Blackadder]

I am not surprised and if this happened in the US, there could be similar punishments. Industrial espionage is a criminal offense in the US as well, although I am not sure what the punishment terms are.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[fnj]

Would you like your oppression with pickles or with mayonnaise? It's probably a similar corrupt corporatocracy situation in many parts of the world, with actions which should be dealt with in civil court criminalized. In the US, The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 brought us (among other insults) US Code Title 18, Part 1, Section 1832, which criminalizes such acts, stating that anyone who steals, or receives or possesses or uses without authorization, a trade secret, or merely ATTEMPTS same, shall be fined, or imprisoned up to 10 years, or both. The fine is limited to $5 million for an organization, but is WITHOUT ANY STATED LIMIT for an individual.

Section 1831 deals with basically the same offenses "to benefit a foreign power," which means that section 1832, giving the lie to the name of the bill, has nothing to do with true espionage.

This wonderful legislation, like the DMCA, was brought to you by a cooperation between tweedledee Democrats and tweedledum Republicans in Congress and the White House.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[jklovanc]

How is punishment for theft of trade secrets oppression? How is theft of a trade secret any different from theft of manufactured goods? Money went into creating those trade secrets. Trade secrets have a monetary value and are bought and sold every day. Should car theft be handled in civil court? Theft is still theft be it information or goods. Why should attempts be exempt from the law? Even if an attempt failed the intent to commit the act was still there. No one should get off the hook because they are a poor thief; they are still a thief.

Take this scenario. Company A spends money researching to create trade secrets for a new product. Company B steals those secrets and, due to $0 R&D costs, sells the item for less than company A. Company A never recoups the R&D costs and loses money on the project. Do you think that will help bring new products to market? Do you think company B should be convicted of a crime just the same as as they would if they stole product coming off an assembly line? I sure do.

Chapter 90 is Protection of Trade Secrets 1831 is "economic espionage" because it is by or on the behest of a foreign government. There is military espionage, political espionage and economic espionage with the key component being the involvement of a foreign government. 1832 is "theft of trade secrets" by companies and or individuals and is not called espionage. They are separate sections dealing with separate crimes.

The lack of limit of the fine for individuals under 1832 is probably an oversight and would therefore be decided by a judge or jury governed by past fines due to common law. Corporate limits are more so that overzealous juries do not get out of hand. Juries can identify more with a person than they can with a corporation and therefore go easier on people.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Check to see if your Company name is available http://bit.ly/m2IHF4

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[Grond]

Industrial espionage is a criminal offense in the US as well, although I am not sure what the punishment terms are.

Fines or up to 10 years in prison or both, if the stolen trade secrets stay in the US. 18 USC 1832. If it benefits a foreign entity then it's up to a $500,000 fine or up to 15 years in prison or both. 18 USC 1831.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[tehcyder]

I am not surprised and if this happened in the US, there could be similar punishments. Industrial espionage is a criminal offense in the US as well, although I am not sure what the punishment terms are.

The death penalty And if you're convicted of three or more counts, two death penalties.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[tehcyder]

How is punishment for theft of trade secrets oppression? How is theft of a trade secret any different from theft of manufactured goods?

This is slashdot, where if you just copy informatiuon, it can't be theft. Although no doubt we have different rules if it's China, as they are teh evil.

Re:You would get a similar results in the US

[jklovanc]

Equating theft of trade secrets to software piracy is invalid. Theft of trade secrets is not someone making a copy of a product and using it. It is much closer to a company stealing a Gold release of a game, cutting DVDs and selling them before the game is released. Even /.ers would agree that is a criminal offence.

Dangerous alqaida terrorists !!

[matt007]

A case is such a secret superior advanced new technology that people making them need to be put in prison.

Clearly they are a major threat to us all.

I am surprised they didn throw their corpses in the see......

Re:Dangerous alqaida terrorists !!

[TRRosen]

Would you feel the same if it was your wife and child that would go hungry and homeless because of their greed? They did this to gain an unfair business advantage and make lots of money. That money comes from market share they stole from other competitors that have employees. Those employees have families that depend on there wages. If their company losses money they lose work and real innocent people suffer! Cheating industry damages the economy and hurts individuals.

there are no clear good guys in this

[conark]

that's the way i see it. you do have winners and losers though. but then again, i guess that's all that matters these days, no?

Here's An Idea For You

[pandrijeczko]

All you fanbois on here constantly whining on about the anti-Apple sentiment on Slashdot, why not do something positive for your public image and start sending emails to your beloved Apple Corp. explaining that, as a user of their products, you're not prepared to put up with this outrage and expect Apple to step in and maybe start launching some appeals to the Chinese government to get these custodial sentences?

Whoops, sorry, was getting ahead of myself for a moment, please forgive me.

Of course you can't do that because to do it you need backbones.

Re:Here's An Idea For You

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

What about those of us who complain about the anti-Apple sentiment, who aren't Apple customers? Do we just do the same?

Please tell me, because your argument has ridiculed and humiliated me, therefore proving without a doubt that everything I say is factually incorrect. What am I to think now in the face of unassailable logic?

Backbone not required

[Anonymous Coward]

I can already hear it

"I sent letters to apple complaining about Foxconn before it was the right thing to do" -sent from my iPod

It's apple people. Just make it look cool, and they'll shove live ammo up their asses.

a little understanding?

[decora]

that man just told you his family members got killed, not the best time to nitpick.

Re:a little understanding?

[mikael_j]

It's not nitpicking, he was using his claimed personal experience with a corrupt and flawed regime that in turn claimed to be based on an ideology to back up his claim that the ideology at hand represents those things which the regime represented even though it is common knowledge that the ideology does not represent these things.

Re:a little understanding?

[thej1nx]

Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck = has to be a duck.

People are essentially people. You cannot get them to voluntarily give up what they perceive as "theirs", without resorting to force/totalitarianism eventually, which in turn eventually, degrades to an authoritarian/fascist state. It has never worked even once in history.

Re:a little understanding?

[zwei2stein]

And this "ideology" was proven again and again to lead to corrupt and flawed regimes.

Because it is just another tool to fool masses and get to the top. It was never supposed to be more than propaganda piece that plays on human greed and envy.

Re:a little understanding?

[Anonymous Coward]

fantasy trumps reality...

go back to your video games please

Re:a little understanding?

[Anonymous Coward]

that man just told you his family members got killed, not the best time to nitpick.

Just imagine if this were a valid way to argue. It'd be a huge loophole for all sorts of lies.

All Muslims are terrorists! Don't nitpick, my cousin died on September 11 in the terrorist attack.

Hitler ate babies! Don't nitpick, my grandfather was at Auschwitz.

Vaccines cause autism. Don't nitpick, my child died from complications due to autism.

Re:a little understanding?

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem I have is that people attack capitalism on the basis of the way it turns out in the real world, but defend communism based on its "ideal". You can either compare the ideal of capitalism to the ideal of communism, or you can compare the way they each work out when people attempt to implement them.

Re:a little understanding?

[KiloByte]

I mentioned this particular example, but it is but one of many. Systemic oppression of workers under communism is less talked of in the West, so let's take a look at the other side of "worker-peasant" for something that is better publicised. Murdering by starvation one fourth of peasants in the state of Ukraine is such a stellar example of a benevolent party fighting for the good of common people against those evil capitalists...

For non-soviet examples, look at the Cultural Revolution, the rule of Red Khmers or what is still going on in North Korea.

Re:a little understanding?

[MBGMorden]

Sad as that case may be, realistically you can't drop a debate every time somebody trots out something like that. We'd never get anywhere.

Re:a little understanding?

[stewbacca]

Errrm, claims of eating babies don't quite qualify as "nitpicking", if I may so nitpick.

Re:a little understanding?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck = has to be a duck."

Unless it's a Cormorant. Buddy of mine found out the hard way - pretty hefty fine. Great quote, but in the real world it doesn't work.

Also, not all that glitters is gold ... (I know, the original quote is "All that glitters is not god". but if you think about it that is not true - gold glitters, and it IS gold).

Re:a little understanding?

[Belial6]

Unfrotunatly that is what the majority of the population do. Add in absurd claims about guns, Democrates, Republicans, teachers, etc... etc... etc...

Re:a little understanding?

[tehcyder]

And this "ideology" was proven again and again to lead to corrupt and flawed regimes.

Because it is just another tool to fool masses and get to the top. It was never supposed to be more than propaganda piece that plays on human greed and envy.

You seem to be describing modern day capitalism, and clearly have no idea about communism either in theory or practice.

Re:a little understanding?

[tehcyder]

The problem I have is that people attack capitalism on the basis of the way it turns out in the real world, but defend communism based on its "ideal". You can either compare the ideal of capitalism to the ideal of communism, or you can compare the way they each work out when people attempt to implement them.

Capitalism only turns out half decently in the real world when it is heavily mixed with communist/socialist ideas. More or less pure capitalism of the early US/Victorian Britain variety is appalling and oppressive.to 90% of a country's citizens. Fortunately, in the past not everyone acted entirely out of self interest, and so they were prepared to tone down or abolish things like slavery, oppression of women, exploitation of child labour, terrible health and safety risks to workers, gross inequaliy of opportunity due to birth, and so on.

Re:a little understanding?

[Luckyo]

Starving on the peasants in Ukraine had a very logical reason behind it. USSR needed to get off its knees after being completely pillaged by its long civil war. Stalin managed to make one of the poorest countries in the world into one of the strongest in just a few years by essentially robbing the countryside. The years Ukrainian peasants were starting, USSR was selling millions of tons of grains abroad, and building an industrial sector in the country with the money.

It had nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with twisted version of patriotism that Stalin possessed.

Re:a little understanding?

[Xyrus]

Every single form of government can (and at some point does) lead to totalitarianism. Ideologies are perfect. Humans are not. So no matter what form of government is implemented it eventually corrodes under the human tide of greed and corruption.

Communism fails in practice (on a large scale) because it goes against human nature. Humans are not nice, altruistic beings. It takes an iron fist to make humans in general conform to any system like communism. This leads to communism having a very short lifespan before the system corrupts.

At the same time, democracy is not a magic shield against this either. A rather stark example is Nazi Germany, which went from a democracy to authoritarian dictatorship in just a handful of years.

All it takes is apathy and/or fear to slide a government into authoritarianism. Concentrate wealth and power at the top and you have a perfect setup for stripping away freedom and rights. Get enough talking heads and charismatic people on your side, and you'll even have the people you're screwing over help you attain your goals.

Re:a little understanding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism only turns out half decently in the real world when it is heavily mixed with communist/socialist ideas.

You are confusing Altruism with Communism/Socialism. Generosity's requisite is having resources to give away and the freedom to choose to whom one wishes to be generous towards. Neither communism nor socialism can produce the engine that drives non-coerced altruism, but capitalism can and does.

Re:a little understanding?

[MightyYar]

My imaginary, never-been-implemented ideology is better than your imaginary, never-been-implemented ideology.

Re:a little understanding?

[Attila Dimedici]

You mean as opposed to communism, which always turns out as appalling and oppressive for 99% plus of a country's citizens?
You seem to be mixing a bunch of historical evils together and blaming them on capitalism.
Actually, the argument could be made that in the long run, all of the evils you mentioned are contrary to the self interest of those on the economic top of the pile. Evidence suggests that slave labor is unable to compete with free labor on a long term basis. All of the things you mentioned introduce inefficiencies into the market place, economies that get rid of them are more productive than those that have them.
Additionally, as another person points out, the force behind getting rid of those things is not "communism", but is instead altruism. All of those things, except the last two are as consistent with communism as they are with capitalism.

Re:a little understanding?

[zwei2stein]

Not sure what you meant by "clearly have no idea about communism either in theory or practice", but I would guess you are hanging onto "greed and envy".

When you convert country to communist one, you desperatelly depend on average guy hating guts of more succesfull people and wanting to destroy them out of spite. By, say, confiscating factories. Or houses. Or piece of land. And you pay on greed of rest of people whom you convince that they are going to be piece of action from it - either by helping themselves to some property or position of power (say, management position in factory or nice flat in confiscated house or part of harvest from confiscated land).

Key is to be prophet and leader of this change so that you end up "owning" this place. At first, you offer paradise, then you offer some looting and ability to kick powerfull people in balls.

(And yes, I have lived in communist country, i know very well how it works in practice, thank you very much.)

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

If ideologies are perfect, then why do all of them fail? A perfect ideology would take human nature into account.

And most people are nice and altruistic; it's how we've evolved. We're social animals. But altruism, like intelligence, runs the gamut in people. The narcicistic sociopaths will always take advantage of the rest of us, and the more intelligent ones will grab power.

Concentrate wealth and power at the top and you have a perfect setup for stripping away freedom and rights. Get enough talking heads and charismatic people on your side, and you'll even have the people you're screwing over help you attain your goals.

Whoever modded you up, I agree with them; well modded. The Tea Party is a perfect example of what you're talking about here. Started by the billionaire Koch brothers, you have working people who are adamant tea partiers working against their own interests, and ignorant of the fact that they are working against their own interests.

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

I'd like to see a social libertarianism, where there are no victimless "crimes" and government stays out of my private affairs, yet does in fact collect taxes to help society along and regulates industry so it doesn't victimize working people and the environment. Government should protect you from me, it shouldn't protect you from yourself. I'm all for socialized medicine, and wish we'd impliment it here in the US. Utilities should, IMO, be owned and operated by local governments, and I'm firmly against toll roads.

In the US, the corporate powers are free to kill, steal, and not pay taxes. Illustration: the mine "accident" last year that killed two dozen miners because safety regulations were ignored -- if corporations aren't above the law, why wasn't anyone imprisoned for mass negligent homicide? Why doesn't GE have to pay tax? Why do the oil companies get government grants? Why are monopolies allowed to gouge me?

Re:a little understanding?

[S.O.B.]

Maybe it wasn't nitpicking but it was still a little insensitive.

Re:a little understanding?

[jackbird]

Kibbutzes in Israel. Important distinction being that its a)a small community, where b) everyone is opting in. They've had tremendous problems with intergenerational continuity, though.

Re:a little understanding?

[Grishnakh]

He said his grandfather's uncle got killed. I think that's sufficiently long ago and sufficiently far away on his family tree that he's probably not in the middle of grieving. What would you call that person anyway? "Great great uncle"? I'm not even sure; I get confused with family relations farther than siblings and parents.

Re:a little understanding?

[Raenex]

And most people are nice and altruistic; it's how we've evolved.

To a certain extent. Most people are also self-interested, greedy, and competitive. That's also how we evolved.

The Tea Party is a perfect example of what you're talking about here. Started by the billionaire Koch brothers, you have working people who are adamant tea partiers working against their own interests, and ignorant of the fact that they are working against their own interests.

Government spending is ballooning out of control. Even left-leaning voters should realize that.

Re:a little understanding?

[Grishnakh]

At the same time, democracy is not a magic shield against this either. A rather stark example is Nazi Germany, which went from a democracy to authoritarian dictatorship in just a handful of years.

Yep, just look at the USA. We're not too far from it ourselves, letting ourselves and our young children be molested at airports by government goons.

Re:a little understanding?

[Grishnakh]

Similarly, the healthiest democracies tend to be very small countries. I don't think anyone's come up with a really good governmental system for a large nation yet; they all turn into fascism (look at the USA and China for examples).

Re:a little understanding?

[alanshot]

...Why doesn't GE have to pay tax?...

This is a common misconception. Repeat after me: "Businesses dont pay taxes, consumers do." Taxes are just another cost of doing business that is simply passed along to the consumer in higher costs.

Raising taxes on a business is no different than their raw materials suppliers raising their prices; the increase is simply passed along in the form of higher costs to the end user.

For example a tax increase levied against Kraft foods would cause them to increase the price of cheese just as fast as the price of raw milk increasing. Both are hits to the bottom line that must be covered in order to stay in business and be profitable.

If you still believe that BUSINESSES actually pay taxes, you are a fool.

Re:a little understanding?

[Gilmoure]

All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Re:a little understanding?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

The Tea Party is a perfect example of what you're talking about here. Started by the billionaire Koch brothers, you have working people who are adamant tea partiers working against their own interests, and ignorant of the fact that they are working against their own interests.

Government spending is ballooning out of control. Even left-leaning voters should realize that.

Yeah, the people who keep saying that made sure it is so. Including the Kochs. How doe

Re:a little understanding?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

He said his grandfather's uncle got killed. I think that's sufficiently long ago and sufficiently far away on his family tree that he's probably not in the middle of grieving.

It's far enough away in family lore, that a killer can turn into a saint.

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

The budget was balanced when Bush took office. Where were the tea partiers when he was President?

It took him eight years to run up a trillion dollar defecit and turn a booming economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression. The spending that caused the budget to balloon out of control was war. The WTC was bombed under Clinton, under Clinton the FBI arrested them and sent them to jail. Clinton warned Bush about Bin Laden, Bush didn't listen, the WTC was attacked again and we went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then Bush got us into Iraq because he ignored his own intelligence agencies. Slicing the rich's taxes made the defecit even worse, and only an idiot would believe that cutting taxes on the rich will help the economy -- a businessman isn't going to hire unless his production can't meet his sales, but give the poor and middle class tax breals and they'll spend it and put it right back into the economy, creating demand for the rich's products and creating even more jobs. Under oil men Bush and Cheney gasoline skyrocketed from $1 per gallon to $4.50 per gallon, and people have to have gasoline to go to work. Pay the mortgage or go to work? Hmmm? THAT'S what caused the housing meltdown. And, why are the oil companies getting government subsidies? Why doesn't GE have to pay income tax?

Now you want to balance the budget by taking away Social Security amd medicare from my dad, who's been paying SPECIAL TAXES FOR IT all his life?

Son, you must be smoking some powerful meth, because your brain ain't workin' right. Our taxes are lower than any time in the last fifty years. Stop the war, get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-rich, and give the middle class a break, and you'll fix both the economy AND the defecit.

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

It's not as simple as they'd have you believe. When my tax bill goes up, I have no choice but to pay it. When the cost of light bulbs goes up, I buy fewer light bulbs. Ge's tax is voluntary to me. If they raise prices, their sales go down. Leaving the price the same and having smaller dividends may in fact result in higher profits and dividends.

Tax increases do NOT automatically cause a rise in prices. Notice how long it took for the rise in transportation costs to affect the prices of the things you buy -- you can't charge any damned thing you want for your goods, or nobody will buy them. Business raises prices reluctantly except when their production can't match their sales.

If Kraft raises the price of cheese, I eat a different brand of cheese or eat less cheese.

If you believe that tax breaks for corporations result in lower prices, you are a fool. The only thing theat results in lower prices is the inability to sell goods.

Re:a little understanding?

[Raenex]

The budget was balanced when Bush took office. Where were the tea partiers when he was President?

Where indeed? Even so, the problem of the ballooning debt isn't getting any better after Bush. Quite the opposite. It seems "one more trillion" is the common answer under Obama.

Clinton warned Bush about Bin Laden, Bush didn't listen, the WTC was attacked again and we went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Clinton had a chance to take Bin Laden out but didn't because he feared political repercussions. I'm also pretty sure that Clinton didn't give Bush the precise plans on the 9/11 attack. But go ahead, blame everything on Bush.

Now you want to balance the budget by taking away Social Security amd medicare from my dad, who's been paying SPECIAL TAXES FOR IT all his life?

The joke's on him and us, because we are really paying for the previous generation, not our own healthcare. Now that the baby boomers are retiring, and the cost of healthcare is spiraling out of control, it can't continue.

THAT'S what caused the housing meltdown.

Right, the housing meltdown was caused by the high price of gasoline and not by people acting irrationally and dishonestly in the midst of a gigantic bubble. Here's a clue: If the price of gasoline means you can't afford your mortgage, you paid way too much for your house.

Son, you must be smoking some powerful meth, because your brain ain't workin' right.

Right back at you.

Stop the war, get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-rich, and give the middle class a break, and you'll fix both the economy AND the defecit.

I'm all for ending the tax cuts for the ultra-rich, but it isn't going to solve the ballooning costs of healthcare, even if you cut way back on military spending (which we should).

Re:a little understanding?

[shutdown -p now]

Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.

I dunno, Aliende's Chile?

The main reason why all "communist" states share the same flaws is that they all export the implementation from the same source - namely, Russia - and that implementation has been explicitly authoritarian from the very beginning. Ever since the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, all other states which tried communism did so under Russian guidance (either willing or forced). It's like taking someone else's source repository, forking it, and then complaining that all forks have the same bug - well duh, of course they do, it was in the original repo!

You cannot get them to voluntarily give up what they perceive as "theirs"

Soviet Communism didn't do that. It banished private property, not personal property. You could own a car in Soviet Union - it was legally yours, and taking it away would be prosecuted as theft. You couldn't own land, or a shop, or a factory.

Re:a little understanding?

[cheekyjohnson]

Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.

Which doesn't mean that it won't be or can't be.

Re:a little understanding?

[alanshot]

But in the grand scheme of things, when Kraft gets taxed, so does Sargento, etc. resulting in an across the board price increase for ALL cheese. So you cant avoid it.

While I dont necessarily agree to tax BREAKS for corporations, simply increasing taxes on businesses is flawed logic.

Re:a little understanding?

[thej1nx]

I fully agree with everything you said.

But the short lifespan you mentioned is the core argument. Democracies that have a fair amount of well-thought balance and checks, at least have a chance of surviving for a pretty long period. Communism implementations by default have to rely mostly on force, and as such are corrupted much faster.

If ideologies were horses, you would probably buy one which was likely to live for a long time, rather than the one which was bound to not last even the year.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.

No ideology has ever been implemented without repressive measures on the part of those who seek to maintain the implementation (however flawed it may be). And I'd say you could call this phenomenon fascism. Reaction would also be a good name, I think. That's not just communism. It is also applicable to most democracies that praised Hitler's vision before WWII, and of course, Hitler's national socialism as well.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Humans are not nice, altruistic beings. It takes an iron fist to make humans in general conform to any system like communism.

Adult humans are not nice, altruistic beings. To evolve a society, it would take generations of adults that would relinquish control over their children. I look at my two kids, and I can totally imagine why idealistic utopian ideologies come to life, and through our failure to raise individuals that can keep their beautiful nature for the sake of conformance, these ideologies fail.

One of these days, I'll be visited by social service for allowing my kids to live just slightly more freely than the society finds acceptable (I can't imagine what would have happened if I dared give them more freedom than that). Reactionary mindset hurts kids the most, and such kids grow up to become reactionary.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Ever since the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, all other states which tried communism did so under Russian guidance (either willing or forced).

It has nothing to do with this. National socialism in Germany (Hilter's gig) had nothing to do with Russian guidance, yet it showed the same symptoms. Same with Yugoslav Communism during Broz's regime, which even explicitly forbade spreading Soviet propaganda on Yugoslav soil, and had various 'measures' to prevent that. They all show the same symptoms. And of course, you have countries like US and UK, which use the same ol' measures in a politically acceptable way ("war on terror" anyone?), but the net result is the same.

And just in case you want to argue that US and UK cannot be compared to "totalitarian" and "dictatorial" regimes: people get used to their own shit, and think everyone else's crap smells worse.

Re:a little understanding?

[shutdown -p now]

National socialism in Germany (Hilter's gig) had nothing to do with Russian guidance, yet it showed the same symptoms.

National socialism had nothing to do with communism, though. It's not Marxist, and in fact it completely rejects the concept of class warfare that underlines communism (and all Marxist strains of socialism).

It just goes to show that extreme totalitarianism is not exclusive to communism, and can be propped by other political ideologies.

Same with Yugoslav Communism during Broz's regime, which even explicitly forbade spreading Soviet propaganda on Yugoslav soil, and had various 'measures' to prevent that.

Same as China, Yugoslavia became USSR's enemy later on, but the main reason why Tito came up on top was initial Soviet support during and immediately after the war.

On the other hand, precisely because Yugoslavia rejected Soviet guidance very early on, their implementation of socialism was much less authoritarian than Russian or Chinese one.

. And of course, you have countries like US and UK, which use the same ol' measures in a politically acceptable way ("war on terror" anyone?), but the net result is the same.

I hope you're not trying to say that Bush or Blair were communists or even socialists?...

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Key is to be prophet and leader of this change so that you end up "owning" this place. At first, you offer paradise, then you offer some looting and ability to kick powerfull people in balls.

(And yes, I have lived in communist country, i know very well how it works in practice, thank you very much.)

Hm, I live in an ex-communist country, and I don't remember anyone offering paradise, loot, or ball-kicks. In fact, the offer was pretty standard: you work, live, pay taxes, and don't step on government's idea of what's good and what's wrong. Just like in any non-communist country. And there was secret police, and normal police, and all that shit. And you could get arrested for spreading foreign ideology, much like in any modern country. I see no reason why that had to change.

But there you have it. We are now a democratic country, where we have all the standard democratic offerings: you work, live, pay taxes, and don't step on government's idea of what's good and what's wrong. And there is secret police, and normal police, and all that shit. And you could get arrested for spreading foreign ideology, much like in any modern democratic country. And you could get arrested for spreading non-democratic ideology, much like in any modern democratic country.

At some point, I imagine I could move to another democratic country, and not being able to tell the difference.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

You mean as opposed to communism, which always turns out as appalling and oppressive for 99% plus of a country's citizens in countries that were occupied by the Soviets after WWII?

FTFY

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

But in the grand scheme of things, when Kraft gets taxed, so does Sargento, etc. resulting in an across the board price increase for ALL cheese.

Using such non-essential food as cheese just shows you how much more they can hit you without you complaining about pain. You just stop eating that much cheese, and that's it. For non-essential products, companies don't have much choice but to keep prices low, because otherwise people would save money for more essential things by cutting cost for non-essential ones.

If prices of more essential foods like oil, flour, and sugar grow due to heavy taxation, then it starts to hurt. People have no choice but to buy these things, and suddenly, the whole economy starts to hurt because most non-essential products start seeing a decrease in sale. That's where things ideally start working in consumer's favor. However, it's only ideally, because most governments are too stupid to do things logically, and as a result, economies collapse, and you get crisis.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Don't nitpick. His grandfather was in Auschwitz, did you read?

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

National socialism had nothing to do with communism, though. It's not Marxist, and in fact it completely rejects the concept of class warfare that underlines communism (and all Marxist strains of socialism).

It just goes to show that extreme totalitarianism is not exclusive to communism, and can be propped by other political ideologies.

Correct. That was my point.

I hope you're not trying to say that Bush or Blair were communists or even socialists?...

It's not about communism at all. I'm arguing that you don't even need communism to have the same kind of symptoms (the kind of reactionary mindset).

Re:a little understanding?

[Attila Dimedici]

Sorry, but there were plenty of countries that tried communism and that turned out appalling and oppressive for 99% of the population that were not occupied by the Soviets after WWII. Including, the Soviet Union itself. You may want to look up some of the following, Cuba, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Yugoslavia, China.

Re:a little understanding?

[nagnamer]

Sorry, but there were plenty of countries that tried communism and that turned out appalling and oppressive for 99% of the population that were not occupied by the Soviets after WWII. Including, the Soviet Union itself. You may want to look up some of the following, Cuba, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Yugoslavia, China.

Actually, you might look up Yugoslavia yourself first. I don't know about other countries, but in Yugoslavia, a vast majority of the population lived a normal unhindered life just like in any non-communist country. Some old-timers claim it was even better than in other countries during the time. So there you have it. Just because you say it was oppressive for 99% of population (a completely random number, no doubt), does not make it so, especially not with the 'always' tag. You should also not mix up countries that were forced into kind of a communist regime because they were occupied by the USSR (Eeast Germany, Bulgaria, Hugary, etc), and countries that had more or less independent communist revolution (Cuba, Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, etc). In the latter case, the flavors of the communism differ by quite a bit. I'm not saying that any of those implementations were by any mean perfect or even good. I'm saying that you shouldn't draw conclusions by all implementations based on your personal opinion and random metrics that are only applicable to a subset of the implementations to begin with.

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

the problem of the ballooning debt isn't getting any better after Bush.

War is expensive. Damned expensive.

I'm also pretty sure that Clinton didn't give Bush the precise plans on the 9/11 attack. But go ahead, blame everything on Bush.

It happened under his watch. He wasn't as culpable for WTC as Truman was for Pearl Harbor, but senior FBI agents ignored warnings from junior FBI agents. You're responsible for the conduct of your employees, and the FBI is part of the executive branch.

The joke's on him and us, because we are really paying for the previous generation, not our own healthcare. Now that the baby boomers are retiring, and the cost of healthcare is spiraling out of control, it can't continue.

The boomer generation is a temporary blip, the "pig in the python".

Right, the housing meltdown was caused by the high price of gasoline and not by people acting irrationally and dishonestly in the midst of a gigantic bubble.

The gasoline was only part of it, of course, but had it stayed under $2 per gallon the housing crisis wouldn't have been nearly as bad. The Clinton administration shares part of the blame for that, since the situation wouldn't have happened if banking regulations hadn't been stupidly relaxed. But the fact is, people could afford the houses they bought when they bought them. People expect raises and don't expect to be laid off.

The saddest part is, history repeated itself. Read Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen (required reading in a history course I took in 1976). Chapter 11 is about the housing bubble that was partly responsible for the Great Depression.

As to health care, Obama and Congress screwed up big time on that. The #1 reason we have the most expensive but far from the best health care in the world is the insurance companies, both health insurance and malpractice insurance. A single payer system like every other industrialized nation (and many non-industrialized nations) has is the fix for that. Obama's plan is just a gift to the insurance industry.

Re:a little understanding?

[JimFive]

Evidence suggests that slave labor is unable to compete with free labor on a long term basis.

Evidence suggests that slave labor is competitive when land is plentiful (and, thus, cheap) and labor is scarce. But it is not competitive when land is scarce and labor is plentiful.
--
JimFive

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

I'm not suggesting increased taxes for businesses, just that they pay their fair share -- which many companies, like GE and the oil companies, aren't doing. IMO they should drop corporate tax rates to more like other countries, while closing all the loopholes that allow companies to get away with paying far less than they should.

Giving tax credits to companies, like the oil companies, who are making billions in profits is either retarded or corrupt.

Re:a little understanding?

[JimFive]

I'd like to see a social libertarianism, where there are no victimless "crimes" and government stays out of my private affairs, yet does in fact collect taxes to help society along and regulates industry so it doesn't victimize working people and the environment.

I pretty much agree with you. However, one person's "industry" is another person's "private affairs".

Government should protect you from me, it shouldn't protect you from yourself. I'm all for socialized medicine, and wish we'd impliment it here in the US.

I agree, something like a NHS or Medicare for all would be excellent. But how do you counter the arguments that it is "interfering with my private affairs".
--
JimFive

Re:a little understanding?

[JimFive]

This is a common misconception. Repeat after me: "Businesses dont pay taxes, consumers do." Taxes are just another cost of doing business that is simply passed along to the consumer in higher costs.

This is a common misconception. Repeat after me: "Cost and Price are unrelated." The value of a product to the consumer does not change just because the cost of creating the product changes.
--
JimFive

Re:a little understanding?

[JimFive]

But in the grand scheme of things, when Kraft gets taxed, so does Sargento, etc. resulting in an across the board price increase for ALL cheese. So you cant avoid it.

Unless Sargento doesn't raise the price and thereby gains market share. Raising the cost does not change the equilibrium point of the supply/demand curve. Raising the price will lead to some consumers avoiding the "tax" by buying less. Hobson's choice is still a choice.
--
JimFive

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

However, one person's "industry" is another person's "private affairs".

I don't think I quite understand. Can you cite an example?

I agree, something like a NHS or Medicare for all would be excellent. But how do you counter the arguments that it is "interfering with my private affairs".

Simple -- how is NHS or medicare "interfering with private affairs"? I never understood that argument. I have no choice in health care now; I can't choose between insurance companies (well, I can because my employer offers different ones, but most folks can't, and I have to choose between the 3 or 4 offered), and all those plans limit what doctors I can go to and what is covered. And I have no say whatever about what the insurance companies do, but with government I at least have a vote.

Re:a little understanding?

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, all that the evidence shows is that slave labor is economically viable in that situation. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in those situations if someone had put as much effort into promoting voluntary immigration as a labor force as was put into acquiring slaves in those circumstances where slave labor was used successfully.

Re:a little understanding?

[dwightk]

You cannot get them to voluntarily give up what they perceive as "theirs"

Soviet Communism didn't do that. It banished private property, not personal property. You could own a car in Soviet Union - it was legally yours, and taking it away would be prosecuted as theft. You couldn't own land, or a shop, or a factory.

Right. No one in the history of time has ever perceived land, shops, or factories as "theirs."

Re:a little understanding?

[shutdown -p now]

Not everyone, but vast majority of people did not, in fact.

Re:a little understanding?

[JimFive]

However, one person's "industry" is another person's "private affairs".

I don't think I quite understand. Can you cite an example?

If I decide to operate a nuclear reactor in my garage, is that industry, or private affair? Does it matter if it is for personal use or if I sell the electricity?

A lot of small businesses are started up with an individual's money on an individual's property. At what point does that stop being a private affair and become open to regulation?

Simple -- how is NHS or medicare "interfering with private affairs"? I never understood that argument.

I have heard two main arguments:

1. Forcing me to pay money that goes to support lifestyles that I oppose is wrong. (e.g. Abortion is the big one in the US)
2. The potential is there for coercing me to take up a lifestyle that I don't want to take up. (e.g. Eat less meat, or else...[I'm not sure what the threat is here, pay a fine?])

As is probably obvious, I don't buy these arguments, either. Someone else may be able to articulate them more clearly.

Overall, I agree with you that a role of government is to protect me from you, not me from me. I also think that a just society provides services that ensure that the basic needs of its people are met. Balancing conflicting roles is part of the job.
--
JimFive

Re:a little understanding?

[mcgrew]

A lot of small businesses are started up with an individual's money on an individual's property. At what point does that stop being a private affair and become open to regulation?

If his nuclear reactor threatens the neighborhood or releases pollution, it ceases to be a private affair. I seem to be in complete agreement with you.

Re:a little understanding?

[Deefburger]

You have your premises backward. Humans are perfect, and enormously diverse. Ideologies are limited and unreal. Forcing unrealistic ideologies on a diverse Human population results in inevitable failure. It is not humanity that is at fault. It is not the fault of reality when your dreams do not come true!!

quotes are to specifically cite the law

[decora]

the wall street journal used quotes, i used quotes. they are quoting the chinese court ruling.

thats what you do when you are quoting someone else. you use quote marks.

Re:quotes are to specifically cite the law

[Raenex]

Title of Wall Street Journal Article: "China Orders Prison Terms in iPad Leak"

Title of your submission: "18 months in prison for making iPad 2 cases"

Well, one is wrong, either AFP or WSJ

[decora]

AFP is not the associated press, its Agence France Presse.

and the two articles (WSJ vs AFP) are completely different, so one of them is wrong.

Charlie Sheen

[Anonymous Coward]

Central penitentiary, or Central "up the Yin-Yang" penitentiary?

Re:Only One Guy Got 18 There Were Also Monetary Fi

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it's a chinese company that was infringed (Foxcomm). Oh yeah, isn't apple a chinese company? It out to be, everything it sells is made there...

They would give them a medal if it were a trade secret from a mainland US company.

BAD REPORTING

[jellomizer]

I wish they would stop with these yellow journalism stupid heading that are just wrong.

No they didn't go to prison because they made a case for the iPad, They went to prison for stealing IP secrets.

Here is a better headline "3 Chinese sentence 18 months for stealing iPad specs before released"

Re:BAD REPORTING

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pointing it out. While this is not a new problem with Slashdot, I'm getting really tired of having to scan the comments to find out that the summary was sensationalist junk. Slashdot editors must be getting older and even lazier.

How many minutes to Wapner?

[tepples]

They're not going to dub the trial into English and show it on daytime TV, are they?

...fifteen minutes to Wapner...

Guy in solitary in the USA for updating a webpage.

[tekrat]

Of course, that webpage happened to be Wikileaks.

What's with the inflammatory headline? And why is China's "justice system" considered to be any more broken than the USA's?

Didn't we used to hear that Kevin Mitnik wasn't even allowed to use the phone while in prison because officials were worried he could whistle into the mouthpiece and launch nuclear missiles?

If anything, the Chinese handed down a reasonable sentence for industrial espionage, because that's what this case is. In fact, it's a more reasonable sentence than some handed out here in the "land of the free".

infringed trade secrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha. WHAT?

A "trade secret" isn't IP, its not defendable (without a specific agreement) and it certainly is not defendable by the state.

yes and no

[hesaigo999ca]

I agree in taking a stand against rampant piracy such as in china where they know everything off....but i do not think this is what they meant, i think they were hoping to actually get the big companies, and not some lone users/small time chimps

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, misleading headlines for a slashdot story... huge surprise. What I don't get here is, what's the "worldview" behind this spin, people who are OK with the idea of industrial espionage?!?!

Re:Getting soft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would have expected a few executions to be in order.

the actual charges dont fit in the headline

[decora]

so you write a headline that sums up the story, then you put the specific charges in quotes. just like the WSJ did.

oh, why didnt i call it a 'leak' case? because there is no legal definition of the term 'leak'. it is a biased and misleading term, that presupposes some sort of criminal activity and has a negative connotation in the reader's mind.

this case is not a whistleblower case, but whistleblower cases are where this bias of the word 'leak' becomes most apparent. a very good description of the problem is in Jesselyn Radack's book (former DOJ lawyer and whistleblower) Canary in the Coalmine. Another example is the Thomas Drake case. .. . . he was not even charged with disclosure of information, but so many headlines claimed it was a 'leak' case as to bias the public against him. It encouraged what was basically defamatory statements.

Technically, you could call these cases 'spy' cases. We don't usually use that term any more... but 'leak' has been so intermingled that the two are becoming messily intertwined.

I try to avoid using 'leak' in any headline, i try to avoid using it at all really.

What could i have titled this story?

18 months in prison for disclosing image files about the ipad2

18 months in prison for photographing the ipad2

18 months in prison for selling ipad2 info

What were these people doing, though, exactly? They were trying to make ipad2 cases. Those headlines imply stuff that is not there.

I would like to contrast my article with the Agence France Presse article. It said that these people were jailed for giving out information that would enable someone to create a rip-off ipad2. To clone it. This is an utterly ridiculous statement, and yet, there it is, sprayed all over the entire planet, by AFP and its professional reporters and editors.

But look at those alternative headlines I have given up there. If I wrote '18 months in prison for selling ipad2 info', then that is what automatically leaps to the readers mind. They got some sensitive information about the secret chips inside the thing, or they got the crypto keys to it, or they did something that would allow unlocking or jailbreaking.

Those are wrong. Those implications are wrong. You have to have the 'cases' thing in there, otherwise you are misleading people about what actually happened.

What would have been a better headline?

Re:the actual charges dont fit in the headline

[Raenex]

so you write a headline that sums up the story, then you put the specific charges in quotes. just like the WSJ did.

Except that your headline was completely misleading, which sets the tone for the rest of your summary. They weren't put in prison for making iPad2 cases. What you did was dishonest.

What could i have titled this story?

18 Months In Prison For Selling Trade Secrets

Of course, that doesn't sound as outrageous as "For Making iPad2 Cases", now does it?

They got some sensitive information about the secret chips inside the thing, or they got the crypto keys to it, or they did something that would allow unlocking or jailbreaking.

Those are wrong. Those implications are wrong. You have to have the 'cases' thing in there, otherwise you are misleading people about what actually happened.

It still would have been much more accurate than your description. If you insist on being explicit on what was leaked:

18 Months In Prison For Selling iPad2 Case Design Secrets

Longer quotation

[tepples]

As I understand it, when you quote someone else, you're supposed to quote at least two or three words in a row. Quoting one word is like saying "alleged".

Re:Longer quotation

[decora]

i quoted two-word phrases, which is all that the WSJ had.
i dont read chinese either.

puppeting a communist government is misleading

[decora]

the communist government can call it a 'trade secret', i call it a photograph of a prototype. parroting whatever comes out of a govrenment mouthpiece is not the way to maintain 'accuracy' in a news article. case in point, thomas drake indictment said repeatedly he 'gave classified information to a reporter'. he never did, there was no evidence he did, they didnt criminally charge him with doing it, the judge ruled that he didnt do it in any way the government said he did. they just wrote a bunch of shit in the indictment to make him look bad. thats the 'accuracy' you get from following government printouts.

"18 Months In Prison For Selling iPad2 Case Design Secrets"

i like that one, but it still wouldn't fit in the slashdot title editor thing.

"18 months in jail for selling ipad2 case schematics"

i would love to have someone to bash around headlines with everytime i write a story but unfortunately this is not kuro5hin.org, and we get only one opportunity to write the thing.