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Shanghai Government Proposes 100 Community Hackerspaces
taweili writes "According to a tweet from Shanghai Morning Newspaper's Weibo account, the Shanghai Government Technology committee has issued a call for a proposal to build 100 community hackerspaces with government funding for equipment and a community managing the spaces. Hackerspaces have been growing rapidly in China since the first one, XinCheJian, was started in Shanghai last November as reported here by CNN Go. Currently there are three hackerspaces in China, with XinCheJian in Shanghai, Maxpace in Beijing and Chaihuo in Shenzhen. It looks like the governments are paying attention to the trend and are getting into supporting (or 'regulating') the movement."
“You forget we're in China, there are tons of iPad clones available for a pittance in the local markets,” he says. “We modify them to match our specifications.”
Ah, to be free. Chinese couldn't be any more difficult to learn than Australian. Could it?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
China, land of innovation and engineering.
USA, land of draconian restrictions and propaganda.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
...is a "hackerspace".
My experience with hackerspaces and government officials is that they really don't think the same way. One is all about breaking the rules and the other is all about living within them. I suppose it's possible for government to fund them and let them loose but it is certainly out of character. Big money tends to draw corruption too and that's death to a knowledge sharing environment.
Making for personal use and research is protected.
I don't believe it is
Brown & Michaels Frequently Asked Questions on PATENTS says: "It [A patent] is a right to stop others from making, using or selling - any one of these. Thus, even if an infringer were to make the invention in a foreign country, he could not sell it in the USA. Similarly, it is still an infringement if the invention is made in this country but exported immediately, or if a person buys the invention overseas and uses it in the USA for their own use - there is no "personal use" exception for patent infringement.
ehow.com says: "Fair Use with Patent Law
There is no equivalent law for patents to the U.S. fair use clause which applies to copyright. Other countries have a patent law with similar applications, but there is no provision that allows a general exemption from liability when using a patent without obtaining a license from the patent holder.
China needs to do some thing about there cheap knockoff copy's of others stuff.
And what makes you think if some one in this space does some thing that china does not like that they well will live to much longer the gov can make there death look like accidents and then say the hacker spaces need people on site to make them safer (read cops ready to stop some from thinning the wrong way)
The U.S. needs to do something about their educational system if they want to stay in the game.
China doesn't have to do anything, especially not care about foreign patents.
They are eating your lunch and there is nothing you can do about it until you are willing to work twice as hard for half the wage. Whining about rules and rights is not going to take you anywhere.
Shanghai is big, 23+ Million and growing. But yes it is true. Property value is still increasing all while there are entire living units unpopulated. That's because as a resource, the government decides when to release them into the market. There's profit in scarcity. From a tax collection and population control perspective, the government still wants to control the first sale of availability. After that (from what my wife has told me), people are free to sell their existing unit to other buyers at market price. So the question many have is this. Why build so many homes (buildings) if there isn't a demand? To the west, that's a waste of resources and thus counter productive against market forces. But to China, they like build in phases all while still controlling supply and demand to an extent. It's inefficient because frankly, their government is inefficient. So ironically, the system works well for what it is. Relatively speaking that is.
Life is not for the lazy.
From what I've heard on TV shows, it's exactly what happened in the USA.
China is run by an engineer. The US is run by a not-terribly-successful lawyer. That's all you need to know. I bet Obama (let alone his predecessors) doesn't even know what a "hackerspace" is and what it could be useful for.