I don't have any problem with kids seeing pornography of any sort, although I do think they need to be slightly educated about it so they don't mistake it for an accurate depiction of sex. Bestiality is a special case because most of it is violence, rape if you will, of animals unable to properly consent. I don't have a problem with the sex aspect of rape, but the violence aspect.
Apple has decided that they'll draw the line before any nudie pics at all.
Except they didn't. They drew the line at no porn in applications, except Playboy and a few other major, recognizable ones and all the porn you want via the Web browser.
Don't like it? Do as Steve suggest and get an Android phone
You do realize that's what I said I was likely going to do, right? I don't object to Apple's decision, it just isn't really right for me and seems more like marketing than an honest attempt to be moral.
1) Unless you've been there, you can't guarantee the accuracy of anything the human rights report says
No I can't, but then I didn't actually go to all the temperature monitoring sites around the world before forming an opinion on global warming, not did I recreate all the chemistry experiments of the past before I formed an opinion about atomic models.
So do you have something useful to add, or are you just saying, but maybe it's all untrue, let's ignore it?
2) Plenty of people take tough ambitious jobs and wash out because they discover they can't hack it.
Yeah, tough ambitious jobs like working an assembly line. Sorry, that should not be an ambitious job and it seems like all the crap that is making it hard are the conditions imposed by greedy bastards with no human empathy.
People who can't handle the hours who quit quickly skew that.
You are correct in pointing that out, except that I used the wrong term. It was the median amount of time, not the average. Sorry if that confused you.
Wanting to prevent your children from seeing pornography and wanting to prevent your children from seeing breasts are two completely different things.
No, actually they're two related things, especially in the context of iPhones since any boobies on the iPhone are going to be considered pornographic by a large percentage of the population. I guess I don't understand what you're trying to get at in context of this discussion. My best guess is you like breasts but your son is gay and you don't approve and don't want him looking at wee wee's on the phone you're paying for. Either that or you're going off on a weird tangent.
Right... there's no way Google could ever come out looking like a good guy. "We let our users choose what to download."
It would be nice if that would work, but there's a huge market right now for phones bought for minors and the purchasers often don't want the phone owner to be able to choose. A smarter move would be for Google to leverage their vast knowledge of the Web to start a ratings system for Web pages, Create a setup so phones can be locked to a particular level of rating for Web pages and apps, and then demonstrate how iPhones let kids look at any creepy fetish porn site but Android provide better controls.
Steve Jobs responded, "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone. "
Well, I don't see that porn is particularly harmful to children, especially compared to the violence in media and games sold on the iPhone, so I don't know why one would be a moral imperative and the other would not. I actually think this is marketing, designed to appeal to parents who want their kids kept safe from the evils of... umm... boobies?
But that's okay. If he's recommending an Android phone, I'll probably take him up on it when I purchase a smartphone.
you're required to live in the dorms and you have specific hours you're allowed to leave the dorms, even when not working. That's not exactly the typical boarding house and it is completely unacceptable. Remember "freedom" is an incredibly important concept for most of these company's customers.
Bzzzt. You can live "off campus" no problem, if you want to.
Bzzzt! that is not what the human rights report says. Workers are not allowed off campus except during specified hours, so unless they can find alternative housing in the plant, which they can afford, yes they have to live in the dorms. Are you being paid to spread misinformation?
Do they live in dorms? Some do, but the conditions aren't terrible by low-end Chinese standards, and considerably better than the farmhouse the worker most likely moved from.
Did you read the report? Average workers last 6 months at the factory before leaving in desperation and giving up two weeks pay to do so.
Do some women get sexually harassed? Sure. Heck, here in the US we have Presidents committing perjury about their sexual assaults!
First, in the US there is legal recourse. Second, since when is consensual sex, sexual assault?
Bottom line: this "article" is a hit piece for political purposes, it does nothing to improve conditions, and in fact hurts worldwide relations by fomenting undeserved anger.
That's a fine opinion, but it stinks like shit to me. The anger is fully justified. No one should be forced to live on the premises and forbidden to leave except an hour and a half a night, in order to work in a factory. It is completely unacceptable to me and I won't do business with the kind of scum that are that exploitive and value freedom that little. if you're part of that, I include you in my last statement. I'm not some blind patriot and I know conditions are bad in many places, but I'm sure not paying people to create those conditions.
It’s funny how you conveniently failed to mention that this practice wasn’t ONLY conducted by Microsoft, and that HP, Dell, Asus, and many other hardware manufacturers outsource to the same company, and that out of all those companies, only Microsoft is taking action to investigate the reports.
That's not funny at all, it's the intention of this human rights campaign. The NLC targeted MS specifically because they were the worst offender and because this particular plant is making products for them, not for the other companies you mention. The NLC report lambasted all those companies and more for doing business with these plants, but needed a single company with a recognizable name in order to pressure any one company to actually take action. They are pressuring MS and MS has said they will look into it, but so far has not done anything about the conditions. Hopefully the average american's attention span won't expire before something positive is done.
Yes, why blame Microsoft? The root cause of these working conditions falls squarely on the Chinese government and Chinese culture.
They profit by hiring these companies to force workers into inhumane situations. They certainly share much of the blame for not requiring their suppliers uphold basic human rights and for lying by telling us in their corporate policies that such is the case. MS has the power to stop this. As customers of MS you have the power to stop this. As voters in the country where MS is based you have the power to stop this. The question is, do you care or are you an apathetic lazy american who won't take action that inconveniences you to help their fellow man?
Hmm, that's not true, the Apple thing was uncovered by the press well over a year ago, with initial reports on Apple's suppliers using poor labour practices as far back as 2006. See this article for example:
In 2006 there were two separate instances of human rights violations at Apple suppliers. One turned out to be pretty much genuine and one was just too much overtime work. In response to this, Apple began a process of more strictly auditing their suppliers.
It's only this year that they finally owned up to child labour abuses by factories used to develop their products, and they stated the children involved were 15 years old.
Apple didn't "own up to" those abuses, they were discovered by one of Apple's now routine audits. The company had been falsifying the records sent to Apple, but because of the 2006 incidents, Apple now routinely sends representatives to double check. No one made any allegation about that factory or the other two Apple found to be in noncompliance, until Apple themselves discovered the problems.
In contrast, the "children" in the Microsoft case were apparently 17 years old, but seeing as you can work full time at 16 in places like the UK I struggle to see that as child labour.
In the UK children are limited in the hours they can put in. These people were working more than even the law in China allows.
I'd argue that Apple case was in fact worse, simply because they knew about bad working practices for longer, and because the children in their child labour case, really were children.
No, Apple found out about specific plants and acted to fix the problem. MS has been one of the top 5 US tech companies listed as promoting human rights violations in China for the last 8 years. In fact, a report came out earlier this year urging people not to buy from them because of the repeated abuses.
That's not to absolve the others of blame, but the GP was right, Apple is at least as bad...
Apple has taken action. They are regularly auditing plants. They absolved contracts and financially punished other plants. That is exactly what we want them to be doing. Microsoft on the other hand, does nothing. When was the last time you heard about an MS audit of their manufacturing partners and them requiring changes? MS relies on public outrage not being strong enough so they ignore the problem.
I'd argue the only real solution is for these companies home governments to start penalising companies over it.
Or, magical unicorns could solve the problem. Get real. We're talking about what we as consumers and voters can actually do, and that includes not buying anything from companies that don't work diligently to stop abuses within their foreign supply chains. You're just being lazy and trying to pass the buck.
Let's face it though- this is why outsourcing is such a big fad amongst large companies nowadays, because it's just a legalised method of gaining access to sweatshop manufacturing, something that is often banned in their home countries because it tends to breach inconvniences like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It doesn't have to be sweatshops. For only a small increase you can gain access to reasonably paid labor in markets where cost of living is much, much less. Companies will do that if we as consumers make them by refusing to put up with this freedom hating, human exploitation. You attempt to equivocate and lay the blame elsewhere but you have the power to buy from companies that are doing something and who are investigating and stopping human rights abuses. Do you care enough about human suffering to do it?
Your comments are interesting, but seem a bit overly apologetic. You're glossing over some things, that I think are important.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
Dormitories are common in Southern China, especially in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Not so much in Ningbo, or Hangzhou, Suzhou, or other places. You know why? Because a cheap 1 bedroom apartment starts at 500 RMB a month; when you're making 800 RMB a month you can't live off-site. So you live in a dorm with a dozen others.
Ummm, that would be one thing, but you're required to live in the dorms and you have specific hours you're allowed to leave the dorms, even when not working. That's not exactly the typical boarding house and it is completely unacceptable. Remember "freedom" is an incredibly important concept for most of these company's customers.
And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.
Yes, that does happen, and it's terrible. Many places in Asia still consider women as second-class; assholes love that kind of place. Happens all over, in fact...
Yes, but not all places only hire women and children for the normal worker positions and in the states you have the ability to successfully take an employer to court and worker's rights organizations to investigate on your behalf.
The upshot is, while you may want to normalize some of the conditions, and while some of those portrayed as hardships are actually more cultural differences, overall the situation is not something a normal, compassionate person living in the first world is willing to accept from companies that supply them with goods. The only reason they buy products is they are ignorant of these practices and that's something important to change.
This is all meaningless, the factory will get slapped on the wrist, the workers will lose their jobs and microsoft will make a comment about taking such accusations 'seriously' and that they are 'investigating'. The public will be outraged for a month or two before forgetting which large corporation they are supposed to hate this month.
Hey, we're the public. It's up to each and every one of us to be outraged and remain that way until we see real change like MS regularly auditing all their suppliers and holding them accountable. Are you going to buy MS products?
The only way to fix the issue is to stop production in China altogether and shift production to another country.
I disagree. Conditions are just as bad in plants at many other countries and some countries start up arcologies where employment laws are suspended just for western manufacturing. We will never be able to force every country on the planet to enforce their human rights laws. We can hold companies accountable by buying from them or not based upon their policies, it just takes work on our part. We have to not be lazy and not be apathetic. Human rights groups are doing a lot of the work for us, we just have to pay attention to what they find.
Until companies start to shift work out of China and into a country that isn't inherently corrupt it just a game of whack a mole.
Why would companies do that? Even if they did, why wouldn't they just corrupt whatever government was there to increase profits? If people don't care about whether or not companies are actually working towards human rights and fair employment policies for their suppliers, what does it matter where the abuses happen?
All that being said, the same factory, with the same management, employing the same people could still easily rebid and get the next contract simply by playing around with the paperwork on who owns the factory.
Which is why we should stop buying anything from these companies until they demonstrate they are making real progress. IBM, HP, Dell, and MS were singled out as some of the worst companies for humans rights abuses in a report that came out last month before this particular news item hit the presses. If customers don't care, why should they? Are you still going to buy from them?
Actually no. If you read the articles linked on Slashdot, none of Foxconn's supplies they use in factories that supply Apple have been involved here. In fact, while Foxconn is listed in the report, they are not listed in the in depth list of companies, so one or the other is an error. While I remain skeptical that Apple will persist in the level of auditing they have been employing, so far they've been doing well. Apple is doing what we want companies to do, audit their suppliers and force them to stop mistreating workers or lose their contracts to companies who will treat workers humanely.
It makes me very sad to see these kind of comments. If Apple gets badmouthed and bad press for doing the right thing and investigating human rights abuses, why should they continue doing it from a business perspective? If Microsoft can ignore the human rights abuses and look the other way and get less bad press as a result, that's the best business move. You sir, are part of the problem.
Why would it say "Apple" when no Apple sourced products come from the factory in question? Sure Foxconn buys from them and Apple (among many other companies) buys from Foxconn, but Apple has also been auditing all the factories that source their products after they discovered this type of thing going on a few years ago. Here is the list of companies outsourcing from KYE and their contact info. By all means contact them and express your intent not to purchase their crap. Please do not, however, conflate them with one of the few companies that is actually taking the issue seriously (for a few years at least). It makes me quite angry that companies like Apple get bad press when they do the right thing (like all the bad press Apple got when they discovered abuses while auditing a supplier) as if there was no difference between that and a human rights organization discovering these things when the company ignored the abuse or did not bother to even check.
How about: "Photos of Chinese Sweatshop Used By US Tech Companies" I guess that just doesn't have the same bite? At least it's more accurate.
No it doesn't have the same bite. By calling out a specific company, more bad press is drawn to that company and it is more likely they will act to manage the PR disaster. An article that just says US companies in general are doing something does not leave a specific name in people's minds and makes customers less likely to act for change. The headline is completely accurate, just not as informative as you'd like. But then, you don't seem too interested in accuracy if you decided to smear Apple without even finding out if that was true, presumably because of some prejudice on your part.
When I was programming, 16+ hour days were common.. as was sleeping at a desk.
Hey, I was there too, long hours, a cot in the server room, impossible deadlines. Of course I also was getting shares of the company and I could easily have quit and had a normal job and I was not required to live in company housing, was supplied with free booze and other perks, and got to choose my own hours. This is something quite different and more akin to slave labor.
I'm also quite certain Apple et. al are no better.
Actually, there was a story about lesser abuses at one of Apple's suppliers earlier this year. The difference being, the abuses were discovered by Apple, while Apple was auditing the companies they do business with to make sure they don't pull this kind of crap. That company lost out financially because of breach of contract and is being regularly audited for compliance. (We'll see how well Apple follows through in a few years.)
This abuse was discovered by the press because as near as I can tell, while Microsoft claims to audit suppliers before doing business with them, they've never actually discovered any cases of abuse or fired or censured a supplier. So, while Apple is not perfect and MS may well be average, the evidence to date does indicate that Apple is better about this.
What they DON'T show -- and I've sent feedback asking for -- is how many of these are legal demands, such as warrants or court orders, versus informal requests.
It looks to me like all the ones that are court orders have "court order" in parenthesis after the listing. So for Canada (as an example) there were 16 removal requests, two of which were court ordered.
Are the laws so different in the U.S.? Taking pictures of something you found is OK. But keeping, selling, buying (when knowing it has not been legally obtained) or intentionally breaking it, could get you in trouble.
State law varies but as far as I can tell, keeping the phone he found was a crime because he did not report it to the police and wait 90 days before they returned it to him and he resold it. Moreover, in California taking those pictures and publishing them may well be a crime too. California has strict laws to protect the dissemination of trade secrets.
Further, this may well be covered by trade secret laws in California as well, which makes knowing dissemination of trade secrets a crime.
They could not impose that on a person who is not responsible for maintaining the trade secret.
That's not how California's UTSA works at all. I think you're confusing trade secrets (protected by state law) and nondisclosure agreements (private contracts between employer and employee). Under the UTSA, paying someone for a prototype device that you know is covered as a trade secret by a corporation is a clear violation and publishing information you learned by so doing is also a violation. If Apple wants to take Gizmodo to court Apple will almost certainly win and by default will be awarded damages as well as money equal to whatever Gizmodo earned by publishing the story.
Almost nowhere are you required to report such things to the police.
I don't think this is true. A quick search indicates, in California any item valued at more than $100 requires you take steps to return and notify police who publish an ad notifying people for 90 days for items over $250 in value before ownership reverts to the finder. Failure to do so is a crime.
Further, this may well be covered by trade secret laws in California as well, which makes knowing dissemination of trade secrets a crime.
I've thought this for a while and I'm constantly surprised that we don't see this in presidential elections.
Well, we do to a limited extent. McCain wanted to run on a platform of no corporate contributions, but gave it up as impractical. Obama promised strict rules about lobbying the executive branch and has actually followed through on several policy changes making it illegal to lobby the executive branch if you just left service there (2 year delay I think). But for an electoral system like ours, it does punish dissent from the two party system. Condorcet or instant runoff would change the game significantly, excepting of course that it's a chicken and egg problem getting it implemented.
When regulation creates a problem, why on earth would more regulation be the solution? That's like saying, "I put molasses in my gas tank and my car runs worse. Let's fix it - more molasses!"
Or more generally, I did something to my gas tank and now my car won't run. Let's fix it by doing something to my gas tank. Of course that actually makes sense and just goes to show how limited your analogy is.
Just because something causes a problem does not mean the same thing cannot solve the problem. That is a non sequitur logical fallacy. I can invalidate that argument simply by presenting an example. Someone threw a glass at the window in front of the bar and shattered it leaving a big hole the rain comes in. Surely glass could not fix the hole, since glass is what caused the hole in the first place.
Okay, since the argument that the cause of a problem cannot also be the solution is proven to not be a truism, the onus is on you to show why in this particular instance regulation cannot be the fix for this specific problem and moreover to propose an alternative fix that is more likely to succeed.
So my real question, why can't everyone cancel their service with a monopolist provider, and sign on with whatever new provider came in its place? The only thing stopping this seems to be that most people are satisfied enough with their current service that they wouldn't want to be a part of this, and thus it does't happen.
There are several things at work here. First you'd need motivated people to organize the customers. Next, you'd need someone to create a new ISP, but if you still only have one provider and no competition you might end up in exactly the same situation a few years down the road. Additionally, you need people to understand what is going on. Because our legal system has been fairly okay about preventing monopoly abuse, most people don't even understand the issues involved and assume eventually other competitors will appear, especially if the service can be provided cheaper (ignorant of the government subsidies, legal right of ways, and other impediments to fair competition). And lastly, you'd need people to go without what is a vital service for many of us to conduct our jobs long enough to drive the monopolist out, which could be long time especially if they have no bandwidth costs and they're getting state or federal government investment dollars.
You can't say people are satisfied when their choice is between organizing a complex boycott that may or may not work; or paying now and hoping real competition will some day be available.
Bad analogies: You can't decouple the electricity, water, and electricity supplies from the infrastructure that supplies them.
Actually, in most locales electricity distribution and generation are decoupled by law. You buy from a distributor, but they have to buy from any and all generators at the same rate, including from other companies owned by the same parent corporation.
How quickly we forget. Regulation created this mess; I highly doubt that regulation will be able fix this mess.
Actually I'd argue lack of federal regulation caused this. For reason politicians handed over billions of taxpayer dollars to these companies so they could upgrade their networks and provide high speed internet to the whole US... and then the companies pocketed the cash and did nothing because we imposed no regulation on what they did with the money. What regulation were you thinking of as the cause for our problem?
Again it all comes back to lobbying and campaign financing. And noone in Washington has any incentive to fix it. Congress? Heck no, they got cushy lobbying jobs to look forward to when they retire.
I actually think this is a real opportunity for reform candidates. Pretty much every person I know on both sides of the political spectrum are in favor of campaign finance reform. It might actually be the wedge needed to get a third party into congress in many districts or at least scare incumbents. It is truly a reflection on modern politics that an issue with such enormous public support can go unresolved because voters are too apathetic and uninformed to vote based on it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any problem with kids seeing pornography of any sort, although I do think they need to be slightly educated about it so they don't mistake it for an accurate depiction of sex. Bestiality is a special case because most of it is violence, rape if you will, of animals unable to properly consent. I don't have a problem with the sex aspect of rape, but the violence aspect.
Apple has decided that they'll draw the line before any nudie pics at all.
Except they didn't. They drew the line at no porn in applications, except Playboy and a few other major, recognizable ones and all the porn you want via the Web browser.
Don't like it? Do as Steve suggest and get an Android phone
You do realize that's what I said I was likely going to do, right? I don't object to Apple's decision, it just isn't really right for me and seems more like marketing than an honest attempt to be moral.
You are telling me that a large percentage of the population find this [wikipedia.org] pornographic?
In the U.S., sadly yes.
Most people understand that the difference between mere nudity and pornographic nudity is context.
Actually, according to the dictionary, the difference is the intent of the emotion intended by the artist (aesthetic versus erotic).
1) Unless you've been there, you can't guarantee the accuracy of anything the human rights report says
No I can't, but then I didn't actually go to all the temperature monitoring sites around the world before forming an opinion on global warming, not did I recreate all the chemistry experiments of the past before I formed an opinion about atomic models.
So do you have something useful to add, or are you just saying, but maybe it's all untrue, let's ignore it?
2) Plenty of people take tough ambitious jobs and wash out because they discover they can't hack it.
Yeah, tough ambitious jobs like working an assembly line. Sorry, that should not be an ambitious job and it seems like all the crap that is making it hard are the conditions imposed by greedy bastards with no human empathy.
People who can't handle the hours who quit quickly skew that.
You are correct in pointing that out, except that I used the wrong term. It was the median amount of time, not the average. Sorry if that confused you.
Wanting to prevent your children from seeing pornography and wanting to prevent your children from seeing breasts are two completely different things.
No, actually they're two related things, especially in the context of iPhones since any boobies on the iPhone are going to be considered pornographic by a large percentage of the population. I guess I don't understand what you're trying to get at in context of this discussion. My best guess is you like breasts but your son is gay and you don't approve and don't want him looking at wee wee's on the phone you're paying for. Either that or you're going off on a weird tangent.
Right... there's no way Google could ever come out looking like a good guy. "We let our users choose what to download."
It would be nice if that would work, but there's a huge market right now for phones bought for minors and the purchasers often don't want the phone owner to be able to choose. A smarter move would be for Google to leverage their vast knowledge of the Web to start a ratings system for Web pages, Create a setup so phones can be locked to a particular level of rating for Web pages and apps, and then demonstrate how iPhones let kids look at any creepy fetish porn site but Android provide better controls.
Steve Jobs responded, "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone. "
Well, I don't see that porn is particularly harmful to children, especially compared to the violence in media and games sold on the iPhone, so I don't know why one would be a moral imperative and the other would not. I actually think this is marketing, designed to appeal to parents who want their kids kept safe from the evils of... umm... boobies?
But that's okay. If he's recommending an Android phone, I'll probably take him up on it when I purchase a smartphone.
you're required to live in the dorms and you have specific hours you're allowed to leave the dorms, even when not working. That's not exactly the typical boarding house and it is completely unacceptable. Remember "freedom" is an incredibly important concept for most of these company's customers.
Bzzzt. You can live "off campus" no problem, if you want to.
Bzzzt! that is not what the human rights report says. Workers are not allowed off campus except during specified hours, so unless they can find alternative housing in the plant, which they can afford, yes they have to live in the dorms. Are you being paid to spread misinformation?
Do they live in dorms? Some do, but the conditions aren't terrible by low-end Chinese standards, and considerably better than the farmhouse the worker most likely moved from.
Did you read the report? Average workers last 6 months at the factory before leaving in desperation and giving up two weeks pay to do so.
Do some women get sexually harassed? Sure. Heck, here in the US we have Presidents committing perjury about their sexual assaults!
First, in the US there is legal recourse. Second, since when is consensual sex, sexual assault?
Bottom line: this "article" is a hit piece for political purposes, it does nothing to improve conditions, and in fact hurts worldwide relations by fomenting undeserved anger.
That's a fine opinion, but it stinks like shit to me. The anger is fully justified. No one should be forced to live on the premises and forbidden to leave except an hour and a half a night, in order to work in a factory. It is completely unacceptable to me and I won't do business with the kind of scum that are that exploitive and value freedom that little. if you're part of that, I include you in my last statement. I'm not some blind patriot and I know conditions are bad in many places, but I'm sure not paying people to create those conditions.
It’s funny how you conveniently failed to mention that this practice wasn’t ONLY conducted by Microsoft, and that HP, Dell, Asus, and many other hardware manufacturers outsource to the same company, and that out of all those companies, only Microsoft is taking action to investigate the reports.
That's not funny at all, it's the intention of this human rights campaign. The NLC targeted MS specifically because they were the worst offender and because this particular plant is making products for them, not for the other companies you mention. The NLC report lambasted all those companies and more for doing business with these plants, but needed a single company with a recognizable name in order to pressure any one company to actually take action. They are pressuring MS and MS has said they will look into it, but so far has not done anything about the conditions. Hopefully the average american's attention span won't expire before something positive is done.
Yes, why blame Microsoft? The root cause of these working conditions falls squarely on the Chinese government and Chinese culture.
They profit by hiring these companies to force workers into inhumane situations. They certainly share much of the blame for not requiring their suppliers uphold basic human rights and for lying by telling us in their corporate policies that such is the case. MS has the power to stop this. As customers of MS you have the power to stop this. As voters in the country where MS is based you have the power to stop this. The question is, do you care or are you an apathetic lazy american who won't take action that inconveniences you to help their fellow man?
Hmm, that's not true, the Apple thing was uncovered by the press well over a year ago, with initial reports on Apple's suppliers using poor labour practices as far back as 2006. See this article for example:
In 2006 there were two separate instances of human rights violations at Apple suppliers. One turned out to be pretty much genuine and one was just too much overtime work. In response to this, Apple began a process of more strictly auditing their suppliers.
It's only this year that they finally owned up to child labour abuses by factories used to develop their products, and they stated the children involved were 15 years old.
Apple didn't "own up to" those abuses, they were discovered by one of Apple's now routine audits. The company had been falsifying the records sent to Apple, but because of the 2006 incidents, Apple now routinely sends representatives to double check. No one made any allegation about that factory or the other two Apple found to be in noncompliance, until Apple themselves discovered the problems.
In contrast, the "children" in the Microsoft case were apparently 17 years old, but seeing as you can work full time at 16 in places like the UK I struggle to see that as child labour.
In the UK children are limited in the hours they can put in. These people were working more than even the law in China allows.
I'd argue that Apple case was in fact worse, simply because they knew about bad working practices for longer, and because the children in their child labour case, really were children.
No, Apple found out about specific plants and acted to fix the problem. MS has been one of the top 5 US tech companies listed as promoting human rights violations in China for the last 8 years. In fact, a report came out earlier this year urging people not to buy from them because of the repeated abuses.
That's not to absolve the others of blame, but the GP was right, Apple is at least as bad...
Apple has taken action. They are regularly auditing plants. They absolved contracts and financially punished other plants. That is exactly what we want them to be doing. Microsoft on the other hand, does nothing. When was the last time you heard about an MS audit of their manufacturing partners and them requiring changes? MS relies on public outrage not being strong enough so they ignore the problem.
I'd argue the only real solution is for these companies home governments to start penalising companies over it.
Or, magical unicorns could solve the problem. Get real. We're talking about what we as consumers and voters can actually do, and that includes not buying anything from companies that don't work diligently to stop abuses within their foreign supply chains. You're just being lazy and trying to pass the buck.
Let's face it though- this is why outsourcing is such a big fad amongst large companies nowadays, because it's just a legalised method of gaining access to sweatshop manufacturing, something that is often banned in their home countries because it tends to breach inconvniences like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It doesn't have to be sweatshops. For only a small increase you can gain access to reasonably paid labor in markets where cost of living is much, much less. Companies will do that if we as consumers make them by refusing to put up with this freedom hating, human exploitation. You attempt to equivocate and lay the blame elsewhere but you have the power to buy from companies that are doing something and who are investigating and stopping human rights abuses. Do you care enough about human suffering to do it?
Your comments are interesting, but seem a bit overly apologetic. You're glossing over some things, that I think are important.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
Dormitories are common in Southern China, especially in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Not so much in Ningbo, or Hangzhou, Suzhou, or other places. You know why? Because a cheap 1 bedroom apartment starts at 500 RMB a month; when you're making 800 RMB a month you can't live off-site. So you live in a dorm with a dozen others.
Ummm, that would be one thing, but you're required to live in the dorms and you have specific hours you're allowed to leave the dorms, even when not working. That's not exactly the typical boarding house and it is completely unacceptable. Remember "freedom" is an incredibly important concept for most of these company's customers.
And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.
Yes, that does happen, and it's terrible. Many places in Asia still consider women as second-class; assholes love that kind of place. Happens all over, in fact...
Yes, but not all places only hire women and children for the normal worker positions and in the states you have the ability to successfully take an employer to court and worker's rights organizations to investigate on your behalf.
The upshot is, while you may want to normalize some of the conditions, and while some of those portrayed as hardships are actually more cultural differences, overall the situation is not something a normal, compassionate person living in the first world is willing to accept from companies that supply them with goods. The only reason they buy products is they are ignorant of these practices and that's something important to change.
This is all meaningless, the factory will get slapped on the wrist, the workers will lose their jobs and microsoft will make a comment about taking such accusations 'seriously' and that they are 'investigating'. The public will be outraged for a month or two before forgetting which large corporation they are supposed to hate this month.
Hey, we're the public. It's up to each and every one of us to be outraged and remain that way until we see real change like MS regularly auditing all their suppliers and holding them accountable. Are you going to buy MS products?
The only way to fix the issue is to stop production in China altogether and shift production to another country.
I disagree. Conditions are just as bad in plants at many other countries and some countries start up arcologies where employment laws are suspended just for western manufacturing. We will never be able to force every country on the planet to enforce their human rights laws. We can hold companies accountable by buying from them or not based upon their policies, it just takes work on our part. We have to not be lazy and not be apathetic. Human rights groups are doing a lot of the work for us, we just have to pay attention to what they find.
Until companies start to shift work out of China and into a country that isn't inherently corrupt it just a game of whack a mole.
Why would companies do that? Even if they did, why wouldn't they just corrupt whatever government was there to increase profits? If people don't care about whether or not companies are actually working towards human rights and fair employment policies for their suppliers, what does it matter where the abuses happen?
All that being said, the same factory, with the same management, employing the same people could still easily rebid and get the next contract simply by playing around with the paperwork on who owns the factory.
Which is why we should stop buying anything from these companies until they demonstrate they are making real progress. IBM, HP, Dell, and MS were singled out as some of the worst companies for humans rights abuses in a report that came out last month before this particular news item hit the presses. If customers don't care, why should they? Are you still going to buy from them?
Looks like they forgot about that again?
Actually no. If you read the articles linked on Slashdot, none of Foxconn's supplies they use in factories that supply Apple have been involved here. In fact, while Foxconn is listed in the report, they are not listed in the in depth list of companies, so one or the other is an error. While I remain skeptical that Apple will persist in the level of auditing they have been employing, so far they've been doing well. Apple is doing what we want companies to do, audit their suppliers and force them to stop mistreating workers or lose their contracts to companies who will treat workers humanely.
It makes me very sad to see these kind of comments. If Apple gets badmouthed and bad press for doing the right thing and investigating human rights abuses, why should they continue doing it from a business perspective? If Microsoft can ignore the human rights abuses and look the other way and get less bad press as a result, that's the best business move. You sir, are part of the problem.
Why would it say "Apple" when no Apple sourced products come from the factory in question? Sure Foxconn buys from them and Apple (among many other companies) buys from Foxconn, but Apple has also been auditing all the factories that source their products after they discovered this type of thing going on a few years ago. Here is the list of companies outsourcing from KYE and their contact info. By all means contact them and express your intent not to purchase their crap. Please do not, however, conflate them with one of the few companies that is actually taking the issue seriously (for a few years at least). It makes me quite angry that companies like Apple get bad press when they do the right thing (like all the bad press Apple got when they discovered abuses while auditing a supplier) as if there was no difference between that and a human rights organization discovering these things when the company ignored the abuse or did not bother to even check.
How about: "Photos of Chinese Sweatshop Used By US Tech Companies" I guess that just doesn't have the same bite? At least it's more accurate.
No it doesn't have the same bite. By calling out a specific company, more bad press is drawn to that company and it is more likely they will act to manage the PR disaster. An article that just says US companies in general are doing something does not leave a specific name in people's minds and makes customers less likely to act for change. The headline is completely accurate, just not as informative as you'd like. But then, you don't seem too interested in accuracy if you decided to smear Apple without even finding out if that was true, presumably because of some prejudice on your part.
When I was programming, 16+ hour days were common.. as was sleeping at a desk.
Hey, I was there too, long hours, a cot in the server room, impossible deadlines. Of course I also was getting shares of the company and I could easily have quit and had a normal job and I was not required to live in company housing, was supplied with free booze and other perks, and got to choose my own hours. This is something quite different and more akin to slave labor.
I'm also quite certain Apple et. al are no better.
Actually, there was a story about lesser abuses at one of Apple's suppliers earlier this year. The difference being, the abuses were discovered by Apple, while Apple was auditing the companies they do business with to make sure they don't pull this kind of crap. That company lost out financially because of breach of contract and is being regularly audited for compliance. (We'll see how well Apple follows through in a few years.)
This abuse was discovered by the press because as near as I can tell, while Microsoft claims to audit suppliers before doing business with them, they've never actually discovered any cases of abuse or fired or censured a supplier. So, while Apple is not perfect and MS may well be average, the evidence to date does indicate that Apple is better about this.
What they DON'T show -- and I've sent feedback asking for -- is how many of these are legal demands, such as warrants or court orders, versus informal requests.
It looks to me like all the ones that are court orders have "court order" in parenthesis after the listing. So for Canada (as an example) there were 16 removal requests, two of which were court ordered.
Are the laws so different in the U.S.? Taking pictures of something you found is OK. But keeping, selling, buying (when knowing it has not been legally obtained) or intentionally breaking it, could get you in trouble.
State law varies but as far as I can tell, keeping the phone he found was a crime because he did not report it to the police and wait 90 days before they returned it to him and he resold it. Moreover, in California taking those pictures and publishing them may well be a crime too. California has strict laws to protect the dissemination of trade secrets.
Further, this may well be covered by trade secret laws in California as well, which makes knowing dissemination of trade secrets a crime.
They could not impose that on a person who is not responsible for maintaining the trade secret.
That's not how California's UTSA works at all. I think you're confusing trade secrets (protected by state law) and nondisclosure agreements (private contracts between employer and employee). Under the UTSA, paying someone for a prototype device that you know is covered as a trade secret by a corporation is a clear violation and publishing information you learned by so doing is also a violation. If Apple wants to take Gizmodo to court Apple will almost certainly win and by default will be awarded damages as well as money equal to whatever Gizmodo earned by publishing the story.
Almost nowhere are you required to report such things to the police.
I don't think this is true. A quick search indicates, in California any item valued at more than $100 requires you take steps to return and notify police who publish an ad notifying people for 90 days for items over $250 in value before ownership reverts to the finder. Failure to do so is a crime.
Further, this may well be covered by trade secret laws in California as well, which makes knowing dissemination of trade secrets a crime.
I've thought this for a while and I'm constantly surprised that we don't see this in presidential elections.
Well, we do to a limited extent. McCain wanted to run on a platform of no corporate contributions, but gave it up as impractical. Obama promised strict rules about lobbying the executive branch and has actually followed through on several policy changes making it illegal to lobby the executive branch if you just left service there (2 year delay I think). But for an electoral system like ours, it does punish dissent from the two party system. Condorcet or instant runoff would change the game significantly, excepting of course that it's a chicken and egg problem getting it implemented.
When regulation creates a problem, why on earth would more regulation be the solution? That's like saying, "I put molasses in my gas tank and my car runs worse. Let's fix it - more molasses!"
Or more generally, I did something to my gas tank and now my car won't run. Let's fix it by doing something to my gas tank. Of course that actually makes sense and just goes to show how limited your analogy is.
Just because something causes a problem does not mean the same thing cannot solve the problem. That is a non sequitur logical fallacy. I can invalidate that argument simply by presenting an example. Someone threw a glass at the window in front of the bar and shattered it leaving a big hole the rain comes in. Surely glass could not fix the hole, since glass is what caused the hole in the first place.
Okay, since the argument that the cause of a problem cannot also be the solution is proven to not be a truism, the onus is on you to show why in this particular instance regulation cannot be the fix for this specific problem and moreover to propose an alternative fix that is more likely to succeed.
So my real question, why can't everyone cancel their service with a monopolist provider, and sign on with whatever new provider came in its place? The only thing stopping this seems to be that most people are satisfied enough with their current service that they wouldn't want to be a part of this, and thus it does't happen.
There are several things at work here. First you'd need motivated people to organize the customers. Next, you'd need someone to create a new ISP, but if you still only have one provider and no competition you might end up in exactly the same situation a few years down the road. Additionally, you need people to understand what is going on. Because our legal system has been fairly okay about preventing monopoly abuse, most people don't even understand the issues involved and assume eventually other competitors will appear, especially if the service can be provided cheaper (ignorant of the government subsidies, legal right of ways, and other impediments to fair competition). And lastly, you'd need people to go without what is a vital service for many of us to conduct our jobs long enough to drive the monopolist out, which could be long time especially if they have no bandwidth costs and they're getting state or federal government investment dollars.
You can't say people are satisfied when their choice is between organizing a complex boycott that may or may not work; or paying now and hoping real competition will some day be available.
Bad analogies: You can't decouple the electricity, water, and electricity supplies from the infrastructure that supplies them.
Actually, in most locales electricity distribution and generation are decoupled by law. You buy from a distributor, but they have to buy from any and all generators at the same rate, including from other companies owned by the same parent corporation.
How quickly we forget. Regulation created this mess; I highly doubt that regulation will be able fix this mess.
Actually I'd argue lack of federal regulation caused this. For reason politicians handed over billions of taxpayer dollars to these companies so they could upgrade their networks and provide high speed internet to the whole US... and then the companies pocketed the cash and did nothing because we imposed no regulation on what they did with the money. What regulation were you thinking of as the cause for our problem?
Again it all comes back to lobbying and campaign financing. And noone in Washington has any incentive to fix it. Congress? Heck no, they got cushy lobbying jobs to look forward to when they retire.
I actually think this is a real opportunity for reform candidates. Pretty much every person I know on both sides of the political spectrum are in favor of campaign finance reform. It might actually be the wedge needed to get a third party into congress in many districts or at least scare incumbents. It is truly a reflection on modern politics that an issue with such enormous public support can go unresolved because voters are too apathetic and uninformed to vote based on it.