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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

> I don't understand why some people think companies should be above the law.

I think certain aspects of justice are above legal frameworks. For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says. Companies like Apple, by lobbying the government for various non-business things (gay rights, climate change, etc.), recognize this.

I think wholesale restriction and manipulation of political speech is just wrong even if it is legally mandatory. And, while understandable, I'm not sure (still chewing it over) it's a valid excuse to say that we were just complying with the law.

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> For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says.

I hope you realize that you are only saying this because you happen to be born at this particular point in human civilization.

For a very long time, people thought slavery is right, including the people who wrote your constitution (assuming your are from US). It is easy to say that slavery is wrong now, but not in 18th century in the US. Think of China as the US, a few centuries ago, when human rights are still a concept being explored.

> I hope you realize that you are only saying this because you happen to be born at this particular point in human civilization.

And you're only saying that because you were born when and where you were. It's not universally accepted that ethics are relative like that.

Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying. That slavery was relatively OK in the 18th century so Apple enforcing government censorship is now, too?

It's also worth pointing out that colonial contemporaries were appalled by slavery, though they didn't have the power to universally outlaw it.

Right, but nobody is saying we should force China to do anything, we are speaking about Apple, which is not a Chinese company.

> For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says. Companies like Apple,

While FOXCONN is not slavery, outsourcing work to countries where you can pay incredibly poor people unethically low wages to create expensive products is hardly a good indicator that a company will stand up to laws that don't affect their bottom line.

Does Foxconn pay unethically low wages? The base pay for 40h/week is ~$400/month. In my Western European country, minimum wage is ~$660/month. The difference doesn't seem that much.

Gay rights/climate change aren't great examples. Those are areas Apple can lobby for change and make their own internal changes without breaking the law.

Take something Apple says it stands for - privacy. They will stand up for users to a point but they will not break the law. They will lobby and create technical solutions but they will not deny or disclose a national security letter no matter how BS or immoral the request may be. This is the same thing. By distributing VPN apps they break the law. They can still lobby for change or potentially come up with a technical solution that allows users to bypass the great firewall but does not break Chinese law (although I don't see how that's possible).

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