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Comment by _iyig | Hacker News Reader

In the summer of 1812, when Francis Cabot Lowell stole the plans for textile weaving machines as described in the article, the U.S. and Great Britain were two nations at war (or on the cusp, depending on the month). I notice this detail often left out when this story is used to excuse theft of U.S. research and development output.

Stealing the fruits of another’s investment is not the act of a friend or ally.

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With the last remark, you are either saying that China and USA are not friends, or that IP theft is not theft.

Either way, the comparison falls flat trivially, because the looms of today are gigantic production plants. Stealing cad files is rather like stealing a weaving pattern ... which I hear is a thing and an old example of copyright infringement.

"China and USA are not friends" and "IP theft is not theft" both happen to be at least somewhat true.

China and the USA should not be friends. China is committing mass genocide and is overall a horrible country. The USA definitely has some problems, but nowhere near the same level. Americans should encourage the USA to not be friendly toward China. Similarly, people in other countries should ask the same of their governments.

Of course, that doesn’t justify any racism or hatred toward individual Chinese people, especially immigrants who have had no role at all in causing this. It’s a moral obligation to be good to other people, and this includes making sure that other people do not commit genocide.

What genocide? America has funded many proxy wars (the mess in the middle east and fuels the constant with aid to both sides of the israeli/palestinian conflict) and China is actually modernizing africa instead of putting in banana republics. It is no more moral than China.

China is mass imprisoning, torturing and murdering Uyghur people[1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...

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