Were we Americans this crass and exploitive in the late 1800's? Not rhetorical, but a genuine question. I've heard the opinion expressed that we indeed were.
For example:
"Johns describes how the first generation of American publishers came to constitute themselves as book pirates who openly violated British copyright law by systematically reprinting works that the British publishers considered their own lawful property. This laid the foundations for a vital but highly controversial book market in the new world and Johns concludes that by “the 1820s, Jacksonian America had a secure and vibrant public sphere – but to European eyes an utterly piratical one”.
Source: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit7/papers/Fredriksson-Draft-...
The US eventually became a champion of IP laws once its own IP industries became globally dominant. China will discover the joys of copyright and patent lawsuits once they dominate the IP industries.
Well English isn't the primary language there, that should probably make a difference in how things play out compared to the US.
EDIT: (compared to the US pirating British works)
"There is, I think, no task-master over free labor so exacting as an American. He knows nothing of hours, and seems to have that idea of a man which a lady always has of a horse. He thinks that he will go forever. I wish those masons in London who strike for nine hours' work with ten hours' pay could be driven to the labor market of Western America for a spell. And moreover, which astonished me, I have seen men driven and hurried, as it were forced forward at their work, in a manner which, to an English workman, would be intolerable.... The complaint that wages are held back, and not even ultimately paid, is very common. There is no fixed rule for satisfying all such claims once a week, and thus debts to laborers are contracted, and when contracted are ignored."
As for intellectual property, the textile industry of New England got its start with English designs in something of an underhand way, I recall.
By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.