Hacker News Reader

Comment by daneel_w | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

So I'm not a moral relativist, like, at all. But in this case, it seems like we westerners have constructed one particular set of norms for encouraging innovation, where we decide that it's possible for ideas to be owned. It's not like there's anything intrinsically wrong with copy-pasting code, it's just that we have a legal framework where we've traded away the right to freely copy-paste code so that we can grant a temporary monopoly to its author. We do this in the hope that more useful code will be written than otherwise. But if the people of China decide that that's not a trade-off they want to make, then I don't think we westerners get to say that they've committed a moral wrong in making that decision. It's just that they have a different way of doing things.

Like I said, I'm not a moral relativist at all. Murder is still wrong in China, imprisoning people not convicted of any crime is still wrong in China, lying is still wrong in China. But I just don't see how copyright infringement is universally an immoral act.

OK, no, it's not intrinsically or uniquely western. Any person who has an idea has no obligation to share their ideas, that's universal. This revolves around the expectation set at the point of sharing their ideas, under which they say, effectively, "Here's something I came up with. I'm sharing it with you in exchange for your agreement that you will attribute it to me and not take the idea and publish it as your own." The ownership and control under closed source could (somehow) be argued in the way you're suggesting, but for open source it's a matter of blatant disrespect and refusal to adhere to and of the requirements set by the initial sharers of their ideas.

Naw... it's just the hypocrisy. If any other company/country were doing it, they should be called out too.

If you actually stop doing the wrong thing and decades later complain about others still doing it (the Western world can complain about slavery) that's moving up and on, but complaining about TikTok maybe being banned when FB/Google/Twitter and TikTok itself are banned in your own country?

Same with copyright... it's not like China's government doesn't issue copyrights and enforce copyrights, it's just that there's not really rule of law since it's enforced so haphazardly. There's little plan other than individuals "what can I get right now".

Getting downvoted by the group-think majority. Just know I tend to agree with you. Our country does not get to dictate how the world operates no matter what our beliefs are. And the idea of intellectual property is just a belief, and a bad one at that.

Operating under a different set of rules doesn't change the fact that they violate ours. They can be simultaneously right under their own standards and wrong under ours. We can and should judge them under our moral standards.

Absolutely. The gun culture in the US is barbaric. The lack of a social safety net is downright evil, to say nothing about the healthcare costs.

-signed, a European

I, too, judge Americans who support the current gun culture, oppose a safety net, and fight against socialized medicine.

- a reasonable American

It's one of the ways countries bootstrap. Not right or wrong, just is. Once they've climbed the ladder the US climbed, they'll suddenly start caring about IP too.

Bootstrap? They had their nuke and launched a satellite by 1970.

I'm not apologetic, I'm just not accusatory.

You say that as if you've been living under a rock, completely unaware of China's operations against practically every nation on the planet.

You mean all the developed nations’ operation to export almost all production capabilities to China for profit? Cause everyone knew exactly what they were doing when they signed onto those joint ventures that were barely disguised force tech transfers.

We made our bed. No point in accusing China when we made it ourselves.

Invest that jingoist energy into doing something about it!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com