Arm China Goes Rogue, Ex-CEO Blocking the Business

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

Uhm yes they can. What do you think a movie file is? What about a PDF? They're just really long numbers that a computer decodes into something we can see or read.

That's not copyrighting a number.  Not even close.

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

If I shared with you a movie in base64 format, which is literally just a number, I'd still be breaching copyright.

No, sharing the movie is being in breach of copyright, sharing a number is just sharing a number.

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

Intel has a copyright on the instruction set, they're under no obligation to release the relevant documentation, they can stop you from partially implementing a compiler (see SUN v Microsoft for Java) and they can sell you their own compiler under whatever business model they choose. So while just writing a program may be allowed under those conditions, actually running it would be impossile without licensing the ability to do that from Intel.

You have interpreted that all wrong, just like the copyright of numbers thing.

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

This is literally a ship of theseus argument. There's an arbitrary point where the entirety of the work is considered "modified" and therefore copyrightable. Where that point is is completely irrelevant because it is completely arbitrary.

  Reveal hidden contents

Cuphead is just Mickey Mouse without short buttons and with a modified head. That doesn't mean the gloves are Disney's copyright just because they are "unmodified".

 

Yes it does mean they are copyright, but how far the legal system wants to go with it will be case dependent. Because in a reasonable setting the courts may decide enough was changed that a component is no longer recognizable is being the original.  If not enough change is made an they are then a copyright claim may be upheld.    

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

Someone else would have done it shortly thereafter. Just because Watt got there first doesn't mean he was the only one capable of doing it. Plenty of things were independently invented by various people at around the same time. The only difference is that instead of Watt being able to personally profit from all the work other people did later to turn his ideas into a reality there would have been a fairer share for everyone involved. Besides, if he had had no need for secrecy (out of fear of someone patenting it first if they saw his work) he could have just collaborated with people and gotten funding through a joint effort.

Who would have done it?  history has shown us quite clearly that without legal protection no one will invest.  So who would invest in work that can't be protected? When steam was no longer under legal protection the development only occurred because steam trains were competing in the service space.  All other parts to trains that could be patented were, like the GE steam brake system etc.  I'm a big fan of Richard trevithick and have followed much of his work and life.  It is important not to confuse why he did what he did with altruism.

 

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

With that said, I also think it's unfair to just expect people to come up with things and not getting paid unless they're hired to do it; that is why I think this type of research should be funded through universities and all people investing time into research should be granted a salary. This may have been unfeasible 200 years ago but it isn't now.

It's still unfeasible now.  The vast majority of all research is funded by private business (even the research in Universities is funded by grants from private companies).  They do it because there is a pay off for them.  No pay off, no investment.  I even tried to point that out in my very first post here:

 

 

where I said:

 

Quote

Maybe someday in the future when wealth has a different distribution model and is generated through services rather than products,  then maybe it can be abolished, but until then,  no guarantees a company or individual has rights to their own research means no research

Note I even said back then "through services", This is what propelled the design of stream trains in the 19th century.

 

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

All right, I invented the wheel^tm so now you need to pay me 10 billion dollars for each wheel you produce. Or what about this: I invented the wheel^tm and you, you specifically, can't use it for the next 30 years. Have fun making square wheeled bicycles while your competitors get to use my round wheel^tm.

Show me something that is as essential as the wheel that people re being prevented from using due to patents.

 

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

Never mind the fact I didn't invent circles or the manufacturing processes I used to make it... if you make something round that spins it's a wheel^tm and it belongs to me.

I've mentioned copyright but the exact same arguments apply to patents and trademarks. They're all bad in that they all seek to assign ownership of ideas.

Now show me a simple thing like a circle that is patented.

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

I don't want anyone to own it.

Then release it under public domain. 

 

 

 

Seriously, you are not actually giving any reasons as to why copyright/IP is bad other than saying you don't like it and trying to tie it to things that aren't copyright or IP problems.

 

 

[Mihle]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

I don't want anyone to own it.

Then you can say bye bye to any innovation that isnt cheap.

And if you mean with straight copies or very close too, then bye bye to any movies or whatever that have any kind of budget.

[mr moose]

31 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Then you can say bye bye to any innovation that isnt cheap.

And of you mean with straight copies or very close too, then bye bye to any movies or whatever that have any kind of budget.

It really is a communist approach to content and IP. No one is allowed to own it and everyone gets equal share of everything is incredibly similar to the communist model of wealth distribution.  That hasn't worked and I can;t see it working in the future.  No one will take a risk unless there is a reward.

[ARikozuM]

23 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

That won't even the playing field, If the playing field has no rules then there is no winner and there is no way to punish those who are causing more damage than good.    Copyright and IP law are essential for development of technology. Maybe someday in the future when wealth has a different distribution model and is generated through services rather than products,  then maybe it can be abolished, but until then,  no guarantees a company or individual has rights to their own research means no research.

 

 

Millions of years of research and innovation would like a word with you. 

 

Abolish it and all of the sudden there will be more of a push for innovation as no one has their laurels to sit in. 

Spoiler

I'd still be okay with 1 year copyright/trademark and 5-year patent. Just as little amount of time to let them profit while then slowly lighting the flame beneath them.  

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Millions of years of research and innovation would like a word with you. 

 

Abolish it and all of the sudden there will be more of a push for innovation as no one has their laurels to sit in. 

  Hide contents

I'd still be okay with 1 year copyright/trademark and 5-year patent. Just as little amount of time to let them profit while then slowly lighting the flame beneath them.  

 

what research and innovation?

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

what research and innovation?

Quite literally all of it. The first patents didn't start until 15th century Italy or ancient Greek culture. Even then there was far more to leverage by sharing than there was to hide. It wasn't until the Italians starting patents that hiding information was widespread. 

[mr moose]

42 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Quite literally all of it. The first patents didn't start until 15th century Italy or ancient Greek culture. Even then there was far more to leverage by sharing than there was to hide. It wasn't until the Italians starting patents that hiding information was widespread. 

So you are trying to argue that patents which didn't start until a time when financial freedom and open markets became a thing are bad because in the million years leading up to it was what?  a bunch of people building things for dictatorial masters with military control.   Patents served no purpose in most of human history because majority of the people where not in a position to capitalize on their work.  They were subjects to a system, ordered to make things for their kings and dictators.    The total of human development until the 17 century was largely making nails and stacking blocks. 

 

Juxtaposition all that to the start of the 18th century where a product development could literally take you from eating shit in the gutter to living in a mansion,  and the importance of those patents becomes very clear.

 

 

EDIT: just in case you weren't aware, a very large portion of wealthy industrialists in the 18th and 19th centuries started out in abject poverty.   They aspired to owning huge factories and propelling development because they were part of a system that rewarded development regardless of who you are.   If you want a good example of patents and wealth driving innovation look up the Jacquard machine.  He did it because he was a poor boy working a dangerous job under duress and vowed to make a machine that would end that for ever.  He did.

[Pickles von Brine]

This allen wu guy. Sheesh. 

[Bombastinator]

The issue I think is either fix or replace the Patent system.  There are arguments for fix, there are arguments for replace.  The arguments for remove without replacing seem foolish to me.  The entire “defund the police” Is fix or replace.  It is not remove, as is sometimes claimed.  Remove is asinine.   Replacement arguments could be reasonable though.

[Thaldor]

Problem with code and IP rights is that currently code is generally put under CR not patents. Difference here is that CR laws are bribed and corporated as hell while patent laws are mure justified.

 

With CR laws you don't need to worry about your code being copied because Elvis and Mickey Mouse are keeping them under protection. Almost every 10-20 years there is huge bribing, sorry, lobbying to extend the protection time of CR laws because some very huge milking cows are in danger to fall to what Mozard, Bach and others are, public domain, and so the corporation's can't milk them anymore. From 25 years after the death of creator we have moved to 75 years and sooner or later the push is done to extend that to 100 years and probably even later to 125 years and so on as long as old mammoths get their money.

 

Patent on the other hand will expire quite soon and you need to prove and pay to extent that time. No one has really interest to change that because sooner or later patents will expire and others can profit from them. Patents are vague as much as they can be and still manage to be valid, again because corporations. You want to patent rectangle with rounded edges? Go and knock yourself out, by adding a random circle you can do it and take a lot of companies to court from breaking your patent for a rectangle with rounded edges, mostly it doesn't even matter if they have the circle or not as long as you have better lawyers.

 

Common sense? Fuck that concept, law is law and only thing that matters is law and how well you can twist it to your needs. What do we learn? Always copyright your code, Disney and huge publishing corporations will handle so your grand-grand-children can profit from your code if it stays needful. But do keep care that you profit enough from the code so you can take anyone even remotely smelling like using it to court, that part Disney and Warner won't handle with their almost unlimited resources.

 

But on the topic. It's odd how a mere side-branch CEO can "kidnap" the side-branch. Seems like case where someone was way too stupid while making the working contract and forgot to add clauses for being fired by the main-branch. Also they might want to change to more centralised access control so they could lock the former-CEO out and invest into controlled email accounts, work phones and others so they can actually prevent people who are fired from making damage.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Thaldor said:

Problem with code and IP rights is that currently code is generally put under CR not patents. Difference here is that CR laws are bribed and corporated as hell while patent laws are mure justified.

 

With CR laws you don't need to worry about your code being copied because Elvis and Mickey Mouse are keeping them under protection. Almost every 10-20 years there is huge bribing, sorry, lobbying to extend the protection time of CR laws because some very huge milking cows are in danger to fall to what Mozard, Bach and others are, public domain, and so the corporation's can't milk them anymore. From 25 years after the death of creator we have moved to 75 years and sooner or later the push is done to extend that to 100 years and probably even later to 125 years and so on as long as old mammoths get their money.

 

Patent on the other hand will expire quite soon and you need to prove and pay to extent that time. No one has really interest to change that because sooner or later patents will expire and others can profit from them. Patents are vague as much as they can be and still manage to be valid, again because corporations. You want to patent rectangle with rounded edges? Go and knock yourself out, by adding a random circle you can do it and take a lot of companies to court from breaking your patent for a rectangle with rounded edges, mostly it doesn't even matter if they have the circle or not as long as you have better lawyers.

 

Common sense? Fuck that concept, law is law and only thing that matters is law and how well you can twist it to your needs. What do we learn? Always copyright your code, Disney and huge publishing corporations will handle so your grand-grand-children can profit from your code if it stays needful. But do keep care that you profit enough from the code so you can take anyone even remotely smelling like using it to court, that part Disney and Warner won't handle with their almost unlimited resources.

 

But on the topic. It's odd how a mere side-branch CEO can "kidnap" the side-branch. Seems like case where someone was way too stupid while making the working contract and forgot to add clauses for being fired by the main-branch. Also they might want to change to more centralised access control so they could lock the former-CEO out and invest into controlled email accounts, work phones and others so they can actually prevent people who are fired from making damage.

CR = copywrite I take it? Copywrite has some serious limitations vs patent or trademark, but it was badly badly abused by Disney some years ago and the ripples of that damage are still being felt.  The problem was Disney had a lot of copy written stuff that was being used basically as trademark stuff. What was done was to extend copywrite law to have a lot of the same effects as trademark law. What probably should have been done was for a lot of the things that Disney had copy written be converted into trademark, but it isn’t what happened.  The result is a horribly abusable and often abused kludge.

[mr moose]

9 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Problem with code and IP rights is that currently code is generally put under CR not patents. Difference here is that CR laws are bribed and corporated as hell while patent laws are mure justified.

 

With CR laws you don't need to worry about your code being copied because Elvis and Mickey Mouse are keeping them under protection. Almost every 10-20 years there is huge bribing, sorry, lobbying to extend the protection time of CR laws because some very huge milking cows are in danger to fall to what Mozard, Bach and others are, public domain, and so the corporation's can't milk them anymore. From 25 years after the death of creator we have moved to 75 years and sooner or later the push is done to extend that to 100 years and probably even later to 125 years and so on as long as old mammoths get their money.

 

Patent on the other hand will expire quite soon and you need to prove and pay to extent that time. No one has really interest to change that because sooner or later patents will expire and others can profit from them. Patents are vague as much as they can be and still manage to be valid, again because corporations. You want to patent rectangle with rounded edges? Go and knock yourself out, by adding a random circle you can do it and take a lot of companies to court from breaking your patent for a rectangle with rounded edges, mostly it doesn't even matter if they have the circle or not as long as you have better lawyers.

 

Common sense? Fuck that concept, law is law and only thing that matters is law and how well you can twist it to your needs. What do we learn? Always copyright your code, Disney and huge publishing corporations will handle so your grand-grand-children can profit from your code if it stays needful. But do keep care that you profit enough from the code so you can take anyone even remotely smelling like using it to court, that part Disney and Warner won't handle with their almost unlimited resources.

 

But on the topic. It's odd how a mere side-branch CEO can "kidnap" the side-branch. Seems like case where someone was way too stupid while making the working contract and forgot to add clauses for being fired by the main-branch. Also they might want to change to more centralised access control so they could lock the former-CEO out and invest into controlled email accounts, work phones and others so they can actually prevent people who are fired from making damage.

The problem is that CR needs to exist, but it is a double edged sword,  if it is written up in such a way that there are no grey areas and no way for large corporations to abuse it, then what you have is a law that treats a teens piracy of a spicegirls song with the same criminal intent as a man making millions out of illegal copies of windows.   

 

It is unfortunate that people will abuse the system, but that is not because the system is flawed, far from it, it is because people are flawed and the legal system tries to protect everyone in a reasonable manner.  

 

The take away from this is as you say,  copyright your work if you value it.  If you don't want anyone to own it but want everyone to have it release it under PD.   Or if you are really motivated, you can try to lobby for a revamp of the system,  you just need to spend a lot more than a few hours on the internet researching the industry and commerce before you even start to develop an alternative.   And we have to be honest with ourselves and try to understand what is what and accept that we may have to change our ideals, not just look for what satisfies them ignoring other people. 

[thorhammerz]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

It really is a communist approach to content and IP. No one is allowed to own it and everyone gets equal share of everything is incredibly similar to the communist model of wealth distribution.  That hasn't worked and I can;t see it working in the future.  No one will take a risk unless there is a reward.

They'll pretend to work so long as the party pretends to pay them .

[Thaldor]

10 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

CR = copywrite I take it? Copywrite has some serious limitations vs patent or trademark, but it was badly badly abused by Disney some years ago and the ripples of that damage are still being felt.  The problem was Disney had a lot of copy written stuff that was being used basically as trademark stuff. What was done was to extend copywrite law to have a lot of the same effects as trademark law. What probably should have been done was for a lot of the things that Disney had copy written be converted into trademark, but it isn’t what happened.  The result is a horribly abusable and often abused kludge.

Copyright, but basicly yes. It is abused to hell and back and generally seen as "well made democratic law" as long as you agree that when you have four parties in a table from which three vote and two are basicly the same (publishers, artists (through producers/agents), consumers and the government; pretty much the first two will vote as one and the government doesn't have a vote, so it's always 2 against 1 and "democracy" wins). Also just that how huge resources the one side has in their use, you wanna take whole parliament to a "education weekend" to Alps everything paid? That is amount of money they make in mere hours and what dog does bite the hand that feeds.

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Copyright, but basicly yes. It is abused to hell and back and generally seen as "well made democratic law" as long as you agree that when you have four parties in a table from which three vote and two are basicly the same (publishers, artists (through producers/agents), consumers and the government; pretty much the first two will vote as one and the government doesn't have a vote, so it's always 2 against 1 and "democracy" wins). Also just that how huge resources the one side has in their use, you wanna take whole parliament to a "education weekend" to Alps everything paid? That is amount of money they make in mere hours and what dog does bite the hand that feeds.

That was not a reasoned argument as far as I could tell.  It was a hypothetical that never happened.  This isn’t loophole theory.  Diving at an instance of minutiae is the same as massive abstraction.  It’s like That whole “a movie is just a number” trick.  Expanding till you find a loop hole or contracting till one is found makes no difference.  It’s an argumentative technique.  Massive abstraction is occasionally useful but it is very often not accurate. 
 

copywrite law is different than it used to be.  Those differences were pushed through by Disney for its own purposes and have caused massive problems.   That’s history.  It happened.  Doesn’t mean it’s good or right or useful.  Bad things happen.  Claiming that because of this change nothing at all is preferable does not follow. 

[Kisai]

On 7/30/2020 at 5:47 PM, dizmo said:

You can only go so far by continuously stealing other peoples IP. That will be China's greatest failing; not having people that can innovate, only those that can copy. You'll never get ahead with that mindset. You'll be at best on par.

 

Maybe that's a good thing. China needs to be stopped.

The only way you can do business in China as a non-Chinese entity is to joint-venture with a local Chinese company so they can steal your IP and sell it behind your back to your home country. Now not everything is really that valuable, but you have situations where a company from the US, UK or Canada decided they wanted China's business so they played ball, and then later that company they setup breaks away from them and starts bidding against them on international bids.

 

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/11/how-to-form-a-china-joint-venture-part-3-is-it-all-just-to-steal-your-ip.html

Quote

This is the classic technique for using a Chinese joint venture to steal foreign intellectual property. This technique has though been refined a bit since then and the current standard technique works as follows:

• Foreign company offers to sell complex and expensive technology on a standard technology licensing basis.

• After much discussion, the Chinese side indicates the price is too high for untested technology. The Chinese side then offers to establish a joint venture company where the foreign side will own some percentage of the to be formed China Joint Venture.

• The foreign side contributes one unit of its technical system in exchange for its ownership interest. The Chinese side contributes the rest. The contribution of means that the JV now owns the technology for China. The JV agrees to the purchase a number of units at full price after the first unit is up and running properly.

• The foreign company then delivers and fully trains the Chinese side on how to operate the foreign company’s technology.

• The Joint Venture never purchases any additional units, claiming the foreign company’s technology does not work properly. The foreign company eventually discovers its technology has been cloned and is being actively utilized by an unrelated (usually state owned) company in China. Since the JV owns the technology, this unauthorized use infringes upon the JV’s intellectual property. The JV must therefor sue to defend its rights. But, the JV is controlled by the Chinese side and the JV management refuses to take any legal action.

• The JV then disappears. Normally, the Chinese side simply buys out the foreign side at a substantial discount.

This system in various forms is still being actively used in China. A variant of this system was used to extract high speed rail technology from foreign companies and to extract jet fighter technology from the Russians. There are various ways to prevent this from happening to you, but one of the keys is usually to license your technology to the JV if it will be using it at all and to do so in such a way as to heighten your protections. If your potential JV partner insists on the JV taking ownership of IP, you almost certainly should walk. There are various other things our China lawyers look at and do to protect our clients from thieving JVs, but we are reluctant to reveal everything for fear that doing so will give the Chinese side an edge the next time. Let’s just say you have been warned.

 

[dizmo]

@Kisai Yeah, doesn't really surprise me. It'll be interesting to see once China is no longer the place to go to get cheap labor. India is already the next in line, and I think we'll see China start to scramble when that happens.