3 Foxconn Employees Charged For Leaking iPad 2 Design 178
syngularyx writes "Three employees from Taiwan-based Foxconn Electronics' (Hon Hai Precision Industry's) plants in Shenzhen, China, have been charged with leaking the iPad 2's design to outside accessory companies in China, according to a Chinese-language sznews.com report. Several online shopping retailers in China were able to sell iPad 2 protective case products before the iPad 2 was even launched, leading Foxconn to suspect that there might have been some employees leaking the design of iPad 2, which it reported to the local police."
remember the guy who was tortured & went suici (Score:5, Insightful)
there was a foxconn employee who lost a prototype or something .
he told several people that he was tortured.
he later committed suicide.
of course, if he had been on facebook and 'bullied', his case would be on Oprah and celebrities would be filming bizarre public service ads about 'how to stop bullying'.
but since he was just another replacable chinese worker, instead his case gets shouted down by mac fanboys who try to minimize what Steve Jobs and Foxconn are complicit in - Dickensian working conditions in a repressive police state.
'Leaking' is a bullshit phrase used to invent 'spies' when most 'leaked' information is either leaked by accident, incompetence, or higher up managers who are being payed. Every fucking case of espionage it works like this, from Aldrich Ames (ten+ years of spying, but he was a high up official so nobody got him until some old ladies at CIA decided to go after him) to Wen Ho Lee ( a low level nuclear weapons simulation programmer who was accused of 'espionage' for backing up his programs to tape... his persecution turned out to be entirely motivated by politics and the media cycle in washington, and had nothing to do with him ever leaking anything)
its all fucking PR, bullshit, and lies. do not fucking drink the fucking koolaid.
you are a free human being, and you have natural rights. one of them is to talk. another is to be free from inane prosecutions by incompetent bureaucrats and clueless officials. by drumming this idea into your head that 'leaking' is a 'crime', they are trying to destroy free speech by brainwashing you into thinking it doesnt really exist. it does exist. its as free as the air and as free as the mind god gave you.
A few months ago, China threw a girl in a labor camp for being sarcastic on twitter. BEfore that, they threw a guy in prison because he ran a website about the poisoned baby-milk scandal. Recently they have thrown artists and others in prison for similar bullshit reasons.
This is the system that is trying to make you believe that 'leaking' is a 'serious crime'.
the only thing criminal here are the systems themselves, and the nooses they keep tightening around the necks of humanity.
contracts - like geohot and the PSN? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony sued Geohot - one of the claims was that he clicked 'accept' to a PSN user agreement. somehow they claim that is a contract. its total nonsense becasue 1, he claimed he never clicked it and 2. EULAs are not contracts nor should they be considered when they are 100 pages long and nobody can understand them.
again, they are trying to brainwash humanity into thinking that ordinary human behavior is a crime.
and if you think the law is fair on this, try going after some gigantic company that breaks its contract with you.
oh wait, AT&T just got a supreme court ruling that says that .... class action lawsuits can't occur anymore if you 'agree' to the 'contract' where it says you have to accept binding arbitration.
congratulations, your legal rights are being stripped away one by one by megacorporations. pretty soon you wont be able to eat, drink, or shit without signing a fucking 100 page contract where you agree that you have no rights anymore.
Re:goatse's asshole charged with leaking (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear /.
Is there a way to report fucktards who want to turn /. into a nanny-state, thin skinned, politically correct retard bin?
I find the goatse stuff as distasteful as the next... and a lot more than some I'm sure. But I would rather have those moderated below my threshold than see a nanny site.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:0, Insightful)
Aren't the conditions less harsh then the employees' alternatives? Would you rather them go do something else?
Re:contracts - like geohot and the PSN? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that Employment Agreements are real honest to god 3-4 page dead tree contracts that you have to physically put pen to, and that you actually are free to talk to someone if you're uncomfortable with the terms of. This is completely fucking different from a 100 page agreement that you scroll to the bottom of and tap "Accept" on, and claiming otherwise is disingenuous and frankly bullshit.
Only Apple would have a cow over this. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's so Apple. A case designer needs some basic info about the outside dimensions, like height, width, thickness, and corner radius. Maybe a bit of info about areas that need to to be uncovered for connector or button access. Only Apple would consider those to be significant trade secrets. Especially since this is Model #2 of the product, which is probably going to be a lot like Model #1.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what is your solution for Apple's dilemma? They're trying to release their product, and not be ripped to pieces by cheap chinese knockoffs from companies who never had to eat the costs of design and R&D. Should the government subsidise them for their losses? Should they just refrain from releasing hardware in the future? Should we allow people to voluntarily enter into contracts to not talk about certain aspects of their working life? Without some actual solution to the problems that arose to present this situation, you might as well argue that time travel is a moral imperitive; you may make a pursuasive argument, but the argument itself will produce no positive change, and the argument is practically worthless.
Also, on a more personal note, I find arguments like this leave a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. It seems that the source of pursuasion comes not from demonstration that your position is right (or that their position is wrong), but from making people feel uncomfortable for believing the opposing side. If I believe that leaking private secrets is immoral, you are trying to implant the idea that this is because I have been brainwashed by companies, thus making me feel stupid or used for that belief, instead of convincing me that the belief is wrong. Who knows? Perhaps this idea that companies are implanting in our minds is 100% correct? Nothing in your argument addresses this, rather it preys off the ad hominem fallacy: that if someone as bad as corporations want us to believe it to be true, then it must be false.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't the conditions less harsh then the employees' alternatives? Would you rather them go do something else?
That's a very bad and obvious strawman, even for an AC.
It frames the argument by presenting a binary choice that is not explained. You _must_ choose between something bad or something unknown that is _worse_.
What this ignores is that there are more options, such as fair pay and conditions. However this would cause prices to rise which is why people dont like it and dismiss it as an option. A binary choice is bad as it deflects attention away from choices you find uncomfortable but may actually be better as well as alternatives you haven't thought of.
I once was asked this by a Philipina girl.
"why are Kano [American] rich and Pinoy [Philipino] poor?"
The best answer I could think of was education. I responded.
ME "how many years of school did you finish?"
HER "I didn't go to school, too expensive"
ME "who taught you to read and write"
HER "My Uncle"
Education in general is not as bad as this in the Philipines, this girl was from Samar, the poorest province of Luzon but it's nowhere near the 12 years we get at practically no cost in the west. BTW, I'm Australian not American, Kano (Americano) has just evolved into a name for all us whities.
The Worst Strawman Of all (Score:5, Insightful)
What this ignores is that there are more options, such as fair pay and conditions. However this would cause prices to rise which is why people dont like it and dismiss it as an option.
You know what is a REALLY bad strawman? To put up an alternate reality that is not possible and claim it is a "choice" that is being ignored.
Lets say magically you convinced a company to pay workers at a chinese assembly plant the same wages they would get in the U.S. Who would hire that plant? You have all of the downsides of interacting with people very far away, and for the same cost you could just build the thing at home.
So you mythical company with full pay has no customers, and goes out of business. The people with supposedly "fair pay and conditions" instead find there is no job at all.
From there you have to start sliding backwards away from "fair pay and conditions" to meet reality. The reality that you ignore that for China, the amount people working at places like Foxconn get IS "fair pay and conditions", because in fact the other choices they have are far worse. By trying to raise either side of that equation you drive companies to other parts of the world and instead of helping, you are putting people out of work. Other people have noted elsewhere that the supposed suicide factory of Foxconn has a lower percentage rate of suicide than the U.S., something which should be making you re-think assumptions about what is fair, what is a good rate of pay, and how exactly you help people without screwing them over.
You like thought terminating cliche's dont you? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're using the same logical fallacy as the AC. Except it's even less thought out.
You're preventing other options from existing in your example by means of using loaded language. What happens if China begins a push towards workers rights. Europe as a whole did this in about 50 years. China wont even need a revolution, all they need is for the idea to be popular in government. In fact they've already planned for it, why do you think the Chines have such an interest in East African politics?
You're using the same argument that there can only be one outcome and all other options must be blanked out.
Now this is just a justification to help yourself with the decision you've already made.
This is a fallacious argument designed to alleviate yourself of guilt. Bad things are justified because a potential alternative is worse, the problem with this thinking is that you've had to deny the possibility of other options in order to accomplish this.
There are alternatives, you simply don't want to accept them because it would require you giving up or admitting something you don't want to..
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have all got a modicum of labour rights with the ability to produce cheap stuff. Taiwan and Japan will actually hold a company to account over serious problems.
Re:Larry Ellison: America's Greediest CEO (Score:3, Insightful)
Property ownership is a social construction, ownership of fiat money doubly so.
He has all that money because society has granted him the privilege as reward for whatever he is supposed to have done to benefit society. If society considers the reward excessive, it will take some of it away - or simply stop protecting him.
If you don't like this, you can live in an alternative reality where humans are slaves who have no choice but to live by your principles - principles which seem to be based on the childish notion that any man who objects to the super-rich, especially the super-rich who got their break selling to government, is simply "an envious whiner". Until then, stop preaching and start accepting a world where society reflects the will of a sufficiently numerous and powerful group, and the best we can do is stop any single subset of special interests getting too powerful.