18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases 285
decora writes "Loretta Chao of the The Wall Street Journal reports on three people in China who were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months in prison for a plot to make iPad 2 protective cases before the tablet's official release. The plan allegedly involved R&D man Lin Kecheng of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company (FoxConn) selling image data to Hou Pengna, who then passed it to Xiao Chengsong, a manager at MacTop. The charges? One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.' The decision was handed down by the Shenzen Baoan People's Court on June 16."
Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
It's good to see China taking IP seriously for a change.
Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not China taking IP seriously as a matter of principle.
This is China taking the needs of Foxconn seriously, and in this case, Foxconn's need is to demonstrate to its clients that it can be trusted with their sensitive commercial materials, such as the specifications of as-yet-unreleased products.
Re:nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
It has ruined you. If you're posting on /. as an educated geek with a good job and a comfortable life then you are one of the few winners of the system. Most of the West is miserable with no voice loud enough to be heard.
The media in every regime give the impression that almost everyone is content with that regime, from the US through the USSR all the way to DPRK. Spend time providing help to or even stopping to have a conversation with the homeless, the chronically sick, the nonviolent prisoner. Then move on to the non-smart - it sounds mean, but half the population are intellectually below average and likely have extremely limited opportunity for it. You'll find that people are struggling and miserable. Not yet at the stage of mass consciousness and disloyalty, but that's yet to come.
I'd summarise our problem in three words: reliance on corporation. We suck at supporting ourselves for our own sake, whether that means individually or at a community / region / national level. Since the '50s local community has deteriorated, and since the '80s we've lost a sense of national community. We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.
In short, we're lazy and we suck. We so far following the progress of every other civilisation [google.com] (read the original, check out how well he'd predicted the next half-decade through analysis of other civilisations, and identify where the West is now) into destruction.
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder if the prison has a "glorious people's correctional work for the purpose of moral education"[1] program? He might end up making the real thing.
[1] Not slave labour at all. No no no. Entirely different thing.
What's with the trolling, slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.
Why make it out like they are victims?
They didn't get time in prison for making iPad 2 cases, but instead for stealing the secrets necessary to make them before the iPad 2 even came out.
Re:How gives a shite (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you ACs get paid to post crap like this? This's The People's Republic of China we're talking about, not just any other "their country."
A small number of Chinese entrepreneurs are being crushed for the economic crime of noticing, seizing upon, and capitalising on an opportunity. Nobody was harmed in the process, but they're being crushed anyway, either for stepping out of line or for not paying the correct bribe.
Hearing that this stuff still happens crushes my soul. You should be ashamed for not feeling the same (never heard the term "empathy"?).
Spent any time in the Bamboo Archipelago lately? Their lives will not be much fun in the next few years, and for what? So some Chinee bigshot can tell Steve that his secrets are safe. Yay. If I were Steve, I'd be slapping Foxconn exec heads for creating yet another unnecessary employee relations debacle.
Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)
These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.
Yes, and they should have been punished but years in prison? You realize these weren't military components for a nuclear missile right?
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.
[1]. An uncle of my grandfather, an uneducated factory worker, was promoted to "senior worker" which was for people with no formal training but with work experience who proven they have a clue how to do their job. That was enough to be labelled "an agent of the bourgeoisie" and be taken away by the DHS^H^H^H UB never to be seen again.
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).
If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.
That doesn't really sound like communism to me. Besides, Animal Farm was not a critique of the ideology, it was a critique of the aforementioned implementations and their totalitarianism, Orwell himself was a socialist.
Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:a little understanding? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not nitpicking, he was using his claimed personal experience with a corrupt and flawed regime that in turn claimed to be based on an ideology to back up his claim that the ideology at hand represents those things which the regime represented even though it is common knowledge that the ideology does not represent these things.
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a little understanding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck = has to be a duck.
People are essentially people. You cannot get them to voluntarily give up what they perceive as "theirs", without resorting to force/totalitarianism eventually, which in turn eventually, degrades to an authoritarian/fascist state. It has never worked even once in history.
Re:a little understanding? (Score:3, Insightful)
And this "ideology" was proven again and again to lead to corrupt and flawed regimes.
Because it is just another tool to fool masses and get to the top. It was never supposed to be more than propaganda piece that plays on human greed and envy.
Re:a little understanding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every single form of government can (and at some point does) lead to totalitarianism. Ideologies are perfect. Humans are not. So no matter what form of government is implemented it eventually corrodes under the human tide of greed and corruption.
Communism fails in practice (on a large scale) because it goes against human nature. Humans are not nice, altruistic beings. It takes an iron fist to make humans in general conform to any system like communism. This leads to communism having a very short lifespan before the system corrupts.
At the same time, democracy is not a magic shield against this either. A rather stark example is Nazi Germany, which went from a democracy to authoritarian dictatorship in just a handful of years.
All it takes is apathy and/or fear to slide a government into authoritarianism. Concentrate wealth and power at the top and you have a perfect setup for stripping away freedom and rights. Get enough talking heads and charismatic people on your side, and you'll even have the people you're screwing over help you attain your goals.