China: All Your Source Code Are Belong to Us
- Categories: International, News
- Date: Apr 28, 2009 02:14 JST
- Tags: Business, China, Copyright, Law, Made in China, Politics, Software, USA
China has set in motion plans to force all foreign companies operating in China to share their source code with Chinese companies.
The governments of the US, Japan and Europe are objecting ferociously to what in China is likely to amount to state mandated piracy of their software secrets.
The system will mandate that companies producing electronics in China must disclose the source code to any firmware or other pertinent software to the Chinese “partner.”
Provisions are even included for Chinese staff to visit and check up on the manufacturers in the US, Japan or elsewhere, to ensure they have disclosed it all.
Companies who refuse to surrender their intellectual property in this way will be barred from exporting their goods from China.
One of China’s excuses for this is that it wants to ensure proper security for the code used in ATMs and smart cards, so as a result the details of their encryption systems will have to be shared with the highly reliable Chinese manufacturers, ensuring the Chinese can work on improving security for the world’s banking systems.
The law has been in the works for some time now, but now China has announced it will be brought into effect in May. A “grace period” will operate for a time, to give companies the chance to prepare to hand everything over.
Western countries are indignant at the law, but have yet to act decisively in response.
An important strategy used by producers outsourcing to China has been to ensure that technologically sophisticated elements of the production process are kept out of the hands of Chinese factory managers, to the extent of restricting such production steps to more reliable nations, or of using non-Chinese engineers and managers in the sensitive areas.
This measure seems designed specifically to foil any such efforts to prevent sensitive intellectual property being appropriated wholesale by less than scrupulous Chinese operators.
Via Yomiuri.
To put this in context, for a long time now China has operated a system where, in order to receive permission to do business in China, foreign companies have had to partner with a domestic company.
Naturally, there is the expectation that the Chinese company will eventually supplant the foreign devil company through a not necessarily voluntary or legal process of “technological transfer.”
Of course, Japan in the past operated similar highly untoward systems through its infamous “METI” ministry, and emerged the better for it (probably at huge expense to international companies). The issue appears to be rather when China will realise the wealthier it becomes, the less tolerable these practices are internationally.
We must also wonder what the many foreign companies piling into China for the dubious privilege of training a low-cost competitor who will receive all their IP are thinking…
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I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords!
As for the IP bullshit that's so prevalent:
``Sometimes Meeker switches between “intellectual property” and “copyright” as if they were two names for the same thing. Sometimes she switches between “intellectual property” and patents as if they were two names for the same thing. Having studied those two laws, Meeker knows they are vastly different; all they have in common is a rough sketch of their form.
Other “intellectual property” laws don't even share that much with them. The implication that you can treat them all as the same thing is fundamentally misleading.
Along with the term “intellectual property” goes a false understanding of what these laws are for. Meeker speaks of an “ethos” of “intellectual property” that exists in the U.S. because “intellectual property is in the Constitution.” That's the mother of all mistakes.
What is really in the U.S. Constitution? It doesn't mention “intellectual property”, and it says nothing at all about most of the laws that term covers. Only two of them — copyright law and patent law — are treated there.
What does the Constitution say about them? What is its ethos? It is nothing like the “intellectual property ethos” that Meeker imagines.
What the Constitution says is that copyright law and patent law are optional. They need not exist. It says that if they do exist, their purpose is to provide a public benefit — to promote progress by providing artificial incentives.
They are not rights that their holders are entitled to; they are artificial privileges that we might, or might not, want to hand out to encourage people to do what we find useful.
It's a wise policy. Too bad Congress — which has to carry it out on our behalf — takes its orders from Hollywood and Microsoft instead of from us.
If you appreciate the U.S. Constitution's wisdom, don't let “intellectual property” into your ethos; don't let the “intellectual property” meme infect your mind.
Practically speaking, copyright and patent and trademark law have only one thing in common: Each is legitimate only as far as it serves the public interest. Your interest in your freedom is a part of the public interest that must be served.''
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-ip-ethos.html
There is hardly any incentive to innovate apart from the public interest altruism if you don't charge monopoly price for something with the marginal cost of basically 0. You seem to have a firm conviction in public interest, but you've got to get out of your own box and realise different people probably have different idea about public interest as much as their private interest. Perhaps there are lots of people out there who don't even think all these crazy computer crap is in public interest! One of the reasons why most of the developed world has chosen free market over planned economy is because history has shown that it was more than difficult to centrally coordinate "interest" and resources, thus the economy, so they've resolved to leave it to a mechanism of rules instead, and that mechanism is called market. Yes it's devoid of heart and neurotically pious to this crazy faith that somehow everything would work itself out. Even more challenging than other problems associated with property in capitalism, "intellectual property" faces the inevitability of monopoly, either by evil corporates or the governments. However, history has demonstrated that government / public sector was ineffective in forcing people to innovate, USSR was a good example of the chaotic allocation of resources, and invention tainted with other agenda. I knew some brilliant white hats who staunchly advocated open source, and as much as they, and perhaps you, who believe in the possibility of a free sharing, free creating network of innovation because of your own ability and good heart, but it's not feasible at the wider level beyond your immediate circle. Just like one might share a cake with their families but not all the strangers in a park, it's nothing but an Utopian pipedream to imagine everyone being in a big family of sharing and caring. It's simply beyond sensible cognition to ask people not to objectify what's beyond familiar to them. it will work if the whole world is white hat, as much as communism will work if everyone is communist, as much as free market libertarianism will work if everyone is perfectly rational with perfect access to information.
I'm neither a free-marketer nor a socialist so my take is that, at the end of the day, whichever sustains incentives to innovate should be the chosen system. This move by China is certainly highly beneficial to the Chinese public interest at the expense of the foreign countries investing there, by basically legally robbing other people's innovation. This is not an issue of intellectual property as much as the blatant assertion of might by an ever more powerful authoritarian regime. Powerful governments are pragmatic and they will remove intellectual property or impose intellectual property which ever they see fit. But at the end of the day, the innovation of this world is clearly shown in patents, which the USA has 1/3 of all, and China & my country Australia have only just over 1% respectively. It's curious why such an evil system of intellectual property create innovation, isn't it?
My main gripes, which you've glossed over, are
1. pretending that the patents, copyright and trademarks are faces of the term 'intellectual property', when in reality, these three are considered and _act_ very different from one another.
2. pretending that 'intellectual property' is anything like physical property.
Instead, you've introduced new gripes of mine:
1. using the terms communism and socialism as if they were synonyms.
2. equating patents with 'innovation'. There's nothing to brag about in having a third of the worlds patents when those patents do not serve the purpose they're supposed to: instead of 'patently clear' descriptions of process made available in exchange for a period of protection, today they are unreadable, obfuscated and a veritable minefield: inventors dare not risk reading patents because they, simultaneously, can't understand the deliberately confusing verbiage, but they're also liable for triple the damages if they _do_ happen to infringe the patent they attempted to read.
Of the triumvirate, copyright isn't in all that better shape: Shakespeare would have the pants sued off him if he tried to pull the stuff he did today.
2.5 using the word 'innovation' akin to IP, without actually defining it.
3. equating libre software with socialism. Consider the following nugget:
"A quarter century ago, when Richard Stallman was upset with the trend away from free software, he didn’t run to Congress seeking legal changes. Rather, he sat down and started building an alternative. One that we know today as the GNU/Linux operating system. He did so without a penny of government support, and without expropriating any resources from his proprietary competitors.
And in the process, he provided a powerful counterexample to many of the standard tropes of copyright and patent debates. In a world where some of the most popular websites on Earth are built on the LAMP stack, it’s awfully hard to argue with a straight face that creativity will only happen if creators are given monopoly rights in their creations. The rest of us can argue until they’re blue in the face about what a world with weaker copyright or patent protections would look like, but Stallman and company have bypassed that debate entirely by offering an existence proof of what an alternative world would look like. It’s awfully hard to argue something can’t happen when it obviously has." from http://techliberation.com/2009/03/17/moglens-socialist-revolution/
How is that not in the spirit of the free market?
Forgive me for not addressing other points you might have raised; I'd be willing to debate on one of these points, but arguing them all is both futile and a waste of time.
Watch all the jobs go to India in 5... 4....
I gues this is revenge for that trade embargo a while back.
Revenge of the Fallen ( prices of labour)
Now these companies who went to China for "low cost" production are discovering what the TRUE cost is. There's no line entry on the accounting sheets for the cost of trying to do business in a country that has no ultimate respect for the concept of private property and contracts -- without which your business is always subject to takeover by the state.
Also, I would be shocked if Russia weren't all over this, immediately contacting companies to get them to move production to Russia.
As well, since the U.S. government is completely owned by the corporations, expect some reaction from the U.S., which might tumble us all into that Depression we're on the edge of.
We live in interesting times, indeed.
What a tactic China >.>
Trying to legally pirate IPs I see >.>
The time has come to tell them to stick it.
Declaring the plans for the copycat high-speed trains to be their intellectual property may have been just to test the water. Now this..
As far as I can tell, the Chinese have no business ethics whatsoever. If we don't fight this new "law, it's the beginning of our end. Depending on what else they have up their sleeve, it may already be too late.
US is also do the same thing in medicine. If you want to sell medicine in US, although it already proofed work fine, you still need to open your recipe and how to produce those medicine. The EVIL America trying to stole our secret recipe.
US is also do some censorship in video game, even for M rating. Their politician also complaining about violence and sexual theme in M rating game??? M rating you idiot! I think US politician need to learn how to read ABC again.
Japan even worse, they censoring the genital part in AV, comic, etc. Very undemocratic, they should listen to the people voice, not became dictator like Saddam Hussein.
At least the US takes pattent law seriously. The Chinese firms are producing knockoffs five years after the contracts are signed.
Reminds me of the Russian Su-27 avionics that they thought were unhackable. The chinese cracked them in two years.
hm... I'm chinese and if this is true then it's messed up, but why don't i see this as a news being reported anywhere else on the web?
China? Piracy? lolwut?
"a country is only as good as the people who run it, in this case, shit"
it's like making their people animal
guh, i hate their system
Hahaha, all is fair in love and war.
Piracy is legal!
There, they said it.
China people are bunch of racist to us and stalker as well!
get a life Chinese people
. . . what you just said IS racism. . .
Change your ways before before talkin abut other people. . .
Someone needs to create a new OS and Language.
Fxxx it and they dun even need employ hackers to get the codes!A truly brilliant move from the fxxxing communists! Where are the celestial beings when we need them?
I'm glad I'm a Malaysian-Chinese. I'd rather go to US/Japan/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Singapore but certainly NOT China
Maybe you do not want to certain parts of the US yet.
But I agree with you about the going to other parts but China.
China: All Your Source Code Are Belong to Us(and it will be available on pirated PC Discs for only 99 cents so buy one now and get free limited edition Pentagon secret files downloads if you call for the next five minutes).Wow,China's telemarketing is really something.
It's a good thing the Chinese company we're partnered with is too incompetent to do anything useful with out source code.
Easy answer for the companies making products in China: add the chips with embedded code elsewhere, or (in the case of EEPROMS) flash them elsewhere.
If I were the China goverment, I'd be more concerned about the code in devices being _imported_.
U.S. government worked with U.S. manufacturers to embed code in printers (and FAX machines?) which allowed the U.S. government to snoop.
How do you set things up so that manufacturers aren't forced to "give away the store", and yet still make things sufficiently transparent for the countries importing devices so that they can determine whether or not those hardware/software devices contain spyware (or built-in "die when command 'X' is sent" code)?
This is what they were doing up until now.
Great, a lot of SBs excited until orgasm based on those shit rumors!!! such as this news and "China: Destroy Japanese Anime!""
lol
go on...
Your own government's policies are rumours?
Those news not real, ok?
that just from Japanese website.
ok, i know
you no need to make sure any news you put here,
because u just need sth can be made use of Anti-China!
Go on...
GREAT!!!Artefact!!!
what are u talking about?
"plenty of English language sources for all this" means this is true?
What logic!
If you check the sources from China BBS,
most of these news are rumours and distortions.
AND ALL of your "weird China news" are from the "weird board" of 163, baidu and so on.
The Japanese web translate it frist, and you'll translate it again and write some stupid titles and articles.
such as "Dog Walking Chinese Style"
here is the source of Chinese BBS
the title is "无锡马路上拍到最残忍无耻的一幕"
and check the comments, ererybody was accusing this action.
and check your title and the comments here!
it represent Chinese...lol
An action which no Chinese support it could represent Chinese.
So good.
No one blindly supporting China gov.
Many young people censure gov. in their BLOG erery day, most of netizens DO NOT like many policies of gov, but not base on rumours.
just u guys are blindly libeling China...FOR FUN.
Not these site cause your bias, and this debate cannot correct it also.
artefact is just a shitty lowlife human who has so many spare time in his life, so, to make his miserable life more productive he started grabbin' weird, outdated, biased, and otaku related news all over the world and compile it in a blog called Sankaku Complex..
now, you must acknowledge yourself first that before entering this site, be prepared that your race might be ridiculed in his articles and you might find some pictures here offensive..
where was I? oh yeah, China ftw...lol
There are plenty of English language sources for all this, so please consider checking it yourself before blindly supporting the wretched actions of the PRC in this area.
from one or two Japanese source is not very convincing, the article if true obviously stated foreign companies in general, so i would expect other nations, especially US to headline this somewhere. As of yet, that hasn't happened, so I highly doubt it's validity.
butthurt china fan/chinese fag detected
immature kid detected
I am Chinese. I have to say that our government sucks in many aspects.
The reason is from 'open and reform' policy 30 years ago. To much emphasize on economic development leads to social problems and corrput. Still, i believe one day rules will change since top chinese leaders are fully known what they are doing. The majority middle level governors really suck.
now this is where i put my foot down. and things what there asking to me can start wars... i say nuck the mothers.
You fucking stupid Americans have no idea what the holy business is going on in Holy China!
Yeah,both Communist and Chinese goverment are bullshit,but i believe that Chinese are all Holy and best!Finally,we'll rule the world!
one word: EPIC FAIL
simply solution:
add some wonderfully destructive easter eggs into the source code and let china use it all it wants.
go to canada and play wow
i think japan needs to rape china again.
all chinese products are shit, they destroyed ebay with their clones. FUCKING STICK TO DRY CLEANING AND CHINESE FOOD! FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think America needs more nine-eleven incidents.
I've been trying to find more reliable sources for this piece of news now for five hours...
can't be done.
most reliable I've found so far is a slashdot article from 5th of october, 2008, but it too only links to the Yomiuri article, which no longer exists...
I'm about ready to call shenanigans.
(In case you're wondering, I'm writing a small paper on Chinas foreign and domestic affairs and their attitude towards other countries in general).
what the fuck. i've never heard about this. what a rumour.
this new was come from a .jp site, it can be only a joke.
KILL chinese !
What if people decided to like, quarantine china from the world.
if one source code is made to match products it would be bad effect on all nations put it this way one source code One hacker boom there the theory for you
so why bother shearing that information we all know the US only want to make money
i google for this news and found many of the english sources all linked their sources from Yomiuri. Is there any other english sources who got this piece of news by themselves or from another source that's not from japan?
Just curious how credible is this piece of news.
that is a VERY good point o.o
you should post this to the top of the page
ha. the world will be a lot safer place when everyone have equally big guns. China is making a great leap toward it by enforcing that everyone must know what everyone else know, including how to make the big guns. it might seems that the Chinese will be the only one with the know-how, but China does sell lotsa things to lotsa people. where the heck do you think those nice AK-47 comes from?
i'm amused, really.
oh, and saged for not related to "anime, manga, and game".
Well thank you china. This means, that some manufactories are going to be (re)built in goold ol Europe again. Sharing secret with the bigest trademarkpirate out there? Funny.
This,country,wont,be,slaved,by,others!!
How,crazy,can,one,government,be.
Meh, not really a big deal. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese government already got Windows XP source code from Microsoft, and have their own version of Linux. If Microsoft is willing to cave, what does everyone else have to hide?
Man...this is how wars are started...by stupid people banding together and making stupid demands....
... well, even though this is horrible, it's gonna be kinda hard to like pull out all operations in China, seeing that it is the world's capital in cheap labour and plastics & other manufacturing... but despite the difficulties in relocating the factories, I am sure the companies would find a way. I mean, this is no less than intellectual theft, if you ask me.
Btw, love the paper laptop XD
I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out.
Who wants to place bets on who'll end up losing more money? Options are: 1) Chinese 2) Western Corporations 3) Western Public.
My bet is on the Chinese, followed by the w public. Corporations won't lose that much money since they'll just increase the prices of their products.
Any other takers?
Okay, I'll bet on the Chinese for this reason: they're still buying US "IOUs" and we're just throwing out money hot off the printing presses. If this keeps up, not only will we be screwed, but China and the rest of the Western world will be as well.
The chinese will just manufacture their own "bootleg" products at less than half the price, we will still buy made in china products because we don't want to spend 3x the cost for roughly the same thing and the companies are going to lose money. This is why the companies are hesitant to pull their operations out of China, espicially now during this time of economic crisis if such a senario does occur then the entire American economy hits rock bottom. Although the possibility of the Western Public being surprisingly patriotic and only buying expensive Western made goods is a possibility too...
there can be a "forced patriotism" if countries ban imports from china.
Dropping a nuke on Beijing would probably shut up this shithead regime quite nicely...
if you do that then China will drop a nuke on America, WW3 will erupt China and America will kill each other off and Russia will rule the earth, trust me there is no way for us to win XD
And,all,the,chinese,will,take,up,arms,with,an,offering,
of,US$1.So,the,numbers,is,a,problem,here.
If your keyboard's space button doesn't work, go get a new freaking one before posting comments that look retarded.
yeah ...cause in the end NO ONE wants russia to rule the world..!!!! say NO to WW3!!!
Shoving a nuke up your ass would shut you up pretty nicely too :D
I'll bet you the world will go in flames if you do that..China is not that easy to wage war with, sicko!
Thanks to China, I got Demigod for 50 cents. Thank you o great nation of hackers and RAZOR 1911
I say the world consider China a lost cause and ostracize it from the rest of the world...further.
NO WINDOWS 7 FOR CHINA
Just so you're all aware, MS has already provided source codes of their programs to China, and I suspect they will continue to do so.
MS sourcecode is accessible for academic purposes afaik.
I'll be laughing my ass of if any of it find its way into china's Redflag linux though..
that could be hard for earth, considering almost all products are being outsourced to china (even our beloved figures and the like).
Game
"NO WINDOWS 7 FOR CHINA"
Um, isn't that more of a reward?
:)
Windows 7 is brilliant
Hahaha maybe you should get a new machine.
Well test it during about a week and go back to XP. You'll see the difference in performance... Your Xp will feel like a Ferrari.
In counter strike source, I lost 20 fps in average, and the system response seems so great now under XP.
But, I have to say there are some features which are interesting.
yeah i also think that using an unpolished beta version is exactly equivalent to what will be my experience with the final product.
i'm also slightly retarded. ^________^;
Slooooww-poooookkke...
damn ryt!
maybe your machine is a slowpoke, lol...
if they cant get windows 7, they'll just make a pirated copy of it.
And the thing is, it'll be better too.
They'll just make a better version of it like what they did with the bootleg vista XD
Yay...eventually China will get to copy their own version of the F1 Ferrari (called the "fail-lalee"), the PS3 (called the "Pi-Yi 3"), and their own version of System of A Down's "Chop Suey" (called...well..."Chop Suey).
No offense, but this law is much more ridiculous than the one in Britain about Basket Pushers.....
you missed out the already there P5P
as long as the capitalists are depending to communist China for cheap mass production, there will be blood..lol
agree... THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
and fake blood
... I HAVE YOUR MILKSHAKE!! I DRINK IT ALL!
Pirated copies of it
the product of stem cell research, perhaps? maybe in the future you'll see a lot of brangelina babies...lolololol!
pirated copies of sperm? D:
....and sperm
and there will be cardboard box laptops!!
i looked at my pet dog's back.. it says
"Made in China" D:
Well, I guess we'll be paying a little more for our electronics when the companies pull all their production out of China.
not just a little bit... try doubling or tripling the cost, I don't know about the rest of you but I'm not gonna start paying double the price for everything even if it means china does take over the world just like how they already took over the economic trade market...
when they are raping you and your family, will you be happy knowing it is what saves you half the price on your precious electronics?
u r either an ignoramus or just an idiot, try speaking sensibly or shut the f... up. we 1st world countries or or more correctly,foreign devil's have been 'raping these' 2nd/3rd' country's in all of south east asia and india of all their resourses for our own profits and leaving them bare, for centuries. china is just making sure we don't add them to ur list of conquests. remember what americans have done to their own native indians and what the british empire have done to the aborigini's or to any natives from any where we invaded. us 1st worlder's r a disgrace to humankind.
Way to put toys above principles.
you sir, just got butt raped by China. enjoy your butt hurt.
Well as long the qualities are good, I don't really mind paying the extra money... it's hard for me to trust china goods especially electronics in terms of quality...