By your criterion, what Samuel Slater did was also immoral. Yet I'd argue it was actually for the common good. There's an argument to be made that most IP law itself is immoral as it grants monopoly rights whereas in most other context we recognize monopolies as naturally immoral. In fact, it goes against a very natural inclination to share interesting knowledge and stories.
IP law is an attempt to recognize that there's some value in granting limited term immoral monopolistic rights because it net produces a better result longer term. That doesn't mean that IP law itself doesn't open up an immoral land grab and is itself open to abuse. Similarly, we obviously recognize that the commitments themselves may be immoral & thus can be broken (e.g. marriage to an unfaithful spouse) or licenses with immoral clauses should be free to be broken (e.g. you can't sell yourself into bondage).
That's not to say that your experience isn't one where the other player was immoral. I'm just trying to broaden the horizon of the discussion beyond your personal story to how we should think about IP more broadly. It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it and that illusion stems from how the Western legal and education systems work (which is a whole other topic - passing off another's work in education is "plagiarism" whereas if you do it literature it's "ghost writing").
The amount of mental gymnastics going on to validate IP theft in the GP’s comment is unreal. Assuming the comment is true (and it matches with enough documented cases to warrant that assumption), they had an agreement, Huawei clearly violated it and then usurped it illicitly and immorally. This is not a good thing. It’s even worse that there are no consequences for bad actions because China is playing an extremely asymmetric game. As a result, if the GP’s company went under, you’re still suggesting this is somehow good for the world? It’s good for Huawei, and not many others. Unless you’re Chinese and benefit, know they’re playing for keeps with your losses. This isn’t what trade looks like, it’s not what the WTO agreement was for, and is very zero sum.
I think the commenter would agree with most of what you're saying - I just don't think they care. The argument would be that raising the quality of life of the Chinese citizen through accelerated economic development as brought on by IP theft outweighs the costs of the theft due to the fact that those costs are relatively minor. They'd claim that the precedents being set don't matter, because they were set by all those other counties throughout history already. The claim would be that while China may be breaking the rule de jure, the de facto playbook has already been written by convention.
No, it's wrong for anyone. And in this case, the German company has recourse to actually sue the US military, and with plenty of history backing this up, can actually win!
Good luck trying to sue the Chinese military for contract breach of installing software on more computers than specified...
Further, note that this is an instance of piracy versus IP theft that then directly competes with the original source, as a coordinated playbook with government support to advance local industries. It's pretty much apples & oranges.
As almost all companies that relied on their productivity to get ahead. China does blatantly copy tech in some cases. Companies accepted that risk.
Of course it is good for China to copy the technology, it is not that other nations are exempt from industrial espionage. That they do it so openly is due to the leverage they have.
> By your criterion, what Samuel Slater did was also immoral. Yet I'd argue it was actually for the common good.
I'll start with: I know I can never be unbiased about this.
But I'm much more comfortable with the US (and Europe, and other democratic societies) engaging in this sort of common-good "theft" than a country like China. The US et al. are of course flawed in our implementation of democratic principles, but I do not look forward to living under Chinese global political/economic dominance. I do not believe an authoritarian government in that position would be a good outcome for humanity.
As I understand history, Slater reconstructed technology of which he had gained a robust understanding. That's quite different from theft of an actual constructed artifact, or knowledge that you've licensed. And if he violated patents in the process, they were patents that had force of law only in the United Kingdom.
I think there is room for robust discussion and argument on how long, and for what, patents or other pure ip protection should be granted. I don't believe permanently hiding knowledge, or locking it for indefinite time in the vaults of a single rent-seeking entity is right. But enforcemenbt of time and circumstance limited exclusivity is arguably worth some cost to society, as a means of incenting people and companies to invest in commercializing their innovation. Violating the agreed rules around those things - whether those are contracts, patents, or other forms, is wrong. Specifically, it is theft.
IP law is an attempt to recognize that there's some value in granting limited term immoral monopolistic rights because it net produces a better result longer term. That doesn't mean that IP law itself doesn't open up an immoral land grab and is itself open to abuse. Similarly, we obviously recognize that the commitments themselves may be immoral & thus can be broken (e.g. marriage to an unfaithful spouse) or licenses with immoral clauses should be free to be broken (e.g. you can't sell yourself into bondage).
That's not to say that your experience isn't one where the other player was immoral. I'm just trying to broaden the horizon of the discussion beyond your personal story to how we should think about IP more broadly. It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it and that illusion stems from how the Western legal and education systems work (which is a whole other topic - passing off another's work in education is "plagiarism" whereas if you do it literature it's "ghost writing").