Because there’s not enough hours in the day to link to trivially-searched information to counter every ignoramus that thinks their opinion matters anyway.

I’m not their Google/Duckduckgo/Bing/Baidu/whatever stenographer. Google et al are a few keystrokes away. They can do the legwork themselves.

There’s plenty of ignorant right-wing assholes out there who go around spouting utter gibberish about “TEH CCP” (sic) to the point that if I see “CCP” I quickly scan for the usual (inaccurate) talking points, roll my eyes, and move on. The fact you actually managed to say something good about “TEH CCP” (sic) made me think you had a slightly more balanced viewpoint.

Of course your subsequent performance (and your hilarious romp through my past posts that didn’t look even slightly like a toddler throwing a tantrum, nosiree!) made me change my mind, so I’ll be going back to the old policy: If I see “CCP” I assume ignorant jackass and move on.

Copyright laws (and other IP laws) exist in China. Ergo “never existed in Chinese history” is false on the face of it. Q.E.D.

Duh.

Or you could use the proper English initialization from their official English name: Communist Party of China. But hey, why not remain an ignoramus and snark instead?

You seem to have overlooked I actually praised the Communist Party of one of the Chinas in my comment.

I didn’t. It’s why I told you instead of rolling my eyes and ignoring you.

Here’s a little tip for you: If you use “CCP” you’re basically identifying yourself as an ignoramus whose opinions on the topic can be safely ignored. After all if you can’t get the name of an institution correct, what are the odds that you got things that require genuine knowledge and nuance right?

“Not Chinese but here’s what I think about China anyway because I can’t listen instead of speak.”

There are several things to unpack here.

First, if you think Chinese IP (not just copyright) laws are lax, come visit me and try to use the IP of a major Chinese company like, say, Huawei. Just let me keep a safe distance from you while you do it, OK?

Second, where they are “lax” is with specifically foreign IP: copyright or patent or whatever. And even there, if the foreign IP holder has significant presence in China they can come down on infringement like Huawei could. It’s just that foreign IP holders often have no such Chinese presence and are faced with an inability to fight IP infringement in China. You know, exactly like a small player in, say, Thailand being faced with her work being stolen and sold all over the USA might find. Or, even when the foreign entity has presence in the USA … well, shall we ask Samsung how they feel about US courts’ protection of their patents when Apple steals them? (Hint: it doesn’t go well if it’s a foreign company vs. an American one in an American court.)

Third, and most importantly, likely the source of a lot of trouble, is that Chinese IP law is, critically, very different from IP law in western countries. Baseline assumptions are different, for starters. If you come to China in matters that involve valuable IP and you don’t hire a lawyer intimately familiar with CHINESE IP law, you’re going to get fucked and rightly so. It’s pretty arrogant and colonial to assume that every other nation in the world must follow your rules on their own soil. (Consider how you’d react to a flip in this: a Chinese company going to your nation and expecting you to obey Chinese IP law to understand why the notion is ludicrous.)

F/OSS is not the panacea its advocates claim it to be. I mentioned collecting bizarre compiler bugs. GCC has a huge presence in my collection.

And this ignores the fact that F/OSS often has no presence whatsoever in entire industry swathes. F/OSS, for the most part, with some exceptions, lags behind the technology curve when it comes to bleeding-edge tech. This is sometimes the fault of vendor shenanigans (I’m looking at you here, Altera and Xylinx), but often it’s just the problem of a very specific problem domain with very few eyes willing to work on it as a hobby.

Show me now a picture of people walking around public spaces reading papers.

Here’s another stark, but interesting, comparison. (Countries selected as countries I have friends or family in.)

What I see in this is that it’s more than just capitalist and socialist differences. There are some “socialist” nations that did pretty badly in that mess. There are some “capitalist” nations that did OK.

But the real reason for China’s success is spelled out more here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1480168091745075200.html

My guess is that China would have done roughly equally as well under its imperial system because the very nature of the people is different.

I’m not sure this is meaningful. A lot of people yearn back for the days of Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Raygun as well.

Simplify requirements and the tooling and technologies simplify alongside.

Are you paying for my time as a (hypothetical) instance admin? No?

Then please don’t tell me how to spend it.

Some people may enjoy the process of moderating down to fractally infinite depths. Others do not and will use the coarsest settings that minimize their work load. The Fediverse should encompass both kinds.

If you as a user don’t want a moderator who bans entire instances for incompatible rules, find an instance with a moderation/enforcement policy you agree with and move on.

(Or start paying your instance admin a salary to administer the way you want it.)

… the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 …

Ooh! I missed that one!

There was no Tiananmen Square Massacre. At all. This is hinted at in the very title of the piece you quoted: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. There’s a few “facts” you’re going to find out, to your likely intense shock, surrounding that.

1. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Citing the same source you quoted:

Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews and CBS correspondent Richard Roth reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the Square itself.

Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and claimed that he didn’t see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated, “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”

Want non-Chinese sources? How about The Columbia Journalism Review? Read that and a few more similar sources (the finding of which is left as a learning exercise) and upon completion ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

2. No matter what you think you remember, Tank Man did not get run over.

I have met people utterly SHOCKED (indeed shaken to their core) when faced with the evidence that what they “clearly remember”—Tank Man being squished into pulp under the treads of merciless Chinese tanks—never happened, but … it didn’t. If you remember seeing Tank Man killed, you are the victim of very skilled propaganda using carefully timed editing, skillfully worded suggestion, and flat-out lies.

The full video exists showing the aftermath of the famous, iconic shots that shocked the world. It’s a good exercise to seek it out. When you do, ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

3. The real story of what went on is far darker.

Not only because of what it implies for the Chinese people but also because of what it implies for western people. The truth is that there was protests aplenty in Beijing in 1989. And there was a massacre. It’s just that the protests the Chinese government was nervous of were worker protests, not student protests. The thing is that the western press didn’t want to do the actual work (and dangerous work!) of covering these. The children cosplaying revolutionary were far more photogenic and could be covered within a brief walk from the popular journalist hang-out hotel.

Further, the corporate masters of most western media really did not want to be broadcasting stories of workers rising in rebellion against cruel masters. It would have struck far too close to home, that would have. Much better to focus on the cute kiddies playing revolutionary! D’aw! They even have a mock Statue of Liberty they call the Goddess of Democracy! Aren’t they cute!?

The real massacre was near Muxidi. It was a massacre of workers who’d finally had enough and snapped. Who’d rioted and attacked police and PLA. Who were subsequently mercilessly gunned down by machine gun, run over by tanks and APCs and generally slaughtered. It was the low point of governance in the modern era of China and it sparked quiet reforms that continue to this day: some good for the people, some … not so good.

In retrospect the press story never really made any sense. The students at the protests came from all the top universities in Beijing and environs. They were the scions of the most powerful and wealthy people in China. They were the sons and daughters of Chinese leaders! I know that people have been trained for their entire lives into thinking that the Chinese are unthinking, unfeeling robots, but do you seriously believe it extends to the point that Chinese leaders are going to order the massacre of their very own children!?

Ponder that for a while, and ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

4. The protests (and suppressions) didn’t just happen in Beijing.

One of the huge problems I have with the ZOMG THEY KILLED ALL THE STUDENTS IN THE SQUARE!!!1111oneoneoneeleventyone!!! narrative is that not only does it suppress the worker uprising and subsequent bloody suppression in Beijing, it also hides the same uprisings and suppressions that happened all over the place! There were protests in Shanghai. In Fujian province. In Hubei province. In all kinds of places. Workers protested. Low-level Communist Party officials protested. PLA SOLDIERS PROTESTED! This was a nationwide political disaster brewing and all of that is erased in the official western record of cute kids cosplaying counter-revolutionary.

What possible motive could the press have for not reporting this? (It was known to them. You’ll find sources detailing that quite easily once you drop down that particular rabbit hole.) Ponder that and ponder this: what other things have you been lied to about over the course of your life?

5. Things have actually improved since then.

You don’t last as long as absolute dictators as the Chinese government has, over a population as unruly as the Chinese have historically always been, if you’re stupid. While the Chinese government did clamp down and clamp down hard (the better term is “brutally”) on the uprisings (note the plural) they also recognized what led to them and started to, get this, fix the problems.

Jackasses from the west bemoan that the locals don’t want to talk about 1989 with them. There’s three major reasons for this, however.

1. Nobody trusts the west. There’s a long, ignoble tradition of the western press putting sources at risk and then topping it all off by lying. Of fucking course they’re not going to want to talk about politically-sensitive issues, knowing that western reporters are sociopaths who’ll put them and their families at risk all for the fucking clicks.
2. Most of the time people use the wrong language. They assume everybody calls it the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre for instance. Which is not the term used here. Quite often, I suspect, the people being asked have no idea what they’re being asked. It would be like me going up to an American and asking them their opinion on Santa Anna’s Grand Victory or whatever.
3. 1989 is over 30 years ago. Most of the people being addressed weren’t even born for it. Many of the rest were in middle school. They don’t know, and don’t care, what you’re talking about. Kind of like how most Americans alive today don’t know or care about the fall of the Berlin Wall.