This is a (very effective) distraction. The fact that culture and race have so much correlation is perhaps the most intimidating hurdle to civilized problem-solving we've ever been presented with as a species.
It's already happening. Every major tech company is investing in engineering presence outside of the US.
My employer sent out a company-wide email late last year outlining an aggressive growth strategy in two new tech hubs in Ireland and India, and encouraging employees to apply for open roles in those locations.
I have some experience in this regard, and Google, even though it’s known for nonexistent human support, isn’t even the worst. I helped a Chinese creator friend DMCA takedown a bunch of accounts on YouTube/Instagram/TikTok straight up stealing her content / impersonating her. TikTok’s response was fastest, one account was taken down within eight hours (to my pleasant surprise), another was taken down in three days. YouTube was all right, accounts were taken down in a week or so. Facebook/Instagram was the worst. They asked for the least info upfront in their takedown form, sent a bunch of follow up emails, then eventually just ghosted me. I initiated new email chains referencing the case ID but never heard from anyone. I had to negotiate with the account holder but that went nowhere either since my threat to take down the account turned out to be a joke. To this day the infringing account is still up.
IANAL but if you send a DMCA notice and they ignore it, they are (partly) liable. That's the point of DMCA.
File in a small claims court (or notify of your intent to do so) and see how long it takes to get a response ...
I wonder if you could probably even suggest a fee for damages, wasted time, etc due to their slow response and hope it's cheaper than them getting a lawyer to assess it ...
You would need to be the owner, and would know where to file though. If it's not your content, and you're "helping a friend" (but not actually legally representing them) then my guess is they haven't received a valid DMCA.
Also, register the copyright, assuming that's still working under the current administration. (Trump is trying to fire the head of the Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress and doesn't report to Trump.)
I was legally representing them. I had their photo ID and a signed legal authorization letter and screencasts of their private creator portal showing infringed works and dossier of side-of-side comparison of infringing URLs and original URLs with publishing timestamps highlighted. All the submitted documents were signed. It hardly gets more concrete than that.
I mean, you can block or ignore them if you’re sufficiently good at bullshitting, and they lose steam before figuring out your weak spot.
Which statistically for the insurance industry happens with 90% or so of all claims.
If you give yourself just enough plausible deniability to work around the penalties (or even if you don’t, if the math is in your favor enough!), at a minimum it can give you a boost for the next quarter, which is key.
my wife had an FB account registered on her old phone number. she had that account deleted (but FB 'deactivates' them by default, instead of actually deleting it). her old number then got reassigned after a few years to a new person by the carrier.
that person reactivated her account and started video-calling her relatives. aunts, cousins etc. and exposed himself to them. like literally all of her aunts have seen his dick by now.
she submitted a takedown notice for impersonation. didn't get a reply. went to file a police report, sent that along with a new takedown application. no response.
after some time we just gave up. we're not in the US, so i guess facebook just doesn't give a fuck and has these requests routed straight to the bin.
Downvoters: I am suggesting that the lack of care by a CEO in his younger years translates directly in his older years as the company grows and reaches global proportions
Every system has some type 1 errors and some type 2 errors. The notion that they could just have neither if they cared a little more is just kind of absurd and doesn't at all reflect the messiness of the world we live in.
Even if Google paid Harvard JDs to read every DMCA notice (of which there literally aren't enough of them), even then they would sometimes be tricked by adversaries and sometimes incorrectly think someone was an adversary some of the time.
I worked at YouTube in the past and I can tell you copyright ownership isn't even fully known by the lawyers. Concretely there's a lot of major songs where the sum of major companies affirming they have partial ownership sums to more than 100% or less than 100%. Literally even the copyright holders don't actually know what they themselves own without lots of errors, and that's without getting into a system that has to try to combat adversarial / bad-faith actors.
If I have 100 customers and I have to spend 1 hour a week dealing with legal compliance requests then if I have 200 customers I have to spend 2 hours a week dealing with legal compliance requests, but I also have more resources to do it with.
In fact, scale usually makes it easier rather than harder because you can take advantage of economies of scale to streamline the process.
And, in the end, if you aren't able to comply with the law then you shouldn't be in that business regardless of your scale.
The only way to guarantee compliance with the DMCA is to remove any content the moment a complaint is submitted.
Copyright can only be determined in court. The fact that not all copyright complaints lead to a video going down is because Google is willing to take on some liability when they believe a complaint is not legit, and leave the video up.
I'm not sure how this is a reply to my comment. What you said applies whether you are hosting 1 video a month or 1,000,000 videos a month. My point was that scale isn't an excuse. What applies to large applies to small and vice versa.
The point is that regardless of the size of the company, copyright is such a shitshow that there are only less bad ways of handling it. The only way for a company to guarantee that they never violate copyright law is to do a takedown every time there is a complaint.
Obviously, this is not something they can do, because offering random people the ability to take down random videos with only the courts as recourse would be a disaster. Neither do these companies want to be in the business of deciding if a complaint is valid or not, because if they decide one way and then a judge decides the other, they get screwed.
Google tries to take a measured stance and evaluate complaints for obvious issues, but otherwise they do generally just act on them, and if the other parties involved can't agree on whether or not there is infringement, they just throw their hands up and tell them to take it to court.
Copyright is so complicated and fraught that it's virtually impossible to manage it in a way that satisfies everyone, regardless of how big or small a player is.
> And, in the end, if you aren't able to comply with the law then you shouldn't be in that business regardless of your scale.
Again, you're talking from a moral standpoint, but it's not practical. Who's going to stop Google or other corporations from tracking DMCAs the current way?
> Why does scale matter?
Because of resources. Any defined process needs resources to be implemented; law enforcement is no different.
Google provides services at scale by means of automating the shit of them. The only way to identify legit from fake claims at that level is to also create an automated resolution process, with the results we see.
You may want to limit Google size by forcing them to perform human reviews for all their customer service interactions; but again, how are you going to force them into compliance? You'd need a US judiciary system the size of Google to do it.
> You may want to limit Google size by forcing them to perform human reviews for all their customer service interactions
You've inferred that, but I didn't make this claim. A sensible strategy would involve automating as much as possible while allowing for the ones that matter (e.g. OP's example) to be escalated.
Clearly you can't do that if, as in OP's case, you don't even perform any automated ID checks before telling the complainant that their ID hasn't been verified.
> Again, you're talking from a moral standpoint
Not at all. I'm taking the legal standpoint. I say nothing about whether this particular law, or any other law, is moral or not. Complying with the law is a basic requirement that any company has to satisfy. Why should Google be any different just because it's big? You seem to be suggesting that laws should only apply to small entities and that once you go above a certain scale, you are above the law.
Again, if you simply cannot comply with the law for some reason (as you seem to be suggesting applies to Google) then you shouldn't be running that business at all because, after all, doing so implies doing something illegal.
If you have 100 customers, they are all authentic. If you have 100,000,000 customers, 15,000,000 are bad actors racking their brains on how to game your system.
I have hosting that regularly shut down my servers based on legal demands from jurisdictions that should have no reach my service whatsoever, or on total bogus claim.
If I refuse to act, they shut me down. If I'm late in acting, they shut me down.
Zero check on the legitimacy on the claim, zero trust in my debunking the claim.
The reality is, it's not economically viable to do so. I'm not giving them enough money to be worth it. So as long as I'm a small actor, anything that looks remotely legit is just processed as-is with no recourse.
The entire world can basically impose its view on me as long as they find a convincing way to tell my hosting "you are at risk".
And it's not one single provider either. Most of them do that: domain name, vps hosts, proxies, caches, etc.
A major part of this problem appears to be that there is no identifiable humans in the loop to bring complaints to. Many of Google's responses are automated and black box algorithms.
When a Google response to a problem is outright bonkers, there is often not much that can be done, but to keep hitting the head on the wall (hoping something different happens) or be the lucky few that can get or has a human contact at Google. From what I've read and heard, those with human contacts, often have been identified as needing special attention. Where they are persons who are making significant money for Google and the businesses they own or can create problems in court.
I wonder if PDF’ing some random nonsense and referring to them authoritatively would get through. The author’s e-mails are friendly. What it might be looking for is corporate legalese.
You're getting at the crux of the issue: it's very hard to distinguish legitimate DMCA takedown requests submitted by individuals from illegitimate ones, and occasionally, they're going to make mistakes. Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else who was trying to take down the content illegitimately.
At the end of the day, the best option is to use an attorney who knows the right procedures and would also run the risk of professional consequences if they submitted false claims.
> Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else who was trying to take down the content illegitimately
Ok, but then Google needs to say what would convince them that the author is who they say they are. The author asked multiple times how they prove they’re the real author and Google’s replies never even acknowledge the question.
> Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else
That's not true. He mentions that he is the owner of the books official websites, which are registered with Google, presumably with all of his personal and billing information.
It would take 2 seconds for anyone at Google to confirm this.
> It would take 2 seconds for anyone at Google to confirm this.
Not really... Google is literally too big, and the fact that they've offshored and/or automated support away and compartmentalized it all where no single IC employee could possibly do much.
I had a billing/tax issue come up with my small biz Google Workspace, and I was getting nowhere via the normal support channels... So I asked my brother in-law who literally works at Google (but not in that team) for help. He could not help me as he had no idea who or what department could handle that and neither did his team members, and it would take weeks apparently to find the right person. I'm not the only paying Google customer with that experience. Google products are great, until you run into an issue you need to talk to a human.
They could have been Slack if they didn't transmogrify it into a social media platform (Google+) and then throw out the baby with the bathwater when it failed.
I’m talking about something much more fundamental, the entire company would pretty much implode within 24 hours (or at most a week) if they couldnt verify who is who.
You're really giving credit in the wrong areas. Google is impressive for its ability to exist beyond the point of dysfunction. It's simply not the case that any Googler would need to verify the identity of any other any more than it is necessary for every server to verify the identity of every other. They only need to verify the identify of the tiny subset they are communicating with at any given time. This doesn't mean everyone has access to a coherent org chart, or that one even exists.
> Ask their managers? But then how do their managers verify?
It's a hierarchical org chart. If you're really not sure ask Sundar.
It's likely any Googler can verify the identity of any other by looking up their username but it's unlikely that the same tool would do something like tell you how the YouTube recommendation algorithm works or who would know that.
They will know the names of frequent collaborators and something about the scope of relevant work but it's not like everyone at Google needs intimate knowledge of every workstream. At that scale it's unlikely anyone has the full picture.
We agree an org chart of some kind probably exists. We disagree on the capabilities. For example I am not confident that it has a concept of a team and if it does that a team would map to a product or feature.
Going from person to team is fairly easy, but going from team to person is hard. That is, you can often confirm a person is a member of a particular team or organization just by looking up their email address, but the reverse direction of finding the right point of contact for a particular team or organization can be difficult.
Searching for the tree root starting from a tree leaf is easy, but searching for the right leaf starting from the root takes a lot more effort.
Aside from the huge array of stuff they've built in house, the "List of mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet" wikipedia page has 264 entries. Some of those bought other companies.
>If googlers dont have an internal org chart they can check, then how do they verify who is on what team?
You really think some guy in some offshore office for low pay, with his boss hounding at him about his KPIs, is going to go out of his way to bother with this?
I don't like it, but the solution here is to hire an IP lawyer to handle the rights process.
Google won't talk to us normies because 1) it's a cost and they don't have to 2) they've convinced themselves that if they tell anyone anything, then the unwashed masses will take advantage of their process/get the service we're owed under law
Google settled a massive lawsuit with Viacom many years ago. The details of the settlement are hidden, but it seems pretty clear that it involves extraordinary deference to large rightsholders who in exchange won't threaten to blow YouTube to smithereens every year.
Sounds like they need to spend some of those billions of dollars on fixing the process and complying with the law, then.
I don't get to ignore the law just because if I follow it, someone who doesn't might get one over on me.
All of this nonsense because Google wants to automate their DMCA takedown process and not hire anyone to deal with real cases as they come, as is their duty to copyright holders.
I have a different reading, the author is reminiscing to the times where trust worked on the web.
A company like Google could trust you for being really the author because who would lie? and those that lie about these things usually couldn't spell or use technology.
The world changed and now Google can't afford to trust someone that says he's the author, because people take advantage of that.
So if you ask me what's worse, this guy having to contact his publisher to get his book off the web, or someone being blackmailed to keep his youtube channel, imo they are right to require a proper lawyer
I wonder if they just prioritize big companies who they either have agreements with or are scared could actually cause them serious legal trouble, and deny everyone else as much as possible because they’ve calculated the risk/reward/cost of getting it wrong.
Google doesn't need to verify anything. They just have to pass along the takedown request and provide a flow for prompt reactivation with a counter notice. After that their responsibilities end and the two disputing parties can litigate.
> The DMV is not a private company with enormous amounts of fraud/scam.
So it sounds like their policy of having a high bar for proving identity but still publicising what is required to meet that bar works for preventing fraud?
If anything, your argument is an indictment against Google.
That's Kafkaesque. We're not talking about SEO here, just simple proof of identity. If they require something sane like ID, they could simply say so. If they need something insane, or have no process at all for proving identity, then this is no excuse.
In this case, a more likely explanation might be "Google won't do this because it would put you in a position to obligate them to do something else". There isn't really a risk of enabling scammers to issue false DMCA takedowns; as you note, that issue is resolved by requiring proof of ownership.
If that were true, how would the judge know who to rule for? Are you saying that anyone can become the owner of any intellectual property simply by filing a lawsuit?
Not all intellectual property is the same. Trademarks have to be registered, patents have to be filed, but copyright is automatically granted by law whenever someone creates a work.
Trademark issues are therefore really simple: is the user of the trademark the one who has it registered or not?
But copyright holders don't have any standard, obvious evidence they can point to that shows it's really their copyright. They can file a DMCA, in which case companies normally just assume the complaint is accurate - but if the party on the other end objects, the case has to go to a judge who will determine who actually has the copyright and if infringement occurred.
Also, the ones abusing the system tend to know it better: often it's their jobs to figure out how to work it to get what they want. The people who just want to use legitimately often it don't have the time and experience to learn it.
(You see a similar thing with benefits and healthcare: often attempts to crackdown on people abusing the system just make it harder for legitimate users)
If you are from US I want to let you know about a scam. Here in asian countries people with good enlgish accents are recruited to pretend to be US citizens and claim benifits that are unused by the real people. There is a whole proper process of how this works. The recruit is given full identity information and a software to make the call appear from the US. The officials on the US side are in on this and get a share for each successfull claim.
I suspect the author is self-published (I don’t know him well, but his emails seem to indicate this).
One of the things that you get, when dealing with a publishing house, is a bunch of IP lawyers on speed-dial.
If you register works with the LoC, it might help in these situations (it isn’t required, but this is exactly the type of thing that it’s supposed to address).
That's little more than corruption. Yeah sure, you can free your issue from the AI-washed auto-reject script if you know the right people. But it's nothing to do with what those people know. It's about who they are.
The whole point of the DMCA takedown process is that it's rubber-stamp on the part of the service provider and all decisions regarding validity are left up to the courts. That's why there's a provision built into the law for the person receiving the claim to file a counter-notice to get their content reinstated. If Google is inserting themselves in the middle and denying claims because they don't believe that the person filing them is authorized to do so, I'm not sure whether that's proper procedure under the OCILLA.
You are completely missing the point. Mistakes can be made. But OP asked repeatedly what he must provide so Google can validate his identity. They didn't answer his questions, even after OP asked multiple times.
> At the end of the day, the best option is to use an attorney who would at least run the risk of professional consequences for submitting false claims.
What if folks signed their work with a private PGP key and published their public key? If you wanted to submit a DMCA request, simply sign a message to prove you’re the content owner. It seems like that could work.
Let’s consider a scenario where you’ve published a video with a public key, and you have a history of using that key for publishing your work. If someone else were to download that video, they wouldn’t be able to sign it because they lack the key. I believe the same principle applies to PDFs and ebooks.
Google has only cared about one thing for the last decade, being number 1. They were willing to sell their soul to beat meta and they’ll sell their skin to beat OpenAI.
This is a copyright law invented in 1998 from the UN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty These things predictably always have ways for moneyed players to abuse them and for organizations to half commit. Even China signed up.
Copyright law existed long before 1998, so it's hardly something "invented in 1998 from the UN". There might be some aspects it standardized, but so far as I can tell I can't see how it's relevant to this particular case.
We’re discussing a post about DMCA in this thread which is a policy pushed by the UN and adopted by the US as DMCA. Not sure what your point is.
DMCA is one of the worst parts of the internet and for some reason capitalism is the boogieman in this thread. IP law has become hyper restrictive/excessive, with little oversight, and favours large companies with teams of lawyers.
>We’re discussing a post about DMCA in this thread which is a policy pushed by the UN and adopted by the US as DMCA. Not sure what your point is.
So far as I can tell there's nothing to do with takedowns? From wikipedia:
>The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself
Capitalism is the boogieman because greasing the wheels to enact anti-consumer legislation is 100% in the spirit of modern capitalism.
Capitalism had moral authority from the invisible hand (with empirical support), but absent that, it's just another system of power, and clearly not a just one.
Please take the snark and condescension to Reddit where it belongs. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I'm wrong, and assuming that it does makes you ignorant.
Indeed. If I'm Xi, I'm invading Taiwan tomorrow. Russia invading Ukraine, USA decapitating Venezuela....there's not even a pretense that international law matters any more.
It's also clear that Trump only respects power, which China clearly has. He already backed off tariffs with the critical minerals threat. Unlikely he'd come to Taiwan's aid in my opinion.
With political polarization in America, you can bet all kinds of fingers would start pointing at Trump in America, saying he enabled it by meddling with Venezuela. Stock market collapse from TSMC blockade would enhance this even moreso. I wouldn't count on much, if any, rallying around the flag effect.
How does Maduro being ousted change the physical realities of an amphibious invasion of Taiwan? You think international law is what has been preventing Xi from invading?
Trump does only respect power, as do all other serious leaders. Power is all that matters in the end.
How do you think the system of international law came into existence? It was imposed by the US at the end of WWII because of their overwhelming military strength and the fact that no other nation had nuclear weapons at the time.
The armchair analysis from some folks on this topic is really lacking. You guys are just wrong, and the hubris you bring with your “analysis” is really off putting.
>How does Maduro being ousted change the physical realities of an amphibious invasion of Taiwan? You think international law is what has been preventing Xi from invading?
It doesn't change the physical realities of that much at all besides maybe slightly further cementing that the US will not come to Taiwan's aid.
No, the main change is that now Xi can more reliably expect a weaker, less unified response from the west due to political divisions inside America as well as between western nations. He can expect less diplomatic pushback, fewer sanctions, etc.
Also, no all serious leaders do not only respect power. Serious leaders who are also morally and ethically good also take into account right and wrong when they make decisions.
The right thing to do would be for America to try to preserve and enforce a rules based order, regardless if other countries do. America has significant agency in the world and should consider how the world should be and try to get there. Not only consider how the world is.
Even from a realpolitik standpoint, there is benefit on showing consistent adherence to an ethical code. It encourages other actors to follow that same code as well. When we violate our own morals and values, we can't expect others to respect them.
How does one nation following an ethical code encourage others to follow it as well?
Following an ethical code in international affairs constrains the nation following it. It provides an asymmetric advantage to others who choose not to follow that code.
This is partly why China has become so powerful over the past three decades. They chose to ignore western ethical codes around intellectual property rights, fair trade, environmental protections, and human rights. They are powerful today in no small part to their willingness to disregard these things.
This is difficult for people to understand because in interpersonal relationships following an ethical code is 100% the path to healthy and meaningful relationships, and most modern history education attempts to anthropomorphize past interactions between nations. But the cold fact is that international politics is nothing like interpersonal relationships.
A nation can encourage other nations to follow their ethical code by threatening to use force if they don't. They can create incentives to encourage nations to change their behavior through trade or treaty. But I can't think of a single time in history when a nation was such a shining star of morality that they inspired other nations to change their ways and adopt their ethics.
You can't expect other nations to respect your nation's moral and ethical values when they don't care about them in the first place and in fact hope that you choose to follow them to the fullest extent so that you're easier to compete against.
> maybe slightly further cementing that the US will not come to Taiwan's aid
Isn't that the opposite? The US just demonstrated that it can still conduct military operations, and the presence of Chinese envoys in the country does not deter it in any way. As of now, China has one fewer source of oil it can rely on in case of an invasion.
Maybe you're right, but I view it more as: China can now be confident that the US doesn't care much at all about the sovereignty of weaker nations or coming to the aid of allies. "Might makes right", and if China asserts itself with strength (as in a full blockade/invasion instead of a few envoys present) Trump will most likely back off.
How does the US invading one country imply they won’t defend another country?
I get that military resources devoted to one theatre can’t be used in another and for that reason the US might be less able to defend Taiwan, but that may not make them less willing.
A more reasonable read is that the aircraft carriers and other naval assets in the Gulf of Mexico are more effective there than they could be in the Pacific. Venezuela doesn’t have hypersonic anti-ship missiles. China does.
> The armchair analysis from some folks on this topic is really lacking. You guys are just wrong, and the hubris you bring with your “analysis” is really off putting.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
I have put in good faith efforts to convert with MisterMower, for example, in [1]. Shortly after that, they insulted me. [2] This is also against the HN Guidelines, and that kind of behavior is not welcome here. Here are additional examples of hostility and insults they've made:
> Old farts like yourself [3]
> In case you don't understand how analogies work [4]
Please don't comment like this here. HN is a text-only discussion forum where people come together to discuss topics that gratify intellectual curiosity. This place can only work if people respect and follow the guidelines, and it's fine for users to politely point out to each other how they can be doing better – precisely so they don't have to get the moderators involved.
This comment comes across as mean-spirited. It's not cool to open with an apology then proceed to put out up to 7 paragraphs of eloquently-worded personal attack.
HN is only a place where people want to participate because this kind of thing is not accepted here. Please show you respect the guidelines and care about the health of the community if you want to participate here.
> How does Maduro being ousted change the physical realities of an amphibious invasion of Taiwan?
Taking the beaches here would require spilling the blood of tens of thousands of PLA troops, but as demonstrate two days ago, the only real barrier to blockading us was the threat of the USA showing up.
Xi's hunger for Taiwan shouldn't be underestimated. It's utterly irrational but it is his obsession. It's becoming clear he intends to die in office, and he's seeing his legacy as a mirror of that of the entire communist revolution - he wants to be the next Mao, with a permanent framed photo on the wall of every school and many houses in the PRC. Mao was happy to waste millions of PLA in every conflict the PRC engaged in as an outright military strategy, he called it something like "drowning the enemy in a sea of bodies," Xi will be the same.
Oh, yes I agree for the most part none other than perhaps the USA military is about to be distracted by South America.
Xi himself probably already had war gamed what it would look like to kidnap the president here in Taiwan from the presidential palace or whatever. The main difference is, now we're all talking about it - if it was that easy to snatch a president, will the PRC try it against us? Will the KMT throw Lai under the bus so the PLA can do a targeted kidnapping or assassination, perhaps alongside his US-friendly VP?
The assumed difference in Venezuela is that Maduro and his policies are not popular enough for a similar leader to easily slip into his place and cohesively unite the country against the US while maintaining Maduro’s policies and keeping his factions and constituents from which his power was derived happy.
Big assumption to be sure, and time will only tell if it’s a correct one.
In a place like Taiwan or the US that assumption is almost certainly false. Imagine Xi kidnaps the US president. Does anyone honestly believe the entire government and its people just roll over and say, “I guess China owns us now”?
This is the incorrect word to use since the PRC has never held territory here. If the PLA sets foot on Taiwan, that's an imperialist invasion, nothing less, unless the people of Taiwan have democratically chosen to abdicate their government for CPC rule, in which case the word should be "unify" or "merge."
We use the term "reunification" for Germany but the Federal Republic never "held territory" in the Democratic Republic. However, of course both states were the result of a split of "Germany". This is the same with the ROC and PRC so bringing both sides together, whatever the mean, is a reunification in that sense.
The narrative of rejecting the term can be said to be broadly propaganda but plays on a peculiarity that both sides don't recognise each others.
> However, of course both states were the result of a split of "Germany".
> This is the same with the ROC and PRC
It really isn't.
Note that West Germany did not have to invade East Germany to re-unify and that East Germany was on a per-capita basis much poorer than West Germany.
Unlike Taiwan, which is doing more than twice as good. So this would be more in line with Russia invading Ukraine. And that's precisely the rhetoric they are using: 'unification'.
This is all totally inacurrate and beside the point.
China has factually split, like Germany before. Whether any "reunification" happens peacefully or not is irrelevant to the use of term and so is which side is the richer.
Russia and Ukraine is obviously not the same at all, and "unification" is obviously not the same as "reunification".
Define "China." 中國? 中華人民共和國? 中華民國? 大清? 大明? 大元? The English term is far overloaded, kinda like the word "dumpling." Having this conversation in English is really hard for that reason.
The key word is 中國, typically translated literally as "middle country," though if you put it in google translate it'll just say "China." Really though, the word means "empire." Empire of what? China? No, just, The Empire. E.g. 一個中國原則 "one China principle," all things that we could call 中國 ruled by the same government.
That's the issue I have. The CPC claims a mandate of heaven for a "Chinese" meta-dynasty, claiming to have domain over everything any government in the region has ever touched (even the Mongols!). I reject this, a mandate to rule should be earned basically every day, and self determination matters far more than maintaining a dynasty of a culture.
Like many empires, the PRC is even creating an ethnostatic justification, calling everyone Han 漢族人 or Hua 華人 and claiming a mandate to rule everyone that could feasibly be called that, using race science to expand their domain. Like "white," under scrutiny, these terms are meaningless. We could translate either, in the context of their usage by the CPC, as "people the CPC thinks it should be allowed to govern." That includes people in Xinjiang, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, America, hell even Okinawa lately.
That kind of ethnostatic imperialist expansionism should be roundly rejected by anybody that values self determination. And, that's why "reunify" isn't the correct word, because there is no country on earth called "China" and there never has been, there's just a government ruling a territory that wants some more territory. The PRC isn't some magical inheritor of every racial, cultural, linguistic, and historical aspect of that region. "China" has not split with the fleeing of the KMT to Taiwan in the 50s, nor was "China" overthrown when the Taiwanese deposed the KMT military dictatorship in the 90s, or when the Qing dynasty was overthrown by the KMT.
You obviously understand what I wrote by "China split" because it is uncontroversial and rather obvious as a historical fact.
You are trying too hard and doing so does you a disservice because it makes you write nonsense that any sources can disprove.
So... why? Why do people get so attached to a narrative? Is it like religion, cult? Need to believe in sonething?
Past history is what it is. It does not mean that the people of Taiwan have to be forced into re-joining the mainland but let's keep the facts otherwise we are really leaving in 1984. If you want to say that the people of Taiwan have a moral right to remain independent if they wish to then just say so.
Have you considered the possibility that you are just wrong? Your 'uncontroversial and rather obvious historical fact' is neither uncontroversial nor is it obvious.
That's why we have a 32 page article on the subject on Wikipedia:
There is only one country where your 'historical fact' is seen as true, and it isn't Taiwan. And that is why China is threatening to invade, and why you yourself use Taiwan without further qualification right after 'South Korea':
The 'one China' term itself is overloaded, depending on who you ask (Chinese, Taiwanese) you get different answers.
Taiwan is an independent country, if not de jure then de facto. That China is a much larger and much more dangerous country is the only reason everybody tiptoes around this.
What is actually unbelievable is that you keep arguing against me by quoting sources that only say exactly what I have been writing all along. So I don't really understand what is this about and perhaps you don't, either...
This is bizarre at this point.
Perhaps you wrongly assume that by "China split" I meant "the PRC split" although it is abundantly clear that I didn't.
Those source do not say what you have been writing all along. Those sources make it plain that this is a controversial and complicated subject that you wish to flatten into a much simpler worldview. But that worldview is at odds with the facts, both the facts on the ground and the view of the parties involved.
You can continue to stick to your worldview, or you can admit that maybe the matter is more complex than you thought it was. The point is that there are multiple viewpoints on this and yours is not necessarily the only one and given that you claim not to have a horse in the race it is strange that you would end up carrying water for one of the parties.
Agreeing to disagree is a thing too, you're perfectly entitled to your own take on this no matter how wrong I think it is. But you are not entitled to your own facts and if you really believe this to be an uncontroversial thing then I don't think I can help you with that.
None of what I wrote is a worldview and I avoided any controversies by sticking to facts: China has split and this is explained in the first link in your previous comment, and "reunification" can therefore be an accurate term.
How is that at odds with "facts"? What "facts"? What do you think I claimed? How is it controversial? I am not sure you know at this point as you are being evasive and shifting to ad hominems.
Claiming that the Earth is round is "controversial" to flat-Earthers. Does this make it a controversial topic?
> You obviously understand what I wrote by "China split" because it is uncontroversial and rather obvious as a historical fact.
I also know, generally, what people mean when they say "goblin," but that doesn't mean goblins are real, and it's also true that two people might be thinking of very different things when a goblin is mentioned. Such is the same for the word "China."
> any sources can disprove.
Well then, should be pretty easy for you to disprove me with some sources then!
> So... why? Why do people get so attached to a narrative? Is it like religion, cult? Need to believe in sonething?
Please explain to us how you aren't also attached to a narrative. Are you a omnipotent entity, immune to human narratives, and the one true knower of Universal Truth? I think it's unintentional, but you come off that way, and that's why you're getting such a strong response here.
> Past history is what it is.
This sentence is genuinely meaningless.
The problem is, you've made some unsubstantiated claims (you can't even define "China"), presumed to be right, and then acted aghast when a bunch of people said "hm no, that's not quite right, here's why," and then you doubled down without providing any further substance to your argument other than just repeating in different ways, "I'm right and you're all wrong."
What's the point of talking with someone like that? I'm happy to have the conversation but I don't see the purpose when people behave like that.
Ad hominem attacks and character assassiination are the tactics of the CPC, not of democratic Taiwan...
I agree that "China" may mean several things but in the context of this discussion and previous comments it is rather clearer.
You can have a look at the Wikipedia link about the political status of Taiwan that @jacquesm posted. You can also have a look at related article about the history of China or Taiwan.
Quick summary (to mostly repeat myself as you point out but it does seem hard to get you guys to even read the links you provide yourselves, or don't want to accept them) is that China asserted control over Taiwan since the 17th century (as a reaction to European imperialism) with Taiwan acquiring province status towards the end of the 19th century. It was then ceded by China to Japan after the First Sino-Japanase war, and "reunited" in 1945.
Following the Chinese civil war the communists took over the mainland and the government kept, and retreated to, Taiwan, which led to a split with de facto two states and official policies to "reunite".
That's all there in the links mentioned. So, again, I don't understand the drama.
I never denied that Taiwan was de facto a state independent of the mainland, or that the majority of the people of Taiwan do not want to be absorbed by the PRC, or even that a portion of the people of Taiwan would like no affiliation with "China" and be simply the Republic of Taiwan. And, yes, Taiwan was never controled by the PRC (like East Germany was never controled by West Germany prior to German "reunification", and there is still no country called "Germany" or "Korea"...). But that said I do have a problem with rewriting history and fallacious arguments to further a political aim.
Someone who lives in Taiwan. Anyway, that's obviously a fallacious argument (argument from authority?) and I note that you keep avoiding engaging with the point and historical evidence and references provided (included by you!) so I don't even know what you agree or disagree with and why at this point.
Yes, just like you are a French guy living in the UK, I would take your statements about the UK or about France as more relevant and better informed than those from some random person on the other side of the globe.
The one common thing about discussions between you and others on HN about any subject that goes on for more than a few comments is that it always ends in you feigning indignation and claiming the other party is unfair towards you. Maybe get off your high horse instead and learn to see things are more nuanced than as black-and-white and simplified as you make them out to be?
Your 'historical evidence' is not nearly as simple and as clear cut as you make it out to be, it is just what you chose to extract from the body of information about the subject because it confirms your worldview or some pre-conceived idea of how things are or should be. Not necessarily how they actually are and that is a massive difference.
> China asserted control over Taiwan since the 17th
This is a great example of why your usage of this word is an expression of your agreement with the idea of an ethnostatist meta-dynasty that a government like the CPC can claim a mandate to rule, rather than a universal fact.
It seems you don't believe Khagan-emperor Kublai was Chinese, since you pin the first "Chinese" assertion of control in the 1600s, even though the Yuan dynasty claimed Penghu.
You also give away your political agenda a bit when you accurately refer to Western actions on the island as "imperialism" but simply refer to Chinese empire activity as "asserted control," rather than what it clearly was, which is also imperialism. In fact it's especially interesting you did this considering that the entire reason the dutch colonists were expelled from the island was because of a battle between two entities that wanted to be called "China": the Qing dynasty, and Zheng Chenggong's remnant Ming dynasty. So here's another question: Manchus, Chinese, or no? Qing dynasty, Chinese, or no? Both yes? Well then both the Kingdom of Tungning and the Qing dynastic territories were China, despite being engaged in a deeply ethnostatist battle defined clearly on Han vs Manchu racial identity. And now the Manchus are 華人 just like everyone else, which demonstrates my point that the words "China" and 中國 are just a political propaganda tool to claim a mandate to rule an empire. The same fight has been fought before, except this time Taiwanese people have no desire to claim the mantle of The Empire.
You believe you're stating facts when actually you're just stating support of the CPC's claim to dynastic inheritance. Thus it's not "never clearer" what's meant by "China" in a time when all people who could be labeled "Chinese" (including PRC citizens) are reckoning with what that identity means in regards to governance and nationality.
> Ad hominem attacks and character assassiination are the tactics of the CPC, not of democratic Taiwan...
You clearly have never watched even 5 minutes of Taiwanese tv or politics lol.
This is a factual statement, not propaganda. The propaganda (or political theatre in mainland China) is that the ROC does not exist and Taiwan is part of the PRC.
Reunite is propaganda because it gives credibility to the lie that these two countries are and/or were one like for instance Germany after world war II.
Taiwanese do not see themselves as Chinese, just like Ukrainians do not see themselves as Russian even if they speak the language. By playing along you are effectively carrying water for the Chinese. That may be your goal, but then you should be clear about that. If that is not your goal you should refrain from adopting the language of the party that is clearly the aggressor here. The 'ROC' moniker stems from a bunch of Chinese that fled there in 1949 after they lost their struggle with the communists inside China. They ruled Taiwan and they named it 'Republic of China', a name that has caused a lot of confusion with those unfamiliar with where it came from.
This is the reason the Chinese now lay claim to Taiwan, and it is about as misguided as it gets. They got Hong Kong by being patient, they may take Taiwan by force.
If you are playing into their hands by parroting their terminology you are fractionally helping to normalize their behavior towards Taiwan. If it should come to pass that China will take Taiwan by force that will have grave consequences, for the Taiwanese, the Chinese and the rest of the world as well due to the central spot that Taiwan occupies in the global supply chain.
Mainland China and Taiwan were one country. It is bizarre to try to deny it.
Taiwan was part of China and ceded to Japan by treaty after the first Sino-Japanese war of 1895. It was then "reunited" to China following WWII... that's really the root of the current situation since that's why the Chinese government (ROC) retreated there in 1949. Taiwan held the Chinese seat at the UN until the 1970s!
Hongkong was also seized by the UK through naked imperialistic aggression and it is testament to the power of propaganda that China be painted as "the bad guys".
Your comment is not factually correct irrespective of rights and wrongs or wishes of the people in Taiwan.
Why should people always have an ulterior motive beyond stating things as they are?...
No need to discuss further if that's going to turn into this. People really need to take a step back and a deep breath when discussing world issues.
I am not even Chinese or Asian if that is your suggestion (a little in the gutter, by the way). I don't have skin in the game and am just looking at history in the most factual way I can.
He said he was looking at history and present reality in the most factual way. Perhaps for you, your identity shapes your viewpoint more than the facts do. Why don't you provide your arguments instead of questioning his nationality?
A properly aged account that suddenly springs to life without ever before having commented on anything or submitted a single link. What a joyful occasion.
Taiwan has been Chinese territory for centuries—just like California has been part of the US. Calling China's reunification 'invasion' is like saying the US is 'invading' Texas if some rebels tried to break away. The real propaganda isn't about history—it's about pretending Taiwan is some separate country when it's been part of China longer than most modern nations even exist.
Taiwan has never declared independence from China. Popular opinions aside, the ROC govt still officially adheres to the One-China Policy which considers it to be a single country together with the mainland.
The main reason for that is because they know that if they did declare that formally (rather than just acting like it is already a fact) that China would most likely immediately respond with force. So this is not because they want it to be like that but because they are playing a longer game.
With the US unreliable and distracted all bets are off on how this will unfold, the chances China attempting to take over Taiwan have substantially increased.
It's unclear how China would have responded because they were not, and probably still aren't, in a position to mount a successful attack on Taiwan.
I think what's missing is that opinion in Taiwan in actually split. The KMT, certainly up to the last president in 2016 is simply opposed to declaring "independence" because they share the position that Taiwan is China, just obviously not the PRC.
> The KMT, certainly up to the last president in 2016 is simply opposed to declaring "independence" because they share the position that Taiwan is China, just obviously not the PRC.
That is only because of the history of the KMT, which is only a fraction of the story of Taiwan. By the same token the Dutch could invade Taiwan tomorrow morning and claim re-unification.
I was just quoting the actual speech. The point is, for anyone claiming the US attempting regime change in Venezuela is going to factor into China's long standing plans to invade Taiwan is delusional.
The US has been involved in regime change operations spanning like 40+ different countries, and almost continuously for a century. This is not a unique event in even recent US history, even though folks with orange-man syndrome would like you to believe otherwise.
As if Xi is thinking "gee, I'd really like to invade Taiwan, but people might get upset! If only Trump would conduct the US's 5th regime change operation this decade...then people would...not care anymore about Taiwan or something?? Wait, this fantasy may have logical flaws..."
The bending over backwards that Americans do to convince themselves the US is responsible for everything that happens is always amusing.
I guess they are, because china was (or still is) practicing blocking of Taiwan. And Trump made somewhat a commitment to Taiwan, but who knows if there won't be a better deal with china tomorrow?
why? Xi already made his intention with Taiwan clear many years ago. Besides, Xi, while pretending to be neutral, has become the major backer of Putin's war effort. It's not like Trump is doing anything special.
Hopefully a bit more diplomatically than that, though.
But, I agree. Encourage him to go over all of his work once or twice more, and use spellchecking tools, before committing or sending out email/slack/whatever.
If he's truly dyslexic, it won't necessarily help all that much, but if he's just really sloppy it most definitely will.
It's not even close to virtually all music. 256M songs doesn't come even close.
It's virtually all popular music recently published commercially in the world.
It's missing large portions of bootlegs, old music, foreign music, radio shows, mixtapes and live streaming music to list a few prominent categories from music in my private archive of cultural works. Those categories, btw, are well represented by torrents on tracker sites.
lol. Where is all this anti-psytrance hate coming from?
Are you people actually that childish that you don't understand the concept of taste, and that everyones' is different? People who have like different music than you aren't stupid. Electronic musicians aren't bad musicians.
You know that nice feeling you get when you listen to music from your preferred composer/artist/genre? Other people feel exactly the same, but with different kinds of music. Some people even love the thing that you hate! wow! Who knew? Except for anybody above the age of 5.
TLDR; just because you dont like Indian food, doesn't make Indian food bad. It's the same for music or other things that are dependent on taste.
In fact, I have a fairly sizeable collection of trance music on my NAS, mainly more mainstream stuff, but some is psytrance.
It's unreasonable to assume psytrance would organically occupy such a large portion of top Spotify songs.
TLDR; just because I think large number of Spotify psytrance songs are AI generated, doesn't mean I hate psytrance. Only childish people would think that.
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