[kweks]

I'm trying to work out why retaliation with porn / tragedy propaganda is even vaguely acceptable.

HN would typically be aghast if you served NSFW content potentially to unexpecting audiences (..think of the children!), or even with the real life analog of becoming vigilante on someone who wronged you.

There seems to be the underlying notion that: because it's China, any riposte is acceptable. Again, HN would typically be aghast if you drew sweeping stereotypes over 1B+ people.

There are multiple solutions.

If someone is hotlinking your content, block their requests.

Lodge DMCA requests to remove their SE listing.

If you have a product and a brand that is being copied, Chinese customs are very pro-active on brand defense. Register your brand / trademark: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danharris/2015/10/12/how-to-prot...

Innovate and update more often. Copying, legal or otherwise happens all the time, in all jurisdictions. Ratinally weigh up the real damage their site is causing, and act accordingly.

[Buge]

It's a common strategy. It has nothing specifically to do with China. I don't think I've ever seen HN posts saying think of the children.

Here's a popular post about a guy doing it, I'm not sure where I first found this post, it might have been HN. Either way I'm pretty sure I've seen some of his stuff linked on HN. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1011 He wrote several followup posts with metrics and stuff.

For example 3 people here say they use it as a strategy, and nothing about China: http://ask.metafilter.com/4302/Is-there-any-etiquette-to-hot...

This accepted answer with 17 upvotes recommends it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3990337/how-to-protect-ag...

Also see http://i.imgur.com/WDDH8wj.jpg http://krisalis.org/weblog/?p=1137

[FilterSweep]

> There seems to be the underlying notion that: because it's China, any riposte is acceptable

I disagree. Rather, its: "Because its not anywhere else, you have no option to defend the business you have created for yourself and your employees."

This has very little to do with China and more to do with the company has little other options given the circumstances.

If I were a web developer of said clone company, and I noticed hotlink protection had been enabled (easily, 301s, 404s), I would have already scraped all of the content on the page (new content notwithstanding), and onError I would serve up the copy of the content I had saved locally.

The only thing I could imagine you doing besides the retaliatory measures listed above is removing the site from SERPs. However, Baidu won't respect your wishes.

[hatsunearu]

Messages about Tiananmen and other "censored" topics will allegedly get the website automatically banned by the Great Firewall. I've heard that some sites suffering from Chinese spam just put that somewhere in their webpage and have the traffic magically simmer down.

[whatnotests]

Because in the absence of law and order, when the social contract is broken we as humans feel the need for justice.

If justice could be served using legal channels, then it would. As it is in the Free World. Given the parent's examples of why legal channels are unavailable, vigilantism is the automatic next best thing.

Legal channels often serve as the path of least resistance compared to vigilante acts in other cases. Their ineffectiveness in cases like this push people to do what they feel they must.

[striking]

That and it's really funny. You're ripping me off? Surprise! Your site's made of porn now! It's enjoyable in a somewhat twisted way, a la schadenfreude.

I don't know if I would call legal channels "ineffective" and I'm not anarchist enough to say that you "must" be a vigilante when they don't work. But yeah, sometimes it's really enjoyable to get back at people.

There's nothing wrong with being morally wrong. (Just as long as you're not hurting anyone, in my opinion.)

[bflesch]

They're not hotlinking us, so these approaches wouldn't work in our case.

Furthermore I think (e)Sports is a rather apolitical thing so I wouldn't like to find myself on some Chinese blacklist, as we definitely want to expand in the asian markets.

[studentrob]

> we definitely want to expand in the asian markets.

Is China required or could you settle with Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, etc?

You might want to investigate the experiences of other businesses who have tried to sell within China. China's judicial system is worse than ours.

I wouldn't pump much time or money into tip toeing around their rules. Ultimately they can just block and clone you. Consider that China's blocking of FB, Twitter, and Google allow them to create their own copies of these sites that create jobs and earn money within China. China likes to say that these sites don't play by the rules, but it seems when you operate in China the goalposts are always moving. Personally I think that's because any government that is not by the people is unstable. That's up to them to decide, however.

[bflesch]

South Korea is huge for eSports so definitely also a huge target for us. But I am not sure that you can play a role in China from outside.

The current interest in China (and our FOMO) is mainly driven by potential investors or acquirers. We've nearly finished our app with which we hope to bring eSports for-money tournaments to a whole new level.

In our type of business everyone is moving goalposts all the time, we have had interesting experiences with regulators in EU and US so I am unsure if Chinese bureaucracy can really top this.

Obviously, when structuring international business in that region Hong Kong or Singapore are prime locations, but I don't think the big vision can be implemented without having native speakers both in CN and SK.

As a German company, a lot of our "good old manufacturing" businesses have written case study over case study about expansion to China, with very mixed results. But I feel we're kind of forced into that decision right now, because growth can be explosive.