[throwaway344]

Up until 1865, the United States made extensive use of slave labor to grow its economy. It also made use of foreign innovations, stealing others' intellectual property.

Both were immoral, and neither should be accepted today.

[mc32]

To belabor the point generally speaking all western and Latin powers of the era employed slave labor and stole from each other.

Today lots of emerging countries still rely on what is in practice servitude labor. They don't outright own the people, but they practically do since they have little chance of escaping their situation. Migrants in se Asia. Rural folks working in Eastern china, etc., where employers withhold passports, international and national "passports".

[nickbauman]

This happens in the US, too, right now.

[mc32]

Just about everything exists everywhere, what matters is extent and degree and what authorities do once they find out.

[nickbauman]

It's commonplace. The H1-B visa is virtually designed for indentured servitude.

[lazaroclapp]

Most of the world agrees that slavery is ethically unjustifiable. Not everyone agrees to the same notions of intellectual property as the U.S. does, even among the developed world.

Also, even those who like IP laws in the U.S. would agree that comparing poor IP laws to allowing slavery is beyond absurd.

This story is, essentially: five people violated the law of their host country in a way that if they had been citizens would have led to a civil lawsuit. As a result, they are being charged and reported as state-sponsored spies.

[nickbauman]

Equating slavery with violating IP laws is a fallacy of extrapolation. One does not compare appropriately to the other. Especially considering IP laws have their roots in Monarchally bestowed monopolies and arguably do not do what they purport to do, which is encourage innovation.