5 ms·

The mindset of Chinese companies is different. The consumer laws in China don't work the same way compare to (say) the one in the US. Chinese user often only p

by nirui 3y ago

The mindset of Chinese companies is different. The consumer laws in China don't work the same way compare to (say) the one in the US. Chinese user often only permitted to use the product as-is, if you developed and/or published a tool that could change how the product function, and the company produced the product deems the change undesirable (say, it hurts their profit), the company then has all the rights granted by laws to force you to take your tool down, as well as ask you for compensation and/or even escalate it to criminal charges. Company might (likely, actually) choose not to do that, but if they really wants to, they can pursue it to that end. That's maybe why Haier claimed that the project in question "harms their business model", which is a legal ground often used in lawsuit against Chinese developers. This case is a little bit more trickier since the project calls Haier's private API, because of that, according to Chinese laws, the violation could ranging from copyright infringement all the way to cyber attack (thus Haier claimed "violate copyright laws").

kmeisthax 3y ago
Wait, "federal contempt of business model" is an actual tort in Chinese law?
- yorwba 3y ago
  Not literally in those terms, but the Anti-Unfair Competition Law 反不正当竞争法 (English text: https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/cn/cn409en.pdf https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/cn/cn409e... ) seems to often get used to accuse business model-threatening third parties of doing something illegal. E.g. Haier could claim that the API is a trade secret that the HA integration is using illegally, or that by accessing the API, Haier's domain name is being used without authorization (though I think this is intended to combat impersonation where someone registers a domain with their competitor's name) etc. etc. Funnily enough, it also outlaws "causing, in bad faith, incompatibility with an internet product or service lawfully provided by another business entity".
tedivm 3y ago
I don't understand why people keep bringing up China when this is a european company run by people in Europe. Every email that came to the dev seems to have come from a white european dude. None of this has anything to do with China.
jacquesm 3y ago
How did we go from 'Haier Europe' to Chinese consumer laws? Or even the United States? Did you miss the 'Europe' bit? They have presence in the UK, Italy, Romania and Turkey (not quite Europe, but close enough). They also have presence in China but Chinese consumer laws do not apply to EU subjects.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It's still a subsidiary of a corporation that is headquartered in mainland China, and OP is talking about the corporate mindset.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/blob/main/takedown_faq.md https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/blob/main/takedown_faq.md China doesn't rate a mention. What does rate a mention is Haier's own people being on the record that their HON app is such a failure that the bulk of the traffic is generated by the HA plugin, which actually is more economical network wise than Haier's app. Also notable is the fact that they are talking out of both sides of their mouth, they claim they love 'open' and 'API' use but at the same time would like everybody to use their app, but since it is (1) crappy and (2) closed source and so not easily integrated it is logical that the people that need it chose to roll their own. It's remotely possible that there is an instruction from China to Haier Italy that they needed to take action but you'd expect there to be some mention of this. Finally, from a security perspective you really don't want your appliances to send data to the rest of the world, China or otherwise. edit: And finally: if they didn't make their appliances cloud connected but instead allowed for a local only version then I'm very sure the HA people would be ecstatic and the whole problem would go away. Why anybody would buy an appliance that requires a cloud connection is beyond me.

by nirui 3y ago

kmeisthax 3y ago

Wait, "federal contempt of business model" is an actual tort in Chinese law?

yorwba 3y ago
Not literally in those terms, but the Anti-Unfair Competition Law 反不正当竞争法 (English text: https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/cn/cn409en.pdf https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/cn/cn409e... ) seems to often get used to accuse business model-threatening third parties of doing something illegal. E.g. Haier could claim that the API is a trade secret that the HA integration is using illegally, or that by accessing the API, Haier's domain name is being used without authorization (though I think this is intended to combat impersonation where someone registers a domain with their competitor's name) etc. etc. Funnily enough, it also outlaws "causing, in bad faith, incompatibility with an internet product or service lawfully provided by another business entity".

tedivm 3y ago

I don't understand why people keep bringing up China when this is a european company run by people in Europe. Every email that came to the dev seems to have come from a white european dude. None of this has anything to do with China.

jacquesm 3y ago

How did we go from 'Haier Europe' to Chinese consumer laws? Or even the United States? Did you miss the 'Europe' bit? They have presence in the UK, Italy, Romania and Turkey (not quite Europe, but close enough). They also have presence in China but Chinese consumer laws do not apply to EU subjects.

int_19h 3y ago
It's still a subsidiary of a corporation that is headquartered in mainland China, and OP is talking about the corporate mindset.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/blob/main/takedown_faq.md https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/blob/main/takedown_faq.md China doesn't rate a mention. What does rate a mention is Haier's own people being on the record that their HON app is such a failure that the bulk of the traffic is generated by the HA plugin, which actually is more economical network wise than Haier's app. Also notable is the fact that they are talking out of both sides of their mouth, they claim they love 'open' and 'API' use but at the same time would like everybody to use their app, but since it is (1) crappy and (2) closed source and so not easily integrated it is logical that the people that need it chose to roll their own. It's remotely possible that there is an instruction from China to Haier Italy that they needed to take action but you'd expect there to be some mention of this. Finally, from a security perspective you really don't want your appliances to send data to the rest of the world, China or otherwise. edit: And finally: if they didn't make their appliances cloud connected but instead allowed for a local only version then I'm very sure the HA people would be ecstatic and the whole problem would go away. Why anybody would buy an appliance that requires a cloud connection is beyond me.