DeWitt Clinton Quotes
Some foreign governments have now in this country agents to collect our productions. Scientific foreigners are now exploring it with microscopic eyes
DeWitt Clinton, 1769-1828, U. S. Senator (Anti-Federalist Republican, NY), Mayor of New York City, Governor of New York, Peace Party candidate for President of the United States, “Father of Free Public Schools", Speech, Phi Beta Kappa Society, Union College, Schenectady, New York, July 22, 1823
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This has been true for a long time. The United States in its colonial days and its early days of independence stole huge amounts, especially from England. The Lowells stealing the technology and machines for weaving cloth from English companies is one dramatic example. Another is the fact that we did not recognize the copyright laws until the middle of the 19th century. American publishers, including Benjamin Franklin, stole most of the material they published. Thomas Jefferson was a foe of government protection of intellectual property—{605105}.
Major leaks made public the fact that the NSA was hacking into the European and other foreign servers of Google, Microsoft and other technology companies and vacuuming up 500 million internet communications every day. (It would be illegal for them to do this in the United States, but via the outside USA servers they capture the information of US Citizens sending E-mail within the United States. The reaction of many foreign government was outrage as their citizen’s private communications were being captured as well. They began to take steps to curtain their country’s high utilization of American company data storage and transmission and regulate the American firms much more extensively. So American company business and profits were damaged by the NSA surveillance programs which the companies did not know about.
Industrial spying and trade secret thefts are very common in the South Korean business culture. Bribery of competitor’s employees is common. In the pre WWII period of Japanese control, the Japanese had a policy of keeping Korea technically backward to produce food cheaply and trade the food to Japan and buy manufactured goods from Japan—a classic colonial strategy. Japanese engineers and other technicians would go to Korea set up facilities but never share their knowledge with the Koreans. If technicians were needed, they would have to come from Japan. None the less there is a cultural blindness and Korean firms will commonly steal technology from anyone—partners or others. The South Korean Governments had looked at this with a blind eye. Many Koreans believe that because of past history the only way that they can survive on world competition is to continue to pilfer technology. However, modern South Korea has excellent technicians and scientists in almost all fields and making the cultural shift to a standard that is more consonant with the majority of the industrial democracies is the great challenge.
DeWitt Clinton, whose name was almost always spelled De Witt during his lifetime and until the late 20th century, was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States Senator, Mayor of New York City, and as the sixth Governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal. Clinton was a major candidate for the American presidency in the election of 1812, challenging incumbent James Madison.
