I’m thinking a little of column A, a little of column B. The story is this: Huang Jin, a student in China, bought an Asus laptop that was having a lot of hardware trouble. She sent it back a couple times and eventually they replaced the CPU, which then started overheating. Examining it, she found it to be an “engineering sample” — an early run CPU made for testing purposes — something which isn’t supposed to be distributed publically.
She got a lawyer and demanded $5 million from Asus or she’d release the media to the public. Asus negotiated with her but eventually rejected her outright and then charged her with extortion. She spent 10 months in jail, and has now been released and is countersuing Asus for damages and the state has dismissed the rest of her term, saying that the evidence was lacking. Quite a yarn!
It’s useless to speculate on the morality, or lack thereof, of an enormous company like Asus, but my guess is that they are mainly guilty firstly of throwing engineering samples on the pile for reuse (tsk tsk), then of an overzealous prosecution of the complainant. After all, they must have known the information would get out if they charged her, so why bother?
On the other hand, when Huang demanded such an incredible sum for the favor of keeping her mouth shut, she must have known that what she was doing was blackmail, pure and simple. She’s trying to warn people now that Asus is trying to cheat people, but corporate injustice is not particularly rare and I don’t think she’s really in a position to criticize. What do you guys think?
[via BoingBoing Gadgets]
I think Asus is at first fault here. They should have just replaced the laptop and all would be good. If they used an “engineering sample” and was caught doing so then I think they could have been sued for more. Probably not $5 million more.
But, the student was at final fault and made it worse. If she really did say something like, “Give me $5 million or I release this information” then that does sound like extortion. If she just released the information I doubt anything would have happened to her and she would have received a new computer and maybe should could have still sued Asus.
Of course all of this sounds like it happened in China? They have some different rules there…
Yeah, I agree with you on both counts. As for it being China, I was actually surprised by how similar it sounds to our system.
Huang Jin , the student, and her lawyer asked for $5 million this number based on the Asus’year 2005 annual turnover*0.05%.They asked for this money during their negotiaiton with ASUS not for themselves but to set up a fund for anti-fraud.For any big company like ASUS, any single consumer in front them is just too weak to fight against them if any fraud happened. If Asus just compensated the cost of the laptop,the cost of being caught as fraud is just tooooooooo low.For general Chinese people who have been cheated by all kinds of fake products, this is a war between weak and power. She is my hero!