Lying is shitty (but usually legal), however "buy this device and copy it's features and user interface" is not "dirty hands" but a completely legitimate course of action. They would have hands dirty if they had bribed some Kytch engineers for schematics or hired someone to steal a prototype, but there's nothing wrong about buying a product and reverse engineering it. In fact, I would consider placing restrictions on that - e.g. software EULAs that prohibit reverse engineering - as immoral.
Completely agree. I don't understand why copying is so vilified. It should be the norm. It's also weird how people can somehow sign away their rights via contracts. Courts shouldn't allow them to do that. A clause saying people can't reverse engineer should simply be considered invalid and not enforced...
Part of the vilification of copying has to do with some existing injustices baked into modern capitalism. We're told that if you're a little guy, you can beat the Goliaths through innovation and outmaneuvering. But if BigCo can just copy SmallCo's innovations, that becomes untrue. Do patents help here? Yes, but it's quite expensive, in practice, to amass and defend them. In many cases, smaller players don't have the resources to patent every innovation, even if those innovations are objectively patentable. So I think, in general, although people recognize that copying of unpatented innovations is legal, there's a feeling that a BigCo, which already has many advantages because of its size, should be competing based on its own innovations, not by copying from smaller players.
