Hon Hai completely drops suit against "iPod City" journos

After folding under public (and perhaps governmental) pressure and reducing the damages it was seeking against two Chinese journalists from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents), Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry has now wised up and dropped the libel suit altogether. As a quick review (though we doubt that you need one), Hon Hai took legal action against China Business News' Wang You and Weng Boa following their report on the much-publicized working conditions at the Foxconn plant lovingly dubbed "iPod City," asking for compensation amounting to many times the reporters' annual salaries and convincing a court to temporarily freeze their assets. The PR nightmare ended on Sunday when Hon Hai chose not to pursue the case any further, according to China's official Xinhua news agency, and was capped off with a mutual apology between the firm and newspaper for all the trouble that the lawsuit had caused. In an encouraging sign that this method of dispute settlement may actually be gaining ground elsewhere in the world, TiVo followed the announcement by sending a bouquet of flowers to Echostar, NTP decided to return the $612 million it won from RIM inside a Hallmark greeting card, and Shannon Derrik and Stephanie Eick (the iPod lawsuit girls) realized after a mediated tea party that they wanted to forgo the legal silliness and go back to being BFFs.

[Joe Smith @ Sep 4th 2006 11:47AM]

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..............

[Scabies @ Sep 4th 2006 12:04PM]

BFF's, BFFL, or BFFE? This is important

[Linkman2004 @ Sep 4th 2006 12:11PM]

...And world peace rained forever.

[Dull @ Sep 4th 2006 1:31PM]

this has been quite a tear jerker...

[Jeff Foster @ Sep 4th 2006 1:36PM]

hahahaha i love the picture

even if it's totally inappropriate... one of those girls should probably be an 800 pound gorilla. :P

[GhostDoggy @ Sep 4th 2006 2:39PM]

Linkman2004, World Peace begins when Jobs dies and the sweat shops close. Ok, just kidding. I love the DiePOD.

[Linkman2004 @ Sep 4th 2006 3:23PM]

"Linkman2004, World Peace begins when Jobs dies and the sweat shops close."

I like the way you think, good sir.

[matchmaking services @ Sep 4th 2006 7:09PM]

In a study, A MAJORITY of the 50,000 laid-off sweatshop child workers (because of foreign intervention) in Bangladesh later became prostitutes, turned to crime, or starved to death.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

[matchmaking services @ Sep 4th 2006 7:11PM]

Oh and in Pakistan when Nike and Reebok were fored to shut down their factories because of world opinion, tens of thousands of Pakistanis were again unemployed.

According to UPI, mean family income in Pakistan fell by more than 20%.

It's not like people in third world countries can get a cushy office job.