Fakes, Coming to a Store Near You 286
fishdan writes to tell us that while most Slashdotters have their own trusted sources for gear there is a growing concern that all consumers should look out for. According to PC World, more and more counterfeit hardware is coming to market each year. From the article: '...batteries aren't the only tech item that counterfeiters love. In October 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Anchorage, Alaska, seized 20,000 suspected fake Memorex USB memory key thumb drives from Asia. And last year, Miami officials seized 900 allegedly phony laptops valued at $700,000. "Maybe it's a laptop, an MP3 player, or a component like a DVD drive--anything in the digital world can be counterfeited," says Therese Randazzo, a U.S. Customs Service counterfeiting expert.'"
I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
When you buy a product from a manufacturer, you as a buyer are protected by warranty laws, a counterfeiter can get away with selling stuff even if the quality is the same as the original for a lower price because they don't have to support you.
Counterfeiters do take away profits from the rightful owners of the product. Companies spend millions of dollars to develop a product and to appeal to a certain market. If counterfeiters were allowed to counterfeit, then companies would not develop products.
Also, how would like to buy an Intel computer but only to find that the insides are actually made by a Chinese knockoff company.
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
Well i'd expect him to say as much. What facts back him up?
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
here [heise.de] you can see a picture of a fake usb bluetooth adapter. as you can see the antenna is a dummy, the only antenna it has is "drawn" on the pcb. also the bluetooth stack is a different one.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
This obviously has issues with the entire manufacturing process. anything that needed these parts now must be tested.
counterfeit stuff is almost certainly poor quality, possibly bordering on dangerous. it makes the most sense as you get maximum profits that way.
Further there is no accountability. A defective and dangerous product could harm people, thusly bringing lawsuits. These lawsuits would target, in this case, innocent corporations instead of outright dishonest ones. the lack of a need to care about the consumer at all makes counterfeitting electronics dangerous.
Wait till you see... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fake down blankets stuffed with shit polyesters.
Now hear this, fake EGGS. Yes you heard right. What mogglers my bind was how on earth could you make eggs cheaper than collecting from chickens. The fake eggs were obviously inedible, but will crack and pour just like a real egg, with yolks and stuff.
The famous fake gucci's and LV's are old news.
Latest that came in from a buddy who works in shenzhen was that he rode in a fake mercedes benz. They copied all contours and instead of the tri-star, it's a 5 pointed-star (China)! Cool eh.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Another problem is when a device made in the same factory as the real deal (let's say a Toshiba laptop) is sold in the US as a real toshiba. To many people hey, it's a real toshiba, and it's half the price!
But part of the price of the REAL toshiba is the Quality Control that occurs along the line. Perhaps only 85% of all laptops made in that factory actually end up being accepted by toshiba as inventory, and the rest is set to be dismantled, scrapped or refurbished as something went wrong on the assembly line. So what do you get when you buy the fake toshiba?
You get one of the *already rejected* "toshibas" that was never meant to be released to the public. Not only was it never given a serial number that matches a toshiba-sold product so all warranty is out the window, it's already been rejected and defined as having problems. Made in the same factory, yes, but not the same quality as the final for-sale object.
Maybe you'll get lucky and get a solid machine that only has some case defects. Maybe you'll get a lemon that doesn't stay powered on for more than 15 minutes, has no warranty, and you still paid $400 for.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
how certain are you that those new brake pads the shop fitted to your car the other week weren't just compressed cardboard? or that bolt holding the engine in place on the wing of the airplane you're boarding today was really manufactured by one of Boeing's proper suppliers. Those are items currently being counterfeited that really scare me.
REAL goods, FAKE labels (Score:5, Interesting)
Do Memorex even make USB drives, or do they simply buy them in from Asian and stick their badge on them?
"Miami officials seized 900 allegedly phony laptops valued at $700,000. "Maybe it's a laptop, an MP3 player, or a component like a DVD drive--anything in the digital world can be counterfeited," says Therese Randazzo, a U.S. Customs Service counterfeiting expert.'"
I bet they were *real* laptops and *real* mp3 players, the only difference was the label. What you're saying is they can fake *labels*. But that's just because the USA has become a fake brand country, companies license a brand like Polaroid or Caterpillar, buy in cheap Asian crap, stick a "Polaroid" badge on it and charge loads more money because people think they're buying American.
Who cares if those fake brands get pirated, since its the difference between an overprice Asian product and a cheap Asian product, it's still jobs in Asia.
They should tackle false origin of goods labelling instead, since that's the cause of jobs being lost in USA and Europe. How can an Italian shoe maker compete with companies which appear to be Italian luxury show makers, but are just fake Asian brands with some minor finishing in Italy?
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Your argument, while good, only fits a small number of cases where the fake could actually hurt someone. I fail to see how a memory stick can blow up and hurt someone.
A much better reason to discourage this type of piracy is simply because margins are already tight in the electronics world without forcing the few players that exist to fight for their money with people ripping them off. There are areas where I feel pirates play an important roll. Music, movie and clothes production spring to mind. Production costs for these items has drop substantially in recent years but prices haven't generally followed. The pirates are showing the consumers that prices need not be as high as they are paying. I admit that pirates don't have associated development costs and therefore will always be able to sell for less but when you see a pirated copy of a movie for free and the real thing costs £16 ($30) you have to ask where the money is going.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people here are having the standard knee-jerk reaction of saying only corporate profits benefit by cutting out fakes but thats just not the case. If a compan builds a brand name not with marketing but build a brand name with actually releasing a quality product then why should the be associated with the quality of fake items. Do you want to read a review of a top of the line quality electronics manufacterer and go out and buy the reviewed item only to find you got bought a low quality item?
Re:REAL goods, FAKE labels (Score:4, Interesting)
I generally agree with your sentiment about Western Consumers getting sucked into overpaying for cheap crap because of a label (CK clothes instantly spring to mind).
However - I do actually think trademark is one area of 'intellectual property' that helps consumers.
If I buy a laptop that has "AMD Sempron 3000+" written on it, I would like to *know* that that's what it is - not an 900MHz Intel Celeron. Similarly, I want the video memory to be whats advertised, etc etc etc.
Who cares if those fake brands get pirated, since its the difference between an overprice Asian product and a cheap Asian product, it's still jobs in Asia.
Sometimes you do not get a rebranded equivilant, but something that is completely inferior to what you expected.
I would be extemely pissed off if I bought one of the Fake AMD CPUs [over-clock.com] that were going around a while ago, to find it overclocked, ran hotter, and had a shorter lifespan that it should.
How about brand products with fake labels? (Score:3, Interesting)
Would this be considered counterfeit as well?
Elevators too (Score:5, Interesting)
The elevator company had no record that they had an elevator installed there.
When the technicians got there, they couldn't fix anything, because the elevator wasn't really theirs. It was a knock-off!
Bad News Dude.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't speak specifically to shoes, but I can speak for sweaters. Production has largely moved out of shops in Italy, and into (Pakistan, Malaysia,
The problem of jobs moving from high paid countries to low ones is endemic, and a good example of a beggar thy neighbor approach to economic production. (You offer companies more incentives to work in your place, and let them pay less for the work.) Eventually everyone works for nothing;(
Better country of origin laws would work if everyone was willing and able to pay more for goods made in *well paying* countries. However some sort of horrible tax regime based on how much workers receive would probably make more sense.
my $.02 ($.02, that's more than an hourly wage in a Burma sweatshop;))
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
First off music/movie and clothing "pirates" are really different creatures. Clothing pirates actually produce a product and then try to leech off of someone elses good name to make a sale. Anyone can see for themselves that a handbag can cost less than $300 by going to Walmart. The bags there don't have the cachet of a Loius Vitton bag though.
Your comments are even more ridiculous applied to music/movies. To say that a pirate has lower production costs is a rather large understatement. Producing a movie requires all sorts of expenses from paying actors, directors, stagehands, etc, to marketing. Pirating a movie requires the movie, a computer, and an internet connection. No mystery on how the pirate can "make" the movie so cheaply. Independent low budget producers/labels are a better example of how movies/music can be made more cheaply.
Growing concern? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was only a matter of time before counterfeiting struck its hand on the electronics industry. There's already counterfeit electrical parts, medical supplies, you name it. The thing is about counterfeits coming from China is that there are thousands of factories that can produce the exact same product easily. Factories are next door to each other in Guangdong/Shenzen -- getting the blueprints for products is only a matter of knowing someone from another factory and getting a copy for you to produce. So it may not be so much an issue as having a counterfeit phone, but having a phone produced in a different factory.
The truth of the matter is, the '100% mirror quality' fake Louis Vuitton's that walk their way past you in the mall are impossible to tell from the real ones. The quality is the exact same, and the materials and craftmanship the same. So for small, (mostly) meaningless electronics, counterfeit does not impose much of a problem to the consumer. For health-critical devices or medicines, it's a different story. That's why there's so much more focus on stopping counterfeit medicine than Louis Vuitton.
Re:Cisco is plagued by counterfeits (Score:4, Interesting)
If Cisco outsources the manufacture of the hardware how can it possibly believe that the manufacturer won't run an extra X copies off the line after they've run Cisco's? Sure, your contracts may prohibit that but when the cost vs what Cisco charges the end user is so great, the temptation for someone at the manufacturing line is going to be pretty high. Especially if they figure they'll sell the goods in a market where Cisco isn't.
There are reasons on-shore companies used to do the manufacturing themselves. This is one of them.
Outsourcing may be cheaper in the short run but Cisco is beginning to learn what the long-run costs are.
Deadly fakes (Score:3, Interesting)
However, fakes aren't stopping at clothes and fashion. The problem is that if you don't fight counterfeit very efficiently, you soon see them appear in places where reliability and traceability are paramount. What about bad components crashing a mission-critical system? Fake brake pads in your car that overheat and fail? Or even worse, fake antibiotics and aviation parts? All these are happening today and are a major concern.
One way to fight counterfeits is to ship items with an RFID tag that is queried at each step of the shipping and traced back to the originating factory. Of course, pirates will soon start counterfeiting tags too, so the system has to be designed to prevent fake and duplicate numbers.
I personally must be naive because I cannot conceive making fake drugs or couterfeit airplane parts -- could you endanger thousands of lives to make a quick buck? Obviously, such scruples belong to a gentler era, such as the Hun invasions.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Li-Ion/Li-Poly cells are the dangerous ones. Basically they can reach a run-away condition very easily, and lithium is *very* reactive. They can ignite if punctured, charged too fast, over-charged, or if they drop below a certain voltage and are then charged at normal rates. They will also swell/burst if over-discharged or over-heated. Most Li-Poly/Li-Ion packs include a circuit with a thermal cutoff to prevent over-heating, a circuit to prevent shorting/excessive-discharge-rates, and a circuit that isolates the pack if it drops below a safe voltage (usually around 2.5-2.8 volts per cell).
I did purchase a pair of Li-poly batteries for a cell phone, which were no-name imports. They did not have any cutoff circuitry, and I suspect could have been nasty if they wandered out of spec (either through abuse or a defective phone). I used them with no problems though, but I think I'd reconsider, given what I know now about Lithium cells.
That said, the circuitry required for Lithium cells is becoming cheaper everyday (the functionality is avaiable in a single chip), so I wouldn't be surprised if "decent" third-party units do have the desired safety functionality.
D.
Re:Cisco is plagued by counterfeits (Score:3, Interesting)
These cards are the bane of support people. When you yank a failing card and realise you can't call TAC, the customer is screwed.
There are a lot of used equipment resellers in Europe with these cards and chassis, they come in through Rotterdam by the container load. You can pick up a non-branded, fully loaded 12008 for a few thousand euros, a 2811 for about 100 euros, and a palette of 1720s with ADSL WICs for 20 euros each. At those prices, you don't bother about TAC support, you just buy extras as spares and swap out anything that fails. The MTTF is usually under a year, so it's still Caveat Emptor.
the AC
Surprise, surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, it's almost entirely the fault of the manufacturers of the "genuine article". If people are counterfeiting your products and still managing to make a profit selling them cheaper than you, then you obviously are overpricing them in the first place.
Re:REAL goods, FAKE labels (Score:3, Interesting)
ball bearing fans (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to buy a lot of 80mm ball bearing fans, because the cheap-ass sleeve bearing fans that came stock in power supplies would always sieze up after 6-18 months. But often the ball bearing fans would wear out, too.
A little surgery revealed that many of the supposed ball bearing fans actually had cheesy bushings, and the clever Chinese simply learned how to sell their cheap wares for more by slapping "ball bearing" stickers on them. Once, to make a point, I bought an $8 fan and immediately dissected it in front of the vendor with a pair of diagonal pliers. He just shrugged.