Counterfeit DFI Motherboards Surface In Indonesia 216
crazyeyes writes "Those crazy counterfeiters have done it again. First they made counterfeit Intel boxed processors, now they are counterfeiting DFI motherboards! Quoting: 'The detail to the packaging, documentation and the motherboard printing really makes you wonder if the people responsible for this have only limited their activities to DFI motherboards. It's quite possible that there are fake ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards in the market as well.'" Update: 04/15 12:59 GMT by Z : As noted in the comments, the articles offer no speculation as to the origins of the counterfeits. Updated to clarify that.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
You may want to risk frying your new shiny 9800GX2 and your 4GB of DDR3, but not I, sir.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They might make their 10-15% profit, but that is reward for the risk and hardwork they put into the R&D that goes into making those chips/boards.
You are IMHO robbing from society as a whole by buying stolen goods. Sure sometimes it's for the greater good, breaking the rules is a good way to influence change. But you can't do it forever. Someone has to pay for the R&D.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Assembly lines create rejects... most often the "knockoffs" taken from factories are those that don't meet assembly/reliability standards and are "liberated" from the reject bin. Proper distribution channels is not just to bilk customers, it's also to control the quality of goods shipped to customers.
For example leaking capacitors and exploding batteries are the risks of poor control in the non-proper channels.
The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Any firm subsidies the R&D spend by selling their current range at a competitive profit. Any one line only stays in the field for a limited length of time and by then a new product must be ready to roll or the company folds.
This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on. Every new fork in the technology will leave a few smaller companies on the graveyard because they either backed the wrong branch or will not have the capital to change.
So along comes a knock off firm who takes the whole IP without doing any R&D and pushes it out at a lower margin and steals profit from the designer. What happens? the original firm suffers and the balance is risked. A similar situation exists in patent car parts and 3rd party parts - when you buy original manufacturer parts you are helping design the next model of car. Without that income the whole system hangs in jeopardy.
Take a step back from your naive, narrow minded viewpoint and try and look at the market as whole. Apart from the legality of the issue Chinese knockoff invariably add nothing to quality, save little on price and carry far greater hidden risks then most people think.
The trick here is to mentally predict what will happen in another 15 years if this continues. My opinion is based on experience and facts as I see them, and yes - I traveled to china 6 times a year for >5 years when working in the CE industry so I have some limited experience in this.
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, if the cheaper copies are actually inferior they will soon earn a reputation for being so [...]
This is where you argument falls down.
The fakes are (allegedly -- TFA offers no facts) being sold as "genuine DFI(TM) motherboards". Now if they were sold as "genuine ChinaCorp Fake(TM) motherboards" then you could consider the reputation of DFI versus the reputation of the fakes, and perhaps the fakes would be just as good. That is not possible if the fakes pretend to be a DFI motherboard and the consumer can't tell when purchasing which reputation they are choosing.
This is why trademark laws are actually a mostly good sort of monopoly protection.
Rich.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second... how reliable do you think a 80% cheaper board is? I know during the 486 era I was hip to buying some cheap arse boards. We're talking rebranded PC chips crap. Even the socket 754 line which was designed to be the cheap line... even true blue asus boards had a high return rate. I'm sure other
And third... support from a counterfeit board. Bios updates are ultra handy. Even from a non-counterfeit board i've seen a lack of updates in the pentium III class where win2k or xp refused to work (I forget the issue, but something MS and intel hashed out). Imagine a pirated bios with no chance of an update.
And lastly... let's say you "could" get a $30 motherboard. Odds are you're going to have to replace that sucker relatively soon with another $30 board because of failure, lack of updates, or whatever. You're out $60. You might as well have bought a $60 board, which to me represents an older model, overstock, or closeout deal.
So to sum up
1) 80% savings is too good to be true for new gear.
2) You risk failure or damage to your equipment
3) Lack of support and updates make it a headache
4) Under pretty ideal conditions, you'll likely be better off with a realistic discount for a realistic reason.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you think the USA jump started their economic development after the revolution?
And who do you think control the current "rules" and to who's benefit?
The Irony indeed
Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake (Score:4, Insightful)
They will...
This is the same process that Japan went thru. If you're old enough you'll remember when "Made in Japan" meant crap quality, and back then there were few Japanese brand names. China if building up it's tech expertise (very quickly) building knock-off versions of brands that are easy to sell. As "Made in China" stops becoming synonymous with "cheap piece of crap", then you will see more and more Chinese brands, respected for themselves, rather than knock-offs.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, you're advocating supporting theft by purchasing stolen goods. If you're talking about 'off the books' production runs - it's more than likely they're also using company materials to do it, thus they're stealing.
No, 'proper distribution channels' isn't an artificial construct to bilk you. It's to ensure that quality standards are met, as well as business expenses and profit*.
On the design end, I'll point out that R&D is a significant expense, and the company deserves to make back that money. In many cases, they also try to make a name for quality. Counterfeiters that imitate that name are trading off that quality, normally without meeting it, thus harming the company's reputation(which does matter).
If the counterfeiters went into legitimate business and didn't steal/infringe I wouldn't have a problem with them offering a cheap product at great prices. I'd still probably go for a higher quality company, but that's because I believe that quality is usually worth the higher price.
*No, profit isn't evil.
Re:and? (Score:3, Insightful)
There was 1 difference though - the west was a easier target because the margins were so much better. It is the normal to see us ripped off left, right and center but there is less economic incentive for them to rip each other off.
There is one point worth making though - they fully understand IP law (and find it hilarious), and they use it against the western world. They have created a vast swathe of (frequently ridiculous) patents and try to enforce them against the west as gleefully as they ignore them in the east. Its just another way to make a living off us crazy people.
Trying to persuade them that this is wrong is like trying to persuade them that it is wrong to eat dog - they will look at you like you are a madman - and to them you probably are viewed as a madman. Its about the same magnitude of cultural gap that exists between a marine and your average taleban - you try to explain that some soldiers will come and issue "warning fire", follow "rules of engagement", and try to imprison you to some "geneva convention" (with better food and water then they are used to) in some civilized manner, yet if all else fails drop 40 tonnes of high explosive on your head. What they are used to is creeping up on somebody and cutting their throat. The concept is so alien they will not understand.
Sorry, drifting a bit in the last.