$200B Lost To Counterfeiting? Back It Up 283
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a story about how the recession has impacted product counterfeiters. In it, the reporter regurgitates the oft-repeated claim that counterfeiting 'costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year.' Techdirt's Mike Masnick asks the Times reporter to back up that assertion, noting two recent reports (by the GAO and the OECD) that suggest the actual number is much lower, and quoting two reporters who have actually looked at the numbers and found (a) the real number is probably less than $5 billion, and (b) the $200 billion number can be traced back to a totally unsourced (read: made-up) magazine claim from two decades ago."
Big Business (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasp!
Re:Big Business (Score:5, Insightful)
The idiotic claim made by big business is that every counterfeited product "would" have been purchased had it not been counterfeited.
The claim not only illustrates a complete lack of understanding of the basic supply/demand curve, but gives us yet another example of a deeply flawed business model which relies on legal threats and big government to plaster over it's shortcomings.
I for one see counterfeiters as a necessary force: Reminding us of the stupidity of major-brand retail prices, and their massive disconnect from underlying value.
Re:Big Business (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't want to pay brand-name prices, how about not fucking buying brand-name goods?
Re:Big Business (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't want to pay brand-name prices, how about not fucking buying brand-name goods?
Way to state the obvious. I have one too "if you don't want to go bust, get a working business model". Well thats my contribution to the save the obvious foundation for the week. Wait here's an even better one "drinking water makes you less thirsty". I am on fire today.
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Reminding us of the stupidity of major-brand retail prices, and their massive disconnect from underlying value.
While I agree that most "brand name" products are overpriced based on their utility, you must remember that there is also a great deal of money spent to let people know that the product even exists. I am not sure of the numbers, but a surprisingly large percentage of a product's budget is allocated for marketing. And when you look at how things are sold to a mass market, it starts to make sense.
Why, for example, do we know that there even is a new "Toy Story" movie? Not because of word of mouth. We ar
Can't really hurt many US jobs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't really hurt many US jobs... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is killing retail too (Score:3, Interesting)
As well as retail. My ex-gf works in fashion down in LA and to pay the lease she needs to sell at leas a single high-end designer dress every few days. Last year she in the garment district she saw someone selling a fake Dolce Vita skirt for 20 bucks, this skirt retails for over 400. How can she compete with that? Should she start buying the fakes to stay in business, because that is what it comes down to.
Re:It is killing retail too (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, did the person selling the fake skirts make it clear that they were fake (or at least, did the customers know)?
If so, then all they wanted was a skirt that looked a particular way; they didn't care who made it. Your ex's store, or the designers who supply her, can only try to compete in three ways, it seems to me.
First, quality; their skirts may be made of better materials than the fakes, or may be made with better techniques. If so, try to differentiate based on this. Of course, some people are satisfied with synthetics instead of natural materials, or poorer materials instead of finer ones, or single stitching instead of double stitching, so it won't always work, and the price difference may remain substantial. (There was an interesting article in the NY Times the other day about the Italian fashion industry and wool quality)
Second, price; how cheaply can the real skirts be made? Maybe it would be more efficient to sell skirts out of a van, instead of out of a store that is expensive to lease. It looks like the fake guys are winning on this front, but there's no reason that they necessarily have to.
Third, brand; there may be some cachet that can be used to make money out of the brand of the manufacturer or the distributor. Some people presented with identical products from different vendors at different prices may prefer the more expensive one as a form of conspicuous consumption. (You can see it elsewhere; a real Picasso is worth a lot, but a forgery, no matter how identical, is worth a lot less to people who care about this sort of thing) It can work, but it has problems. Some people don't care about brands, but just want a nice skirt. If the fake is good enough, they'll probably buy it since it costs less than the same thing from elsewhere. Some people care about brands, but are excluded due to artificially high prices set by the people controlling the brands. They'll deliberately seek out the fake skirts in order to most closely approximate the real thing.
I suspect that the ex et al have been trying to compete only on brand, and perhaps partially on materials (although usually brand justifies more of an increase in price than materials). If it's not working as well as they'd like, perhaps they ought to try a different approach?
Usually not with fakes (Score:2)
To the extent they will even admit it to the customer, the fakes are still branded to look real. While a customer might understand it is a fake, depending on how savvy they are, the idea is for it to appear real to everyone else. It is the whole status thing, as you noted with your Picasso thing. Perhaps a more similar case would be prints of modern artists. Usually, a given picture is printed only so many times. Each is numbered and the plates are destroyed afterwords. This is to increase the status and th
Re:It is killing retail too (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming the counterfeit dress makes any profit at all, the genuine one must be making at least 380 bucks of profit for a price of 400. That means your girlfriend and her suppliers are getting at least 95% profit margin.
In other words, cry me a river.
Frankly, if your entire business model depends on selling cheap items at insane markup because they're "genuine", you deserve to go out of business. How could you possibly avoid that, in an economic system that's entirely based on using competition to lower prices?
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That's not true. A custom tailored dress/suit can cost thousands, but will fit much better than a $400 dress/suit, let alone a 99$ JC/Penney special.
"Custom tailored" means someone doing alterations so that it fits you. You pay extra for that because of that person doing the work. Counterfeits are going to be off-the-rack copies of off-the-rack originals, and while there may or may not be a difference in the materials most of the savings are in the name. They're often made in the same factory with the same materials, so the only difference is not having the markup.
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At the risk of stating the obvious: if the counterfeiters divert enough revenue away from the genuine producer, the genuine producer won't be able to employ so many people and might even go out of business completely.
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The massive profits over the actual relatively low manufacturing costs go to the American designer/brand (assuming it's an American company like, say, Oakley).
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Re:Can't really hurt many US jobs... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the reasons countries trying to modernise their economies tend to put a focus on IP creation - it leads to a large influx of cash for a long, long time. Same goes for moving away from a primarily extraction-based economy.
Well, only so long as other countries respect it. Creation, after all, is expensive but not remunerative on its own; it is publishing that is (or at least can be) where the money is made. It's reasonable to let someone else invest the time and money in creation, and then to copy them cheaply and profitably. Convincing states to not do this is tough, especially if they don't have, and don't expect to have, much local creative effort that could be exploited elsewhere, justifying mutual respect for these rights.
Given that it seems unlikely that two countries would openly go to war over, say, DVD piracy, copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc. just don't seem like a stable, long term basis for an economy. It's just too imaginary. Extraction isn't too good either, but perhaps there's some other way.
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Given that it seems unlikely that two countries would openly go to war over, say, DVD piracy, copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc. just don't seem like a stable, long term basis for an economy.
How cold and dry is the simple reality.
Very well put. It's found me in one of those rare days I don't have mod points but consider yourself insightfulized.
Maybe newspaper articles should list references (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe newspaper articles should cite their sources and have a list of references at the end like academic papers do. That way at least readers or other interested parties could independently verify the facts in the article.
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Do you know how long it would take them to verify all their sources. Come on, it'd take several extra hours to get a story up. There's no time for that. If you want for confirmation, you'll get scooped by someone else.
[sarcastic but unfortunately true soapbox off]
Re:Maybe newspaper articles should list references (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say that the author needs to verify their source. They merely need to list them. They got that $200 billion figure from somewhere. Cite it.
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Teh intertoobs, where else? (This is also why newspapers often have typos, even in the digital age. It's cut-and-paste from a lolspeak site.)
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That's the problem though, they frequently aren't verifying them, so they can't cite them. It's embarrassing to say "we found it at another publication, and are just guessing they did their homework."
I said it sarcastically but true. Hell, if you look at a lot of the crap being published these days, they're frequently full of spelling and syntax errors. It sucks, but it's the way it is. "Get it out" frequently overrides "make sure it's right".
As the summary said, th
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So why exactly hasn't Slashdot (and every other blog on the planet) been sued into a smoking crater? I think you've been pulling plays out of the New York Times book here bud...
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Well, I've been on the receiving end of a few C&D's [wikipedia.org] for doing what Slashdot does. It all depends on who gets their panties in a wad that day. Carrying parts of their stories can be touchy. Duplicating large amounts of news is well beyond the fine gray line of copyright.
Generally, we (bloggers and aggregators) all do it with attribution (the read more links, or embedded links). It actually helps them out. Consider a Slashdot story and the Slashdot effect. If Slashdot r
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Maybe newspaper articles should cite their sources and have a list of references at the end like academic papers do. That way at least readers or other interested parties could independently verify the facts in the article.
Heck, even wikipedia articles list their references and are conspicuously labeled if they are in need of references. This article says the figure is from "the authorities".......WTF is that???
By the way, I work for a company that sells products that could be counterfeited. I estimate that just my company loses approximately 200 trillion dollars a year just from people selling products in our name. Why didn't she report that?
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Maybe newspaper articles should cite their sources and have a list of references at the end like academic papers do. That way at least readers or other interested parties could independently verify the facts in the article.
Oh god, that would be so fricking fun for a couple of days...
Then people would start asking why the news had two or three, very boring, items and soon old unverifiable news would come back.
It's been a long time since the news became entertainment media, you can't expect people to be now able to digest dry information.
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The penis enlargement commercials make no such claims precisely because they can't get away with it in the US either. Seriously, listen to one again. You will NEVER hear them say that it will make your penis larger. They may imply it, but they will never say it outright.
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Where exactly do you draw the line of fraud? I think giving this First Amendment consideration is at least worth a moment. These media outlets are often expressing political views with their organizations, aren't they? You know for damn sure that if anyone tried to tell these "news" sources that they had to limit any aspect of what they presented to the public, the ACLU would be all over it claiming First Amendment.
Nobody is looking for censorship, it's just the NOISE! Think of a spam filter for news. The
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As in x acres per day times 365 days per year divide by surface area of the earth and we found that those evil farmers in the Amazon region were denuding the entire planet (including the surface of the oceans) every year.
Working backwards, the surface area of the earth is 510 072 000 square kilometres (or 1.26041536 e11 acres), yielding a daily rate of 345319276 acres lost. Considering that the Rainforest Action network typically claimed that 50,000 acres were lost per day [google.com], your estimate is a gross exaggeration.
Now, current estimates of amazon deforestation are [wikipedia.org] on the order of 20,000 square kilometers, or 13540 acres per day. But RAN used a worldwide figure.
Re:Maybe newspaper articles should list references (Score:5, Insightful)
So, based on the 216,000 acres per day in the April, 1990 Vegetarian Times article your search turned up, my estimate was off by a factor of 4. As in, Vegeterian Times was claiming the denuding of the Earth by your figures every 4 years instead of every year.
Surface area of earth: 510 072 000 sq km
Veg Times estimate of acreage lost per day: 216000 acress
Veg Times estimate converted to square kilometers: 874 sq km
Yearly loss, assuming 365.24 days/year: 309605 sq kilometers
Years it would take to denude 510,072,000 sq km of rainforest at that rate: 1650 years.
Your estimate: 4 years.
square Kilometers get read as square miles, hourly estimates based on 8 hour work days get scaled up again using 24 hour work days. All rainforests are read as just the Amazon.
Ever been to Brazil? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the counterfeiting capital of the universe. Because of Brazil's 60% duty on imported goods, an a very unfavorable exchange rate, a pair of Nike sneakers made in Singapore for $5 in materials and $0.30 in slave labor costs about R$600, which is a month's wages (or more) for a lot of people there. So, there's a huge demand, and therefore supply, of counterfeit goods.
Re:Ever been to Brazil? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is largely not due to high import duties but due to corrupt customs officials. Fucking hell hole, I'm longing to get out of it.
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Because of Brazil's 60% duty on imported goods, an a very unfavorable exchange rate, a pair of Nike sneakers made in Singapore for $5 in materials and $0.30 in slave labor costs about R$600
Think about what you said again.
$5.30 to make the shoe + 60% import tax = $8.48.
At the current exchange rate this is R$14.8
If it's not the import tax, then where is the added charge coming from?
I'm sure you can figure it out, it's not a trick question.
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His point was that because of the high import tax, the exchange rate, and low income of the average citizen, it costs much much more in real money in Brazil to buy a Nike sneaker than it does in the USA.
Old media sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand, they are trying to salvage old media, and on the other hand they are trying to kill efforts like Wikileaks.
It seems pretty obvious.
CNN can just say anything they want, even if it's completely inaccurate and has no sources to back it up. They can just say their source is secret, and nobody is even going to ask.
Wikileaks, OTOH, shows you the actual docs. That's why they are being persecuted as criminals.
Encyclopedia Britannica is written by an unknown number of employees under unknown circumstances, and they cite no sources clearly (In the best case, they just cite a bunch of sources that might or might not back up their claims, and there's no direct way to check them easily).
Wikipedia is edited by the general public, each edit can be easily identified and accredited to a single author, and all sources are directly linked to in most cases.
And yet, Encyclopedia Britannica is considered more credible than Wikipedia, even when it's been shown that it's far more inaccurate, not to mention outdated.
Old media has to die, but the almighty economic powers that run this world won't let it go without a fight.
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yet, EB is a perfectly fine cite to use in your Wikipedia article. Thus Wikipedia can never be considered more reliable than EB.
Not to say that EB is the word of God but I find the source normally more reliable than those who cite the source. Of course, there are also no absolutes in this case.
Lik you do? (Score:3, Insightful)
You claim media should list their sources and that old media fails because it doesn't do so.
But you then are supposed to be new media, social media, and you don't list your sources either.
You make claims, with no way for me to verify them.
See how EASY it is to sounds like a know it all who claims to hold the one truth in his hands and expect everyone to believe you on your word alone?
I am willing to bet that the article you read that made these claims didn't list its sources either and that those source
Re:Old media sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks, OTOH, shows you the actual docs. That's why they are being persecuted as criminals.
They're being persecuted like criminals because some of the documents in their possession are of questionable legality, not because they show the docs full stop.
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Get over it. Truman defeated Dewey already.
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Nonsense. Ask any librarian.
Re:Old media sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Citation needed.
Re:Old media sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you disagree with the facts doesn't make the facts political. It makes you wrong.
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Regardless, I still favor the information I gather there from the one I find in many places. It's just that it would be better for Wikipedia to go back to its roots and encourage the public to edit.
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Not just that, but rampant fanboi mods as well. Just look up how many articles they have there for something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Deity forbid you find they actually got something wrong on one of those pages, they will drop the banhammer on you. That is why I only use Wikipedia for boring facts like chip designs or WW II military craft, because anything really popular will most likely have a fanboi mod watching it like a hawk.
I'll have that in mind next time I have an urge to correct some specific wikipedia data about Buffy the vampire slayer.
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For an online encyclopedia with no political bias, see: http://www.conservapedia.com/ [conservapedia.com]
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This article, and:
http://collateralmurder.com/ [collateralmurder.com]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/army_wikileaks/ [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.examiner.com/x-6495-US-Intelligence-Examiner~y2010m6d20-Censored-news-Pentagon-attacks-Wikileaks-more-gulf-drilling-approved-Fed-fights-reform-more [examiner.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html [cnet.com]
http://thestatsblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/britannica-versus-wikipedia/ [wordpress.com]
Not surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously though, estimating losses due to piracy/counterfeiting is always dodgy since it assumes that a certain number of people would have bought the real deal had the fake stuff not been available.
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When I was in my teens, I could find counterfeit Movado watches for ~$30 that were indistinguishable from the real deal. Would I have bought real ones for $1500+? No.
Of course now that I want a real one, there's no chance in hell I'm going to settle for a fake.
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Not that I give a lot of credence to that $200 billion figure, but I think part of their claims are that people might be buying counterfeit goods thinking that they're legit. For example, it was a while back on a forum that I saw some people that had gotten fake Seymour Duncan guitar pickups off ebay. They were sold for a price nearing authentic ones, and were sold as authentic, but after scrutiny it was discovered that they were knockoffs.
That said, while it DOES happen, I think it's a lot rarer than mos
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Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The "lost sales" numbers companies claim often are based on 100% of people buying the more expensive real product (which most of us would agree is a completely bogus number).
Indeed, I recently bought a fake Breitling watch for $100.-.
Even though I have to take it off in the shower (yes I bathe) I would never buy the +$4000.- real deal that's water proof to -500 meters.
Yet some lawyers would tally this as a $4000.- lost sale.
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The "lost sales" numbers companies claim often are based on 100% of people buying the more expensive real product (which most of us would agree is a completely bogus number).
And all the world bankers are laughing at all the fools.
Who are all the fools? Anyone not a world banker.
*illions lost to piracy, counterfeit goods... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You also have to consider that the market price is artificially inflated to "cover the damage" of piracy. Thus, if there was no piracy, the prices would (hypothetically) be lower. So not only do you have to consider the sales lost rather than the total pirated, but you also have to use the "real market value" not the inflated market value. Further, you would have to subtract from this total the amount lost per sale due to the devaluation.
If the value ends up negative, then the industry is actually making mo
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Not all NYT coverage of counterfeiting is the same (Score:2)
Counterfeiting is Ok. (Score:4, Insightful)
without anything producing any goods for it.
Let me introduce a little friend I call Hayek. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Counterfeiting is Ok. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not enough to recognize that 'social justice' is an empty phrase without determinable content. It has become a powerful incantation which serves to support deep-seated emotions that are threatening to destroy the Great Society. Unfortunately it is not true that if something cannot be achieved, it can do no harm to strive for it. Like chasing any mirage it is likely to produce results which one would have done much to avoid if one had foreseen them. Many desirable aims will be sacrificed in the vain hope of making possible what must forever elude our grasp.
-Friedrich Hayek
"Law, Legislation and Liberty"
Hayek: the unoriginal "too hard; don't try" philosopher.
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Hayek: the unoriginal "too hard; don't try" philosopher.
Tell that to the millions who voted for the "lesser of two evils" in the last election(s).
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Perhaps he was just using hyperbole to distance himself from socialism as much as possible.
That's pretty obvious when you compare his ideas to Keynes ideas on how to stabilize failing or stalled economies.
Re:Counterfeiting is Ok. (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is between effective government and ineffective government, not the ability of a government to provide a just society. Hang on, I'll put it simply: you need to learn more than what your daddy told you. It's a big, big world out there.
Let's look at two modern western nations and see what the results are:
USA vs Norway
GDP per Capita (World Bank)
Norway: $55,000
USA: $46,000
Life Expectancy
Norway: 80 years
USA: 78.2 years
Poverty Rates
Norway: 7%
USA: 12%
Employment Rates:
Norway: 3.5% (April 2010)
USA: 8% (April 2010)
Income Inequality (Lower is Better)
Norway: 25.8
USA: 40.8
Vacation Time
Norway: 25 days
USA: 14 days
Awww boo. Reality is a bitch, ain't it?
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Bah. That should read unemployment rates.
Re:Counterfeiting is Ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
Approximate population
Norway: 4,478,497
USA: 309,162,581
Whether your underlying point is right or wrong, I don't consider your comparison valid because of this little detail.
I would even venture as far as to say that your statement goes against your point. The fact that the US figures in your original post are so close to those of Norway even though the US has to govern almost 80x the population is actually more of a testament of an effectively scaling government. It's unlikely that the governmental system of someplace as small as Norway would meet the needs of such a large population.
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Also note that we have 3.7 million square miles of real estate and resources, and Norway has 125,000.
I think the inability to effectively use a nation's resource because that nation has too much stuff is a pathetic way of defending that particular argument. In fact I think it's self-defeating. It's like arguing that your company is broke because it has too many assets.
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U.S. military installations in Norway: 9
Norwegian military installation in the U.S.: 0
One reason the U.S. does not spend as much on social welfare is that we spend a lot more on our military. This benefits the social welfare states of Western Europe, including Norway.
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Simply? You get deflationary spirals, much like with what we're seeing now.
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So, they're smart enough to care about Fiat currency, but too stupid to write their debt contracts with an inflation provision?
Got the wrong message off that tagline (Score:4, Funny)
The whole "back it up" line made me think for a second, they wanted people to copy money to preserve it from counterfeiting...
ACTA propaganda campaign? (Score:4, Interesting)
When they start using rectal numerology to prop up a story like this, I can't help but think that this is a propaganda piece to grease the skids for ACTA.
The obligatory Obama comment (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The obligatory Obama comment (Score:4, Informative)
Well then why didn't you reply to it? Oh, wait, it isn't there. I expanded all the comments and ctrl+f'ed Obama, the only three instances were in your post..
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$5,000,000,000 (Score:2)
Five billion dollars is still a lot of money.
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5 billion is a small number in the context of the national economy. In fact, it is so small as to be dwarfed by the margin of error when Considering economic trends.
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Not only is $5,000,000,000 a relatively small number compared to GDP and the market as a whole, but you have to look at who is losing the money.
The counterfeit manufacturers only sell this product once. Once they sell it to a distributor (most likely someone in the US) the product becomes part of the economy.
Those counterfeit goods that are sold on the street (as in pictures article) were originally purchased from China (probably also true for the legit product) but the one making the money is the stre
Re:$5,000,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Five billion dollars is still a lot of money.
But put the numbers in perspective.
US GDP $14,260,000,000,000 (2009 estimate, courtesy of the CIA [cia.gov])
$200 Billion equals 1.4% of the GDP
$5 Billion equals 0.035% of the GDP
One is a problem worthy of immediate attention. The other is a problem to worry about when nothing else is pressing.
Well actually (Score:2)
Even if something is a small part of the economy, it is still worth dealing with. There are lively hoods at stake, as well as just a general sense of justice. After all if you have your wallet stolen, you still want it solved, if possible, despite the face that the value in harm is so small compared to the GDP as to be statistical noise.
What it does do, though, is determine what is worth spending. If you have a problem and spending $1 billion dollars can reduce the problem by 10% well then if that is worth
I did not rtfa but... (Score:2)
Yeah but $200B 20 years ago is worth (Score:2, Insightful)
Direct or Indirect? (Score:5, Interesting)
The place to start with this is doing something like purse shopping. You can go to a Coach store or Prada and find a really nice purse for $1500 and an OK one for $500. Then go to a store that sells similar knock-offs and you can see things that look more-or-less like the Prada ones for $100. Then stop by the street vendor with a absolutely faithful Prada copy for $35.
There are two things that the average Joe learns from this adventure:
What this does is by the mere presence of the counterfeit goods in the marketplace is reduce the willingness of the public to buy originals. It doesn't matter what the "original" is, obviously there has to be a cheaper counterfeit version available. This applies to everything from caviar to computers and automobile parts to luggage.
$200 billion lost because of the presence of counterfeit goods? Easy. The direct losses might only be a few million, but pushing the idea of "just as good as" in front of people pushes the originals out completely.
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The fashion industry has dealt with counterfeiting for ages; the cheap knock offs actually help them. The real key (to tthem) is about creating something fashionable. The hilarity is that they have to watch what people do with the knock-offs to figure out what fashionable means. Oh-Bla-Di, Oh-Bla-Dah, ....
Re:Direct or Indirect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh, I'd say the lesson there is 'don't buy overpriced name-brand'. I mean, I'd never buy a Rolex watch. I see a counterfeit Rolex and all that tells me is 'this is what that expensive watch is actually worth, in terms of parts and labor'. But I'm not gonna buy the counterfeit either. Instead I'll buy a Casio or a Yes.
If there's a dramatically cheaper counterfeit of something available, that means you're probably being ripped off when you buy that item. Notice that it's mostly the overpriced luxury goods that get ripped off. And movies and such, but that's just because blank DVDs are dirt cheap compared to a DVD movie - again, you're getting ripped off when you pay $20 for a piece of plastic. Money too - worth $100, costs a couple cents.
Anyway, my point is that there only has to be a cheaper version if the original version is a colossal waste of money.
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$200 billion lost because of the presence of counterfeit goods? Easy. The direct losses might only be a few million, but pushing the idea of "just as good as" in front of people pushes the originals out completely.
Really? If it wasn't for counterfeits, nobody would buy cheaper goods? Let's see... I can get an Audi A3, or a Honda Civic for about 15k less. Or heck, the VW Golf, from the same company, can be had for 5k-8k less. I can get a Sony Bravia TV, or I can get a Vizio for about 30% less. Heck, if you want to push the comparison all the way, you can look at the audio industry, where "as good as" systems and components can be had for 95%.
Face it, "just as good as" is built into the capitalist system. Counterfeitin
Re: (Score:2)
Some things are actually worth the price. For example, the manufacturer's auto parts fit better, last longer, and run better than your typical 3rd party OEM part. A $100 bookcase from Ikea is not going to compare to something made from solid oak. The Model M isn't just a fancy name for a keyboard.
But when it comes to designer stuff, it's like a set of Monster cables. The presence of $5 cables that are functionally equivalent is just an indicator of what the cables are actually worth. Those companies that ma
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're telling us that counterfeiting produces informed consumers which means that those selling high-price-high-margins branded products loose money because people ... *gasp* ... know better!?
We should close price comparisson sites then: by the same argument they cause the loss of trillions of dollars by letting consumers find out where to buy equivalent products for the cheapest price.
Same thing for reviewing sites and magazines: if they didn't inform people, they might very well have gone and bought t
I don't see why this is a problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The "victim" still has their product to sell. It's not like I'm "stealing" something from them.
This is a very valid point. They should stop calling this "theft".
In other news... (Score:2)
Oh wait... finally. I get it now. Copyright trolls want a slice of that untapped uncontroleld trillion dollar economy.
I'm not going to RTFA, or all your comments. I just read the headline and posted this. Any redundancy is intentionally accidental.
Manufacturing (Score:2)
The manufacturing industry sold it's soul to China and now we are supposed to feel bad for them?
The News Media Insist that... (Score:2)
Why do they do this? Because their business depends on it.
Ask anyone who gets their opinion of things from the 6pm news about the internet and they'll tell you what they've been told to say.
Bad numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the days of cassettes and when VHS was king, I used to get all sorts of things from the local library. I'd often dub copies for myself and return the borrowed copy almost immediately. When we all transitioned to CDs, I kept up this practice. I was also known to download a fairly hefty amount of software from local BBS's, and later the internet. My reason for doing this? I simply could not afford to spend $12 on a tape I wasn't sure I'd even like, $15+ for a CD that might include one song I liked, or $20-$30 for a movie I'd watch once or twice then stick on a shelf. Buy a shirt, a hammer, or a TV, or a pizza that turns out to be crap? You can return it for a refund. Not so with music, movies, software, etc., even if it doesn't work right (in the case of lots of software and computer games). Nearly everyone has bought a CD they don't like, and they are all screwed.
So perhaps downloading, torrents, and p2p file transfers are rampant. I'm sure of it. But much of this is due to high prices and the flooding of the music/movie/software markets with utter crap. Were the opportunity to download for free not there, most of these unauthorized downloads would absolutely NOT translate into sales. I buy a few CDs a year to support my favorite few artists, as I have for the past 15+ years, which is what I can afford to buy. Yes, I download more than that, but if I couldn't, I still would not buy more. I did not buy movies before I could download them, and I never will - not enough re-use value. Software? I use linux and almost strictly free software now, and have no need for windows junk. A lot of people are like me, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Would I could mod you up. Techdirt (Mike) is occasionally even right, but as always, he's a biased, opinionated jerk who just loves to hear himself type. I'm unclear as to why anyone reads that crap anymore.