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Faking a Company
gambit3 writes "What happens when pirating a movie, an application, or a game is not enough for you? Well, you take the next step and pirate a whole company. It happened to Japanese electronics giant NEC. Counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan."
Some guy with a garbage bag of Sunglasses and Watches is a bit different then a company manufactoring goods on a massive scale and selling them in stores?
You know the guy with a garbage bag of the product is bullshitting you. But what if it was in the Sunglass Hut (tm) ?
This is not supposed to be called piracy of a company, it's a trademark violation, unauthorized and fraudulant usage of the NEC trademark. The affected factories claims that they have papers to prove that they were licensed to manufacturer the goods, but the papers were faked, which is considered fraud. The term 'piracy' has been utterly bastardized and overused already, please be more specific.
Please direct all bug reports to
Exactly. This was a very well-coordinated and well-conceived plan, not something down in the backyard. This was done in the open with, as the article noted, "official-looking documents", passes, ID cards, etcetera.
This is just taking piracy to new levels. This would have taken a lot of effort, but I'm sure that it would be increasingly commonplace in years and decades to come.
As a few people have said, slapping a bodge label on a bodge product in a bodge market is something, but producing decent-quality products, as the article infers, in proper factories and sold in proper shops and retail outlets is another.
Read the article. They're not talking about putting a NEC brand on one or two shoddy items. They're talking about setting up a company and pirating the entire NEC image.
They were placing orders with factories using the NEC name. They commissioned R&D, their factories had NEC signs on the outside. They even designed and built their own products.
This is a huge step from the guy selling Oakley sunglasses. By faking the company and not just the product they were able to get their goods sold in legitimate outlets, right alongside genuine NEC products.
When you start to think about it, the scheme works on so many levels. Ordinarily you run a huge risk to create a factory producing fake goods and everybody in the factory shares that risk. That means it's massively expensive to set up and run, your staff are sub-standard and there's always the risk of blackmail. By creating a fake parent company and just ordering the goods from 'legitimate' factories, they bypassed all these problems. You've now got good cheap staff, proper management, and all in all a far more efficient service.
Even better, now the police can't prosecute these factories for producing the goods since they've done nothing wrong - they've just fulfilled orders as normal. Of course they'll have to stop production and will have their goods confiscated, but their insurance will cover that... The police have no choice but to go for the parent company. Fair enough you've now got to collapse that side of the operation but you've got nowhere near the costs. A few staff, some nice headed paper... sure beats loosing a factory.
Plus, you're no longer selling cheap pirated goods on the street. Instead you're able to charge full retail price.
In one fell swoop they've cut the costs of producing goods, made production more efficient, sold them at a higher price, and managed to legally insure the vast majority of their pirate production line against the risk of getting caught.
Genius, sheer genius. Yes it's illegal, but you can't help but be impressed. Somebody somewhere deserves serious Kudos for coming up with this.
Why did they go through all the motions of creating a distribution network but only pretend to be one company? And why NEC? NEC isn't really much of a player anymore in the consumer world, they are more into industrial grade manufacture and IT consulting. They still do make consumer electronics, but they hardly seem to be the companies bread and butter anymore. Nor are they dominant in the field, TFA goes on to say that some of the products weren't even close to anything NEC currently makes. Why not also claim to be Philips or Sony or Samsung?
Monstar L
Just a thought. Seriously though, if I was NEC, I would try and by up the fake company and continue to operate it. you could probably get it for pennies on the dollar and you already have trained employees.
So... these people set up a company, did legitimate business, developed products, shipped and sold products. They did everything any other company does, except come up with their own name and logo.
Perhaps these "official-looking documents", passes, ID cards, etcetera, *were* official. Perhaps they were just issued by the bizzaro-NEC that was stepping on the real NEC's name. That's could still be nothing more than trademark infringment.
There is nothing here that even resembles piracy, or copyright infringment, or theft. These people used the NEC mark, and the real NEC is pissed. These guys were able to exploit the ease with which NEC could close business deals for manufacturing, or marketing a product. They have been riding in on the coattails of a large company with an established brand *by infringing their trademark*.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
There are a lot of "counterfieting" operations where the work involved makes you wonder why they didn't go legit. People selling "fake" iPod Shuffles, for instance, that actually work, they're just not real shuffles. Someone's taken the time and trouble to organize the manufacturing of this item, including a certain amount of R&D, for a working product. And then they proceed to spoil the entire enterprise by putting someone's else's name on it, meaning:
- they can't sell via legitimate distributors
- they can't get funding except from organized crime.
- they have to do business constantly looking over their shoulders.
Now, we're talking about creating a massive corporation. This solves the first part of the problem, but suddenly introduces brand new ones. We're no longer talking about a one-off production run of something that, once off loaded onto distributors, can be treated as a job done and, as time goes on with no knock on the door, a success that doesn't have to be worried about. We're talking about a business where you're guaranteed to get caught eventually. Your risks just went up massively. Even organized crime is going to be careful dealing with you. On top of this, you need the organizational ability and resources to hire a hell of a lot more people, which is going to be difficult to do if you either have to fool everyone in the organization that you're legit, or you limit yourself to a pool of people who don't really care about the almost certainty they'll end up in prison at the end of the game.
What the hell? If you're that skilled in business, why knock off NEC? Why not start something legitimate? Yeah, NEC's an established brand, but, c'mon!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm a fan of NEC's burners and happily recommend the brand to my friends. Good stuff.
One of these friends said "Wow, I am sure am glad I get my NEC stuff from a reputable online dealer, like Newegg!"
My question is, where'd Newegg get these drives? Did their distributor vouch for the goods? How about their distributor's distributor or the originating factory?
When somebody up the chain said "I _KNOW_ these are good drives" and vouched for them, then that product carried that credential all the way to the end users and that's what we're trusting. But we don't know, really.
"It came from Newegg" might be nice sentiment but Newegg probably has no idea if they were selling fakes or not. I don't think they would knowingly do so, of course. That kind of cheap money is not worth the hassle with an IPO in the works.
Sig for hire.
Many of these pirated items were not part of the genuine NEC product range.
:-)
In other words: The criminal version of "embrace and extend". Plus, of course, it avoids direct comparison which would threaten the appearance of authenticity.
Genius, pure genius.
Also note that the article says the goods were generally of good quality. I wonder if NEC - provided they had known about these before starting criminal investigations - would've simply bought them out instead, expanding its product line at the same time.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The reasons you mentioned are why it doesn't happen that often (probably).
The advantages are now need for marketing, a well built up brand, and not having to provide warranties or support.
It is quite simple compare business case number 1:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Wrap iPod shuffle lookalike plastic
3) Sell as iPod
4) Profit
Compare with business case number 2:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Pay designer to design a cool funky faux iPodesque white plastic exterior
3) Pay huge international marketing firm to make worldwide humongously expensive marketing campaign
4) Rummage through garbage for scraps of food, use cardboard for shelter
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
If someone comes from NEC and places a large order, and pays, what are you going to do? Ring up the national NEC number, and query it? Look for their picture on the website?
Why would you even question it, unless they came of rather dodgey.
Of course, once this 'faked company' meme has taken hold, the multinationals will exploit it to the full by making sure all their outsourced third world factories and production centres can be turned into 'pirate' factories at short notice:
... that's not us! Yeah, that's it! They're a bunch of pirates who made a fake MegaCorp factory! We've never seen those guys in our lives! Officer! Arrest that factory! Secretary - type me up a shoddy-looking forgery of our licensing agreement. "Fake" factory workers - You're all fired! Back to unemployment and poverty for you!
Bleeding heart liberal type: You're running sweatshops and paying 12 year olds 10 cents for an 18 hour working day! You're pumping toxic chemicals into the drinking water supply! You're making defective products that explode and kill people! You bribe politicians!
Your factories are run by fascist thugs who hire death squads to kill union organisers! And we have proof this time! You're going to jail at long last!
CEO of MegaCorp, your friendly neighbourhood planet-raping multinational: Errr umm
Third World Workers: Sigh. Shafted again...
A close relative told me the company he works for has an a little secret that no one talks about. Seems after setting up a partnership with a chinese company to outsorce production (eliminate local jobs) they went to china to further the deal. Production lines were seen, hands shaken, and everthing was going along nicely. Before getting on the planes to go home someone had to return to the "factory" for something they forgot. It sould seem that thieves had made off with the workers and were taking down the "factory". I don't think the theives got too much money, but today no one at X corp. will mentions foreign investment without a quick look and a cautionary tale. Probably just a story told by the middle management to explain a lack of ambition, maybe. Ahh capitalism... don't ya just love the smell?
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
I strongly disagree.
The International Herald Tribune has had this layout for several years and were pretty early adopters of using dhtml to allow the readers to save articles and also modify the size and format of article text.
Anyway, the wide 3-column format usually allows for much more text than the traditional one-column variant, at least with the wide margin that the latter comes with.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
You mean like Sony buying LiteOn Optical drives, putting their logo on them and changing the firmware to report 'Sony' instead of 'LiteOn'?
Or like virtually every notebook manufacturer (including Apple), assembling their notebooks out of Chinese OEM parts?
Do you know why Chinese 'piracy' is so rampant? Because all the products are made in China anyway. One factory produces the 'brand' product during the day and the 'pirate' product after-hours. Of course they're completely identical.
I mean think about it, if you were a Chinese company manufacturing electronics, and you see how the stuff you design and produce is sold for ten times the price that brand X pays you in the West, you'd start to wonder a bit too.
If the products were designed and produced in the 'West', this would be much more difficult. But the corporations don't care. They still make a huge profit by sticking their brand name on Chinese stuff and selling it for a huge markup.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?