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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."
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.
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.
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.
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