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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."
All I can say is, wow, that is incredibly cool! What moxy! What an idea!
These guys should get a criminal Nobel or something!
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
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) ?
No... this kind of thing almost never happens.
Usually fakers just do what you said - use the name. They don't set up an entire outsourced manufacturing base with a global distribution arm reaching as far as Africa and the EU.
... so why does NEC seem so upset?
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
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Buy Risk Free From China IVELL - Global product sourcing
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More Questions anyone?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Did they pretend to be NEC in wholesale deals with other businessmen and the other businessmen did not they were dealing with them? I did not find it in TA.
Only because you didn't READ IT.
These records showed that the counterfeiters carried NEC business cards, commissioned product research and development in the company's name and signed production and supply orders.
Some of the factories that were raided had erected bogus NEC signs and shipped their products packaged in authentic looking boxes and display cases.
etc, etc
Oh no... it's the future.
Not quite. While Oakleys, Rolexis and other knock-offs have been manufactured for a while, this is a whole different ball game. These individuals actually lease property, negociate with suppliers and establish sales relationships in the name of NEC. They do all this under the flag of the firm's proper brand name, not some mispelling. Those are two very different scenarios. It's kind of a neat scam. It will probably inspire con-artists everywhere to try something similar. I could just imagine someone faking Hilton. They could order a large quantity of samples from a few suppliers - and pay upfront for the samples to build trust. The scammer later says they love the product and then order 5 cargo containers from each supplier on 30 days credit terms with a forged letter of credit. And then Bam! They disappear with a few million in goods to never appear again.
TFA:
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
I was looking at a chinese electronics manufacturers page some time ago, and they had a bulletin board.
One of the posts effectively consisted of "Can you make me some tv's branded panasonic and send them to north africa"
Tip of the iceberg, perhaps.
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
Hi, Bill Gates here. I'd like you to visit my new site:
http://www.m1cr0s0ft.com/
This is exactly what Microsoft did to IBM's PC software division in the 80's!
I always knew there was *something* underhanded there, but couldn't put my finger on it.... ^_^ Contract, schwantract.... No company, not even IBM, could have been that stupid. It was all just "Corporation Piracy".
It all makes sense... DOS, CP/M, and, of course, once MS had made enough money from the theft they started taking less and less of IBM's assest - with the last partial theft in the Windows 95 + OS/2 Warp releases... from there, Microsoft could just keep heaping "original" code onto the DOS codebase it secreted away.
Ahhh, all is right in the world when everything finally falls into place!
(Disclaimer: This is a joke. Sarcasm. Humor, people. We all know the real facts..... or do we???)
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
I've been faking being an employee for years :o)
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
It was already done, here, in the US: it was called "Enron".
And I thought the guys who claimed to work for the railway company and started removing the rails of an abandoned line not far from where I livedhad been something!
The hired local companies for transport and even distributed leaflets to the people in the neighbarhood informing them of the upcomming works! They made some money from the scrap iron before anybody noticed!
How do we know the reporters were getting comments from the real NEC executives?
An aquaintance recently went to China to visit a factory that makes the sony bean mp3 players. They told him they could make the players for him and just leave the sony logo off it. He then plans to sell them on ebay.
I tried to explain how bad an idea this was and how there are so many other legal ways to invest your money, but he wouldnt hear it.
So there is a use for the MikeRoweSoft name after all!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
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*.
I'm no legal or finical expert however, wouldn't your 10 000 friend be legally required to pay taxes on their $1 000 000 of stock? I was doing a quick look at the fortune 500 FAQ, market cap is equal to the number of shares times their value as of such and such a date. Therefore, the shares have to actually be worth $1 000 000 or you company will have a market cap of $0. If they are therefore worth $1 000 000, then your friends have each been paid $1 000 000 and would be required to remit taxes on it. Since the stock is really worthless, in that they can't sell it to anyone, they would have to use other sources of income, aka their real jobs, to pay for the tax on that $1 000 000. Good luck finding your 10 000 friends willing to do that. I don't think the taxation office takes "it was a joke" as an excuse for not paying.
Everytime I go to China I always buy a ton of counterfit goods. The stuff is quite often of excellent quality, sometimes even better than the original. I am talking about things like shoes, bags, clothing etc.
I am not so sure about electronics and counterfit media, except for movies, that are usually DVD rips. DVD rips actually work better than commercial DVD's as they don't have encoding on them -so no complaints there either.
I heard from a reliable source, that many western companies have been forced to enter the Chinese market by counterfitters presenting them with products identical to their own at trade fairs.
They have the choice of getting into a joint venture, or competing with a counterfitter at unequal terms. Or rather, not much choice at all.
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 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.
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
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.
This article has the ere is no need to
most hard to read create a stupid column
format for the text based layout. These
I have ever seen. The guys should be shot.
web != the newspaper, th-
And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
...there's a place near here that's doing the same thing with a whole industry/product line - couterfeit food. Luckily, they're easy to spot, all being labelled with a big bright yellow M,...
To get a slightly more traditional web format on IHT articles, look for "ARTICLE TOOLS" on the left and click "CHANGE FORMAT".
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 WIC-1DSU-T1-V2 is $1,000 list, $700 or so to a small reseller in distribution, and $400 for a clean used unit from a reliable aftermarket dealer. Go look for that part number on Ebay and check out how new boxed product is 15% of list price
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
This is news? The Yes Men have been doing this for a long time. http://www.theyesmen.org/ Pure genius. :)
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.
The FA actually implied that some of the products being sold were knock-offs of legitimate NEC products. So can we quit the "There's no piracy here" meme? Copyright infringement...
Copyright law doesn't generally apply to products. At most it may apply to artistic, non-functional aspects of the exterior design, but even that's rare. Note the number of iPod knock-offs that look just like an iPod, except they have to use a different input mechanism because the iPod wheel controller is patented. And they don't say "Apple" or "iPod" on them anywhere.
Unless there are patented components, it's generally perfectly legal to produce and sell knock-offs of a company's products. It's not legal to put the company's name on them, that's trademark infringement.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's ok. We have fake CEOs, and CEO/CFOs who make fake profits.
In China, they have a fake Slashdot, see slashdot.cn, registered to jesse.webmaster@gmail.com. The website even keeps crashing my firefox-1.5.0.2 on linux box.
There you are, staring at me again.
That's nothing, right now we have a dictator faking a democracy in the US. Beat that pirates!
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Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Speaking of which, there's also a Chinese group trying to fake slashdot: http://www.slashdot.cn which redirects to: http://solidot.org/
If only you could get someone to pirate just the technical support part of your company!
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