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Knockoff Tech Selling Better Than the Original
An anonymous reader writes to mention an IT Wire story about the industrious Chinese industry centered around reproducing commercial products. These individuals have become so adept at forging based on the original that by the time the developer of the technology comes to market, the 'original' is seen as 'fake' by consumers. Other products, such as shoes, CDs, DVDs, and even expensive cars are available for much lower prices in certain Chinese markets. From the article: "Sell these products do, especially in Asia where the prices are low, few questions are asked and in many cases, the quality is actually pretty good. Samsung is said to have been so concerned by seeing its phones copied on the Chinese market that it tracked the distribution channels back to the source and discovered the electronics guys responsible for copying their latest products. After offering them a job with Samsung and a chance to go legitimate, they are reported to have declined the offer, saying that they were able to make more money by simply continuing in their pirate ways. What Samsung did next is not known."
Samsung will seek illegal recourse. Samsung is, after all, a Korean company, and all such companies are run by Korean men, of whom the overwhelming majority have served 2 years of mandatory service in the brutal Korean military.
The illegal recourse is to find and kill the Chinese pirate engineers. The operation should follow the rules of the Korean Special Forces and should leave no trails or traces.
... but if the knockoff alternatives lack the DRM that the authentic products contain, I'd probably consider purchasing the knockoff as well.
You know, the fact that China has managed to become the manufacturing center it has is rather astounding. They turn around and steal the technology of the companies who have decided to put plants there. Their system of law is simply unpredictable. By and large, companies who moved there should have known better. As irritated as outsourcing to India has been, in retrospect, we should have made a more concentrated effort in making India, rather than China, the mass-manufacturing center for the American market. India has a few things going for it that China probably never will. First and foremost, they have a republican (small r) system of government. They have benefitted from hundreds of years of English Common Law, which is arguably what makes Biz so seamless and efficient (relatively speaking) in the UK, US, and Canada. Finally, they don't seem to have an appetite for superpower status. We picked the wrong country to invest in. If I owned a manufacturing company, I'd get the heck out of China.
Various econimies, as they have started up, have begun by copying other countries products.
Hong Kong, Japan, and now - China.
Oh, and one mustn't forget - USA.
Some time ago, as the USA economy was just beginning, the USA did not respect copyright laws in any way. Notably, they copied books. There were loud complaints from - I believe - Charles Dickens, among others.
As their economies move along, their copies became better, then, eventually, they would start to create inovations of their own.
Then they would start to want copyright laws. And perhaps obey them.
"Cats like plain crisps"
This post is a dupe! I read this on www.slashdot.cn last week!
I find it interesting that this article used the word "Piracy" in conjunction with all these products. In many cases it appears the products weren't pirate versions of the originals, but unique, new products in their own right that happened to have the same features or in some cases even more features. For example the phone that is claimed to be a knock-off of the LG phone looked very similar, but it was by no means identical. The device that looks like a PSP but has a nintendo emulator and GSM phone built in is quite brilliant, and is in no way a fake PSP anymore than a portable tape or cd player is a fake walkman. To me the product would be pirate if it was produced by the same company off the same assembly lines but shipped out the back door and sold as using the original name, brand, etc, but through grey-market channels. On a general level, IP theft in China by chinese companies doing business with foreign companies is rampant. The question is, though, is that a bad thing? Is this not, at some level, unchecked and enthusiastic entrepreneurialism at work? At some point this is bad, as the Chinese, like the Japanese were during the 70s and 80s, are not really inventing or creating anything new. But the Japanese did move on and now seem to be inventing and creating a lot of things, and I think the Chinese will too. But the question becomes what will become of the West?
I fail to follow your reasoning here. I remember when I paid $240 for an 80mB disk. Today I can get 500gB for $240. How could anyone get a 6000-fold reduction in price without R&D? Any cost-cutting the bean counters do is irrelevant compared to what R&D will get.
If a technology company wants to prevail in the marketplace, what they need to do is to keep R&D so intense that the copycats will not be able do duplicate the performance of genuine products.