Slashdot Mirror
Fake Raspberry Pi Shops Pop Up
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that there are the first fake Raspberry-Pi sites out there: 'It's just been drawn to our attention that there's a Russian site (www.raspberrypi.ru) purporting to be an official reseller, which is already offering preorders. [..] If you see a site offering preorders or claiming to be an official reseller at the moment, it's a fake. Please don't send them your money. Initially, this site will be the only place you can buy a Raspberry Pi, and we are not offering preorders.'"
They have been selling Raspberry pie at Greggs for ages.
There are already several places selling "fake" Arduinos. They are actually identical to the real ones, because the design to arduino is completely open source, and the official one has a rather high margin, so there's space for chinese manufacturers to come in and produce clones for cheaper.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
I have read slashdot everyday for nearly 10 years and I have no clue what "Raspberry Pi" is. Seriously how hard would it be to have the article say "Raspberry Pi, the $25 dollar PC" or something like that?
More important, why is this article even posted? I mean we could post dozens of articles a day if we follow the formula "site found selling fake [technology]."
I have read slashdot everyday for nearly 10 years and I have no clue what "Raspberry Pi" is.
One of these claims must be false. There have been loads of Raspberry Pi stories in recent months.
Or you have some sort of memory disorder.
There are some rudimentary publishing rules and adding one sentence in the beginning should not be a problem for those who already know the subject. How about:
Raspberry-Pi, a start-up promising to sell $25 Linux boards in the near future, already has a knock-off site.
The concept would be easier to grasp if you read some articles written by professional writers once in a while.
At the risk of exposing myself as a total /. noob, I must come to the defense of the parent: I've been reading /. daily for four months now and don't remember coming across "Raspberry-Pi".
The cake is a lie.
You don't need a trademark to get a site taken down for fraud. If they haven't been in contact with the project and are claiming to be official resellers, then they are committing fraud whether or not they ultimately deliver the goods.
I'm betting that when all is said and done that none of the units are sent out.
I read the whole site and nothing there made it sound official. They said they are a Russian community around the Raspberry pi project and were taking pre-orders for the product (although the page has since taken that down). They never called themselves "authorized" or "official" resellers. They were just plain old resellers.
Based on your definition pretty much everybody company in the world that doesn't manufacturer a product themselves is fraudulent.
I did read the post and I don't agree that they are purporting in any way to be an official reseller. You can be a reseller without being "official" or "authorized". Those are special terms reserved for companies that make special bulk agreements with a vendor. I did not see that claim made anywhere on the Russian site.
The Raspberry Pi people are overreacting and the only thing they have legal recourse against is the unauthorized use of copyrighted images.