Aardvaarkman said:
Therumancer said:
The bottom line is this, I know people from Austalia and have discussed issues like this with them before. I doubt either of us could produce 5,000 people as a sampling on pretty much any subject, and as clever as such a thing might make you feel in the short term, think about how stupid that really sounds. At the end of the day your big problem is that the information I've gotten is not something that supports what YOU want to think on this subject right now.
Instead of all the blathering about Australians you supposedly know, how about addressing the facts?
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See, there it goes again. An insult (blathering) for addressing a point (sources) people have complained about because you don't like it, combined with what amounts to 4 year old "nanananana I'm right, your wrong" since your by definition not engaging in a debate or discussion, merely trying to force a point of view that your convinced of. If I'm to accept that you believe you have all the facts, then why should I even bother talking to you when I disagree?
The bottom line comes down to this. I mention things like digital infrastructure affecting digital business, bootlegging, and other things and in some cases explain how it might work, and get endless crap for it. The bottom line is that my own hypothosis about the nuts and bolts of it was never paticularly relevent compared to businessmen who have flat out said things in articles about not wanting to run their digital businesses in Australia or finding it a pain in the butt because of the infrastructure. How the F@ck do I know what their reasons are. People scream "well the internet doesn't work that way", I provide a possible reason based on what other people have told me, people scream about that. Entirely missing the central point that it's not me your really argueing with, I'm just giving you the stated reasons, and given that so many businesses claim these things, and it's an ongoing problem, that maybe, just maybe, there are factors here you don't know, which is why there is a govermental inquiry to begin with. At the end of the day though while these businesses are greedy, they aren't generally the sort to try and exploit a market in the way being suggested. I've always acknowleged I could be wrong there, but simply started that I think when the discussions with the goverment happen there is a pretty damn good chance they are going to find there are a lot of valid reasons behind the way things are, because if these companies could cut their prices, and reach more people for market penetration they would.
There are also issues of feigned ignorance. Want me to spell that out for you.... let's take your entire arguement about bootlegging. You likely know better just by being on forums like this. While it was also hypothetical, consider that every point you raised about bootlegging is complete BS because of it wasn't there never would have been a problem. It's why we get shock exposes on it all the time.
At the end of the day what happens is that stores do not buy directly from the manufacturer, typically they do their business through distributors and middle men that buy the goods in bulk, and then sell a lot of differant products at once to the retailers. SOME retailers do deal directly with the manufacturers but that generally tends to be an exception rather than the rule.
The thing with Bootleggers is that they counterfeit goods, and also pretend to be the company in question when selling to a third party. What's more the middlemen oftentimes don't give a crap where their product comes from as long as they get paid and have plausible deniability. Given that internationally you have distributors selling to each other to transfer goods between regions, work out shipping, play games with taxes and tarrifs, etc... direct dealing with the manufacturer might not ever happen. You might say buy 500 iPhones from a warehouse that can make a profit by selling them to you, but not by selling them to retail in your area, but you might be able to make a profit by reselling them to retail.... all depending on the web of mazes and policies.
What's more there have even been articles (covered on The Escapist at one point even if I remember) about bootleggers going so far as to counterfeit entire stores. Basically creating an Apple store storefront, pretending they are Apple, and selling bootleg Apple products to customers.
With Apple in paticular there have been some pretty nasty fights with China because they went to China to do a lot of their manufacturing, China being China just took the patent and started running it's own factories, producing the same product. So Apple has it's factories, but a couple cities over there is another sweatshop producing the same product at a lower quality, stamping "Apple" on it and shipping it out. China basically stole huge amounts of proprietary Apple information when Apple went there and started bootlegging at the same time they manufactured for Apple.
The point here is that yes, your buying from a "legitimate retail store", and getting a "boxed product, right off the shelf, with all the company stickers", but guess what... that doesn't mean it's real.
Heck news magazines/TV programs have occasionally done episodes on it where for the purposes of sensationalism they would walk into one store or another that got caught, pull down a brand name product, open it up, say "this looks real, doesn't it" and then go on to explain it's actually a counterfiet and how it got there. While of course the store management insists they had no idea (which may or may not be true) and passes the buck up the chain to the distributor. Typically the news gets as far up the chain to pretty much show the chain going to China, or some third world South or Central American country (in the US) but for obvious reasons they can't follow it any further. Some stores try and make a big deal (especially after being caught) about all their products being genuine.... and really there would be no reason to specify "Genuine Brand Names" if there wasn't increasing suspicians that they weren't. It can actually sometimes be part of a pitch (if you look, or pay attention) that a store nowadays takes time to investigate who they are dealing with, or makes the claim to ONLY deal with the manufacturers directly (which is not always the case which is why it's pointed out). Of course even so a lot of what they say is a lie. At the end of the day a lot of regional managers and stuff know that if they get passable counterfeit products for half the price, most customers will never even suspect, and they can make twice the profit. How many people even remotely know how to tell if their "Sony" TV is really made by "Sony", or of their "i" product gets them online, lets them text, etc... or even care at the end of the day for that matter. It looks real, the code works (which could have been the result of a hacked keygen), beyond that how many people are looking at the product?
That's why I pointed out my copy of "Chinatown Wars"... this was a game that came in an authentic looking box, with all the proper markings. It's a perfect job except for one obvious screw up, and really these guys know their business so it's generally not going to be that obvious.
Australia (as has been pointed out here) is closer to China, manufacturing and bootlegging both happen in China. If your typical business is buying from a middleman/warehouse, or through a chain of them that go back to China, at the end of the day they really don't know what the hell they have, only what it looks like. As a result when businesses claim "bootlegging is part of the problem with doing business in Australia" it does seem plausible. When the goverment looks into it, it could be quite interesting if say Apple pulls out a list of huge numbers of Australian "i" devices registered with numbers that Apple knows it never actually created or manufactured. Does Australian have less enforcement or awareness of this? Well maybe.. if your genuinely ignorant of this, then it would go a long way to explaining the problem and why it might be a factor. Truthfully though I DO think your just argueing because your on forums like this one, which means your more interested in this kind of thing in general as a matter of course, especially when it applies to technology.
Oh and before the personal attacks roll in, I'm not saying "Aussies are too stupid to recognize the real thing" since people seem to be projecting heavily onto what I'm saying. I'm saying it's a global problem, these knockoffs fool just about everyone, and it's supposedly a bigger problem there than it is elsewhere, Australia being right there next to knockoff central. Argueing that it's cheaper to ship from China is a very double edged arguement, since your dealing with pretty much the ultimate robber economy. You have no idea what is actually in their warehouses, and they tend to be good at pretending to be the real manufacturers at times. The guy on the phone or visiting the warehouse or whatever just knows everything says "Apple" and looks and sounds legitimate. When your dealing with entire stores having been faked... I mean.. think about it. It's not like Apple for example has much motive to lie about it, ultimatly it comes down to demands that countries like the US stop it, largely because they WANT to be able to sell their products more cheaply in some markets and get genuine penetration by them, as opposed to having to compete with the goverment
approved (and yes, it is goverment approved, the occasional token crackdown for diplomatic reasons is pretty much meaningless... a dog and pony show) thieves in the next city over from their plant that claim to be them.
I'm sure you'll continue to want to fight with me, but I'm pretty much done with the thread (which I've said before). In the end we'll see what happens during this goverment inquiry, if we ever find out.
