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Comment by PublicFace | Hacker News Reader

I like the Chinese counterfeits. I got a bundle of knock off Ralph Lauren polos that let me experiment with the frat boy look in college with out spending thousands on real ones.

I personally like shanzai culture. Brands are cool but ultimately quality should be an internal thing that customers should seek out and test, not rely on status symbols and brands to define their tastes. Caveat emptor is a thing you know.

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> not rely on status symbols and brands to define their tastes.

> I got a bundle of knock off Ralph Lauren polos that let me experiment with the frat boy look in college with out spending thousands on real ones.

I hope at some point you realize the irony of your life choices.

What if you paid and ordered Ralph Lauren and received counterfeit? Because that's the larger problem in my opinion. Especially since it often also includes goods that are dangerous as counterfeit (like medication).

It raises an important distinction, though: protecting users vs protecting brands. There are business interests pushing to conflate the two, but we shouldn't.

Precisely, in my worldview. Brands have some amount of value for users as they are a stamp of a certain level of manufacturing standard. However that does not mean they are inherently beneficial to consumers.

Yeah exactly. I guess I didn't address the inherent way you GET knockoff shirts/clothing off of ebay which is look for the people who are obviously selling fakes pretending to be reals but for far too cheaply and order accordingly. It's not hard if you aren't totally blind to the standard Engrish language cues. That being said I am probably hurting RL's brand. But do I care? What if selling "official knockoffs" was a thing? What if you paid the smallest of licensing fees to sell an "official knockoff". A certified look alike with no quality standard. That would be a new market segment right?

What if you ordered Ralph Lauren from a guy on the corner selling shirts out of his suitcase?

The argument isn't about counterfeits, the argument is about Amazon's slide from "retail store" to "group of guys on the corner hawking crap". Amazon has always been that group of guys, it's only now people realize this.

>quality should be an internal thing that customers should seek out and test

What's the point of seeking out and testing for quality products if you never know if you're going to get that product or a shoddy counterfeit? If you identify that company A makes high quality polos, how do you ensure that the polos you order online are actually from company A.

Who says the counterfeit is shoddy? Sure, it might be, but the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.

I think your argument is 100% valid when it is apparent to everyone in the transaction that they are buying a counterfeit good.

Quality can be synonymous with a brand. If you lead a buyer to assume they are buying an item of a quality it doesn't have, this is essentialy theft.

I agree and I replied above saying I didnt really address the hidden nature of fakes. I went to ebay looking for fakes because they are cheaper and I didn't want to actually own real ones.

I like manufacturing safety standards! Those are cool too.

I mean I agree but what about something like clothing where the style is ephemeral and safety isn't really an issue (outside of blatant materials poisoning or whatever).

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