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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Using this image as an example:

https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1-102...

What would stop a particularly clever counterfeiting factory from using this service as a 'check list' of things to change, to improve the authentic appearance of their work product? Seems like a bargain for the price.

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There's even more info for them in any of the guides: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/

e.g. for this very item in the screenshot, the guide is: https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/

Partly answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248

Partly answered by someone else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111

Having never been in the market for such things, what price would the fake Hermes Birkin bag in the example URL typically sell for? Either on aliexpress or similar or in a domestic retail market in China? The fake certainly seems good enough to pass casual inspection from a distance.

Anywhere from $50 for a bad rep, $500 for something that looks pretty good, and ~$1,300+ for something that’ll pass for the real thing. (Source: wife is fascinated by the rep industry)

1300 is when you get scammed. Most likely the 500 already gets you near perfect replicas.

Adidas has unseen Chinese competitor that sells any Adidas made in any size throughout Europe. They advertise with Google but the webshop images are just a couple of pixels too small to do a decent reverse image search.

I think its simply not worth the extra effort.

Most people cant tell the difference between 90% and 99% close to original so they dont need to improve their quality to that point.

Legal interpretations aside, this seems like an xkcd 810 kind of problem!

Counterfeits are bad for consumers because they are often low quality similes with shoddy attention to details and cheap materials.

If the end result of this site is that counterfeits increase their quality control?

Well, it'll still be illegal, but at least I might be happier with half my Amazon purchases =]

For those interested: https://xkcd.com/810/

I don't think counterfeiter need a website like this to know what to change. They know what to change, they are probably way more expert on the thing they counterfeit than this website. The thing is, they don't need to improve it at all, that's not their market, they try to be cheap, that's their market.

I say more power to them! I really don't understand why some fashion accessories are so darn expensive in the first place.

If all it means is that a few rich folks will feel bad because some poorer people have the same handbag as them at a party, I'm okay with that. They could probably do with being a little less materialistic anyway.

So you're saying that it's alright if people commit fraud, as long as it's in an industry that you don't much care about?

Not exactly. I just think the materialistic culture such products perpetuate does more harm than good.

the fakes are produced without any supply-chain transparency, so there’s no-one to pressure over using sweatshops, non-renewable materials, toxic production chemicals.

but hey, pretty bag is cheaper, that’s what mattered?

if you want to stop humans wanting the pretty bag at all, good luck. that’s a hiding to nothing, right there.

My extended family is responsible for manufacturing a selection of these "luxury" goods, for the official brands. Unfortunately, the supply chain is not quite as clean and ethical as you envisage... Sweatshops are involved in the production of the $20k bags too (or at least the subcomponents).

Well, I'm not claiming they are all ethical (although many are); I said that transparency provides leverage to demand improvement, and I'll double down on that by pointing out that real improvement has occurred through exactly these means in sectors from the rag trade to consumer electronics. So, that’s not an effective counterexample, quite the opposite: you’ve identified a specific case that activists could lean on.

This is how the world becomes a better place, through transparency enabled by authenticity. Pleas for for everyone to be less materialistic have never moved the needle one iota, but an appeal to ethics is a superficial measure that nevertheless has systemic consequences.

If you think designer handbags have any relationship to ethics or sustainability, guess again.

That may be true, but it still sidesteps the whole "they're committing fraud" thing.

It's not like LVMH or the glitterati that shop in the back room of an Hermés boutique are the ones who get hurt, either. It's the indie designers and the normal people who save up to buy something nice for themselves who pay for it.

Doesn't have to be fraud to be a good counterfeit. It could be sold honestly as a counterfeit.

I'm not a lawyer, but this just seems like a different kind of fraud - two parties knowingly engaged in a transaction involving counterfeit products, where the victim is the original designer rather than the buyer.

It's probably a trademark violation, and maybe copyrights and patents do depending on the specific facts, but I wouldn't call those fraud.

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