Who owns this camera, Nikon? Me or you? [video] | Hacker News Reader

Who owns this camera, Nikon? Me or you? [video]

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227 pointsjosephcsible145 comments

The video is about Nikon blocking international sales of their used camera parts on eBay. It may be due to "free trade" agreements forbidding the import/export of patented goods without the IP-holder's permission, but I only know industry groups tried to include such terms - I don't know if any agreements in force actually contain them.

As Louis Rossmann has pointed out in other videos he's made from the comfort of his lay-z-boy, it's not just Nikon wanting to restrict their goods coming in overseas. (In this case it's to protect Nikon's pricing structure between different continents.)

Refurbished Apple parts have been caught up in import restrictions as well, not because they're fake, but because they have an Apple logo on them, and Apple insists that everything overseas coming into the US with an Apple logo must be counterfeit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/9pe9yd/us_customs...

> (In this case it's to protect Nikon's pricing structure between different continents.)

Ah ha - so what seems to be different in this case is that he's selling products from the US, shipping to the EU. In the US, this is already settled law.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/thai-student-pro...

Same concern. Not sure how they're allowed to do this in the EU, but I assume it's to do with them not having precedent, or some EU regulation which disallows it somehow.

There is such a regulation and it is very settled law.

From 1998 https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/1998/10/the-ecj-has-delive...

> The ECJ has delivered a landmark ruling which effectively allows trade mark owners to block the sale of goods bearing their trademarks within the EU, where the goods have been obtained on the so-called 'grey market' from suppliers outside the EU. The ruling means that the holder of a trade mark in the UK, or other EU country, can prevent the sale of parallel-imported goods from outside the EU even though such goods have been legitimately sold abroad in the first place. This means, in practice, that a trade mark holder can prevent retailers from obtaining goods bearing its trade mark cheaply from markets such as Asia or the US and selling them at a discount within Europe without its authorisation.

And more recently (2022): https://trademarkblog.kluweriplaw.com/2022/10/21/court-of-ju...

> The court may order that infringing goods be removed from the market, returned to the rightful owner, or destroyed. When making a decision, the courts consider the gravity of the infringement as well as the interests of third parties. Also, Article 10(1) of Directive 2004/48 (Enforcement Directive) states that a judge may order “destruction” of goods to enforce intellectual property rights.

Just to add: the EU mandates certain standards that other territories do not necessarily impose. For example: turn signals on cars: in the EU, they must be separate from brake lights and colored yellow or orange.

That is: (1) vendors may abide by different standards elsewhere, and (2) implementation of those different standards may cause incompatibility (eg. US rear lights may not be compatible with EU models).

While that might not completely justify such rules in all cases, they're not always fully anti-consumer either.

But if a product does not comply with EU standards, it is illegal to sell/import/use it in the EU regardless of if the trademark owner allows its sale - it's not up to them.

So yes, deputizing trademark owners to police imports, on the off chance that maybe sometimes their decisions will align with other consumer-protection laws, is always fully anti-consumer.

You can still import a car with wrong tail lights, half a car, just the tail lights or a car without the tail lights.

You just can't register such a car in europe to be used as a "local car" (have plates of the current country) and driven on public streets.

You can also drive into europe with such a car (as long as it's legal in it's main country, and there is a treaty made by EU-that_country). While US cars are a rare thing to see here, there are a bunch of british right-hand drive cars all around europe driven by british drivers, that have bliding headlights for everyone else (becase the shape of the beam is different), and EU has no issues with that. You can even buy one in EU... but to register it under eg. german plates, you'll have to modify (well, replace) the headlights (not sure about the wheel).

Wait, is it legal to drive a car that does not meet safety regulations as long as the car is registered in another country? That sounds like a really bad idea. What if a country allows you to drive any sort of thoroughly unsafe Mad Max vehicle without seatbelts or airbags, and an excess of unsafe spikes everywhere?

There's got to be a point where that kind of car can't be legally driven in other countries, right? I would expect that, to drive in a country, your car has to meet the safety standards of that country.

I heard that some US states don't require yearly inspections, and that people there drive rusted through cars to the point of almost braking in half, and it's still legal to drive them across the whole country.

My personal experience is europe, EU countries and the balkans, and all those countries allow all cars from all other countries to drive there (temporarily, when visiting or driving through), although some require additional equipment (snow tires in winter in some countries, extra pair of glasses in greece etc.).

For example above, EU mandates separate turn lights and brake lights, but you can still drive a US car in EU: https://www.a1autotransport.com/can-i-drive-a-us-plated-car-... (for 6 months max, if you return home)

In general, the only thing your car needs is insurance for the country it is being driven in.

Its quite trivial to take rental cars into other countries (but talk to the employees first they generally have to give you additional papers to prove insurance).

Things can be easy without being legal, though. Of course in practice most countries will tend to have very similar car safety laws, and if they don't but travel between two countries is likely, I would expect most cars will just obey both.

To allow cars that violate your country's safety rules seems weird.

Laws generally only exist as a knee-jerk reaction to something.

So, if you want to mass import and sell vehicles that don't meet the safety standards you'll run into trouble.

But an individual temporarily working in another country bringing a personal/company car for their use with them doesn't. The USA does enforce that you take that vehicle home with you though or at least that's what foreigners tell me when others want cars from their country that aren't sold in the US.

> there are a bunch of british right-hand drive cars all around europe driven by british drivers, that have bliding headlights for everyone else (becase the shape of the beam is different), and EU has no issues with that.

I'm not sure whether the EU has a law about this, but most mainland EU countries mandate that UK cars crossing over to the EU mainland must fit headlight beam deflectors to prevent this issue. British drivers with cars that blind people are probably ignoring this law.

Many cars have a switch on the lights to redirect the beam for exactly this reason.

There is a whole industry around the import of US cars that are not directly sold in the EU. You can even register them with the US rear lights, in Germany. The absence of an EU CoC makes this a tack costly and lengthy, but it is absolutely possible.

Coming back to the video, I think it is more an issue around Nikon US, eBay US and the seller. I don't think Nikon, or any other Japanese camera brand, are blocking international resale of used gear on eBay in general, there are way to many private and commercial sellers in Japan shipping through eBay to the US and the EU for thatbto be true.

Also, with all the account blocking stories and copy right take downs being discussed on HN basically every day, why do we all assume it is Nikon's "fault"? I mean eBay is a party in this, too.

> There is a whole industry around the import of US cars that are not directly sold in the EU

Same in France. The requirement when buying a foreign car is that it must get vetted by the DRIRE (ex Mines), which might be easy (e.g a EU car typically already has a registered entry because vehicles are extremely similar to identical) or hard (e.g US cars being subject to different regulations), but if one vehicle of a specific type went through the process it now has an entry as well and it's a matter of checking that the ingress vehicle matches the previous entry, fast tracking the process. IIRC there are provisions for historical cars (véhicules de collection, i.e > 30yo) that are allowed to not be compliant with current regulations as long as they're stock (except for some bits, e.g IIRC tyres must be upgraded to radial tyres to be road-worthy). Still lengthy and costly.

(caveat: it's been a long time since I got interested in the process, things may have changed)

By comparison, I imported a 32 year old car into the UK from Germany and it wasn't even inspected... I applied for plates and they turned up in the mail. After that I did the MOT (road worthiness inspection).

I read it that this regulation only applies to retailers (as in commercial sellers) and is there to protect liscenced sellers and OEMs from price dumping through grey imports. Fair enough, as the regulations around market access, the various anti-trust laws, are pretty severe as well. They make exclusivity pretty hard, for both OEMs and retailers, and fines can be stiff.

Nowhere does it mention the sale of used gear, or the sale by private partied. Which lines up with my limited experience around buying used gear online, especially eBay, from outside the EU. I never tried to export so.

I don't think the law really differentiates between used and new goods, nor big vs small.

It's true that these rules are rarely enforced about you selling an old game to your mate in a bar... But in principle I think any IP rights holders of IP within that game could attempt to block such a sale.

Software liscenses can be re-sold in the EU, but don't ask for specifics.

And again, IANAL, but those import restrictions on grey imports make sense for protecting the offical distribution channels for new goods, e.g. because of warranties and setting sales prices. Used goods don't have warranties, beyond some basic ones, and OEMs usually don't care about those.

Is eBay considered a retailer though? Last time I used these platforms, it was still a private sale between two individuals.

Yeah, but the example is about exports from the US, not about imports into the EU.

So you’re saying the regulation mentioned by the parent comment about EU imports is not the reason this happened?

Propably not, you can get Nikon gear from Japan into the EU all day long.

You're conflating product made by the company but intended for sale in a particular market...with goods being made not by the company. Either in factories that have nothing to do with Apple, or being made in factories contracted by Apple, but in ghost production lines in parallel to the official ones, or "after hours."

Rossman was knowingly buying and importing parts made in Apple-contracted factories that were being made "off the clock" (ie, Apple parts are made from say, 9-5 and then from 6-10, the factory makes more, without telling Apple, and sells them through their own channels.)

That's a contractual violation, which is a civil matter...but the factory was using the Apple logo on the labels of the batteries, which is a trademark violation, and that's where customs gets involved.

So...yes, actually.

Rossman has some valid points but he's also a slimy shyster. Everyone else in the repair and parts biz was buying batteries without Apple logos, Rossman knew that, and knew that he could charge more, or more easily sell, the apple-branded batteries.

Apple has not, to the best of my knowledge, harassed anyone importing or using third party parts that lack an apple logo.

It's hilarious that you're pissed about literally the whole point of a trademark.

This is just part of the story.

The other part of the issue has been importing refurbished items, like screens and other components. The parts are literally pulled out of Apple produced products, as is. But since Apple puts their logo everywhere on the parts, it's almost impossible to import them. They just claim they're counterfeit, without having to provide any evidence that they are. This went all the way to the supreme court in Norway, and the supreme court sided with Apple.

It's too expensive to remove the Apple branding on genuine and refurbished parts, so now we're stuck with actual counterfeits, often from the same factory as the originals, just without the logo. But we could have just used perfectly fine refurbished parts.

The guy kind of immediately struck as someone who would not check the ruls forst, or outright ignore them, only to turn around and rant about him not being allowed to cheat. E.g. by selling basically counterfeight batteries when everyone else uses non-branded batteries is cheating those other repair shops. That he wants to ride the, very legitimate, right-to-repair wave only seems fitting. Right to repair does not allow you to use counterfeight parts or illegal sources and ignore customs.

Just checked, isn't he the same guy who quit NYC over some legal / tax / liscensing dispute with authorities?

He left New York over their Kafka-esque treatment of him and his business, amongst other things.

I'd encourage you to watch his videos where he calls the New York government and tries to figure out why there's been a lein and warrant for his business since 2012 (that he was never notified about because it was sent to a random PO box in Maine). Even worse, the warrant, which affected his business for years without him realizing, turns out to have been a mistake. He never would have figured it out without spending a month being bounced between departments, hung up on, etc.

Indeed. Kafka-esque is a good word for it. Even more, it looks like it was a software bug that ensnared 40 or so other businesses around the same time.

I'm pretty much pro-regulation on companies -- but even so it's the government's job to enforce them fairly, accurately, and efficiently.

> Refurbished Apple parts have been caught up in import restrictions as well, not because they're fake, but because they have an Apple logo on them, and Apple insists that everything overseas coming into the US with an Apple logo must be counterfeit.

Apparently those Apple logos were indeed fake, unlike what was generally reported in the media. He mentions how he found this out from the court filings in his recent video, and how Vice News didn't correct their story after he provided them the details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YbdgZUO4&t=23s

I'm confused what the downvote means here. Did I get the story wrong somehow? If so I'd love to know what actually happened.

Yeah, that's actually a different case. And yeah, Rossmann was wrong about that one. He's covered that before and told the story about it on his video blog.

I don't know about what it takes to import a camera lens, but it's possible the lens itself would have trouble clearing customs in some places. I once tried to have a used laptop shipped to Mexico via FedEx, and I couldn't get it through customs (without an import partner & in less than a month or two). I had FedEx send the laptop back to a relative in the USA & had them fly down to Mexico to give it to me.

Noted, companies have convinced governments to help protect their pricing structure.

What I find disquieting are all the long comments discussing the intricacies of these 'grey market' tactics. To even discuss it lends this kind of bad faith dealing a legitimacy it does not deserve.

It's like fan fiction.

Maybe it's just me, but when powerful people conspire to screw me over, I'm not that interested in hearing their venal arguments about why it was reasonable and for my own good.

  > Maybe it's just me, but when powerful people conspire to screw me over, I'm not that interested
  > in hearing their venal arguments about why it was reasonable and for my own good.

I am interested in hearing it - once. I'll consider then either accept or reject their stance. But the incessant repeating of variations of lies is attrition.

I'm going to guess the problem isn't a "dual use" government export restriction. The VR AF-P 18-55 seems to be a plastic-mount kit lens for consumer DSLRs, though it does have some nice properties.

Could it be an anti gray market diversion effort gone a bit astray? There's a place for those efforts, but I'd think they'd be solving their business problem for new product, and tackling it at the points of their contractual partners. Not product end users.

Many photographers buy&sell used lenses, as they upgrade, experiment, change needs, etc. Photographers get married to proprietary lens systems, partly because they've bought into a particular system, but I've also seen a lot of brand goodwill. (I've had great experiences with Canon professional service, after buying into EF L glass, and also great experience with the Nikon parts service for some vintage strobe repairs I did on the side. I've often used the word "love" when talking about products from both brands.)

I don't understand how messing with the sale of a used entry-level DSLR lens is worth risking alienating photogs to your hard-earned brand and system.

I did not whatch the video, yet. But my experience so far with Nikon is, that it is no problem to get used gear from outside the EU. Emphasis on used and as a consumer. Also, Nikon's repair service is pretty good, also for basically obsolete stuff. As long as parts are available that it, and you are ready to pay the hourly rate (which is also fine, because they are not running a charity).

That being said, I prefer to buy within Europe, or even Germany, for simple reason of easier returns and no need for customs.

Edit: Asking who owns the camera because certain sources forbspare parts are blocked, while spares in general are available, or because certain sales channels are not available is a strong question to ask. Because you can sell and repair your gear. Cameras are air gaped, so you don't even havebto perform OTA updates. Nikom cannot block you from repairing your gear yourself, other then voiding the warranty, or using it which ever way you want. Quite different from, say, John Deere...

Edit 2: Just realized, every piece of used kit I bought, and had register for various reasons with Nikon ranging from repairs to servicing and cloud storage, was accepted by Nikon without problems. In one case I know the body was already sent in by someone else before, still no issue. I really have to watch the video, it seems.

Edit 3: Ok, just watched it long enough to understand the perceived problem. And it has nothing to do with Nikon per se. You can easily buy, every day all day long, used Nikon stuff from Japan and have it shipped to the EU for example. And it was not customs that blocked it, it was eBay. And even then only for international shipping through eBay international shipping. Which, apparently, is perfectly in line with existing legislation, but I am not a lawyer. So everything Nikok did, and yes this sucks, was blocking the resale of a used lense to customers abroad / outside the US, not the sale itself. That is different from what Apple does (as mentioned in the video).

To make it short: Yes, you own the kit and can sell it whenever you want. As every owner, you do not have the right to sell in whatever market on whatever plattform you want (commercial sellers are even more restricted). These restrictions have nothing to do with ownership rights. As I suspected, the video is based on so many misconceptions and misunderstandings, it is little more than a rant.

> As every owner, you do not have the right to sell in whatever market on whatever plattform you want

Why?

Try selling the Glock you bought in Texas in, say, London and you will find out. Or on Amazon, they have a strict no-guns policy.

Or me importing and selling the Fairbairn-Sykes dagger I made in the UK. Or the legal weed you bought in Amsterdam in Germany. Or the right hand drive car in one of those countries where those are illegal. I could go on...

Edit: Or importing Kinder Surprise eggs into the US, I just love that example.

In all of your examples, it is illegal to sell the product in the market you're trying to sell in.

It's not illegal to sell lenses.

It is legal to sell a Fairbairn-Sykes in the UK, you have to be a collector or merchant. You can sell a Glock in the UK, you have to be a liscensed merchant, same in any other European country I know. There are rules around those exports, imports and sales to follow. There are rules around the sale of branded parts, e.g. refurbished OEM parts, just follow them. And without details, we don't know why the one offer on eBay was flagged for export. Because domestic US sales are still fine, right?

Again, none of those points have anything to do with ownership of things.

Edit: Also, nobody said anything about the lense sale being illegal, for now we just have eBay blocking international shipping through eBays program, after Nikon US found something with the offervthey didn't like. Just what that was, we don't know.

I think it's just an attempt to stop "grey-market" imports if I had to guess and this old lens just got swept up in the dragnet. They're probably (ab-?)using ebay's IP protection systems though.

Manufacturers sometimes have vastly different pricing based on region and want to protect profits, to the point that most (all?) manufacturers will not service "gray-market imported" lenses in the US. So large 3rd-party grey market importers like "E-Infinity" even offer their own warranty.

"Grey-market" means perfectly legal imports, just without the manufacturer's blessing. Even just calling them "grey" is a gross corporate invasion on ownership rights.

If they can take advantage of global disparities to manufacture something, we should be able to take advantage of those disparities when buying.

> take advantage of global disparities to manufacture something

Like ashen-faced children, slaving in a sooty factory, under a leaden sky.

What is grey-market again?

Brilliantly stated insight, by the way.

I'm all for banning the import of products created through child labour, slavery, or thoroughly unhealthy working conditions. But they're not banning that. They're just protecting corporate profits.

No, no, no, that's not how it works. Globalisation is for throwing you in the street if you won't work for Vietnamese wages, not for letting you buy goods at Vietnamese prices.

To me, at least, "grey" indicates that the manufacturer support for updates or warranty is in a "grey" area, since a lot of that is localised to where it was originally purchased from.

And you’re super right that’s a good definition, but GP has a great point that if “black market” means it’s stolen merchandise, the very term grey market implies “kind of stolen” which is gross when it’s just “consumers using globalization in exactly the same way we do, in a way that slightly reduces our total margin dollars from the theoretical maximum”

"black market” means it’s stolen merchandise"

Black market is also drugs, guns, ... any trade not official allowed. And stolen goods often get sold legal via ebay, craigslist etc.

Even that should be illegal. People move. All the times.

It's kind of disgusting seeing people even entertain the notion that this is right. It's corporations bullying people and controlling things they have no right controlling.

Agree, thus the scare-quotes.

The thing is it's very hard to tell whether imported purportedly second-hand goods are authentic or not. Ebay could be held liable for facilitating counterfeit imports and that's what they came up with.

Some people report that after providing receipts to the rights owner they got unblocked.

Also see Blazer v Ebay, where it appears that Ebay (in 2017) was not really jumping to take down items on a whim.

> The thing is it's very hard to tell whether imported purportedly second-hand goods are authentic or not.

It's also very hard to tell whether genuine goods contain illegal lead paint. When Nikon and Apple products get pulled from shelves based on an unsubstantiated email from my lawyer, I might show some sympathy to their crying wolf about counterfeits and stomping over consumer rights.

Ever heard of MSDSs? Pretty sure they have to provide assurance for everything they sell, including "everything causes cancer" for California.

Oh sure, but are the goods on the shelves the same as what they provided assurance for? Just as someone may have swapped my Nikon lens for a counterfeit before I tried to sell it, someone may have swapped Nikon's or Apple's products on their way to retail, or after they left the factory, for lower-quality ones.

If they were found to contain lead or anything harmful, the stores could be liable for facilitating this or that crime - the courts ruled the police do not have a duty to protect, but apparently retailers do, and must act with the presumption of guilt on the most spurious of allegations.

Sure this will make commerce impossible, but we had no issue making commerce impossible for individuals, did we? We just treat them as fly-by-night Chinese importers, even when they're based in countries that very much put people in jail for counterfeiting and eagerly cooperate with various IP prosecutions. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Hey don't be mad at me, I'm not the one who makes these rules.

It appears that currently if mostly affects legitimate sellers and facilitates despicable differential pricing, but in absence of such rules the picture would likely have been different.

Also manufacturers face hefty criminal penalties for declaring a safe product and selling lead salts, what kind of penalty can be levied on a Chinese shyster?

Also-2, retailers can and are held liable for selling dangerous goods, see Schwartz v. Macrose Lumber.

> Hey don't be mad at me, I'm not the one who makes these rules.

Which rules? There is no law forcing Nikon to act this way. They do it purely for profit. Suggestions that they'd be somehow liable if they don't police their consumers are beyond tenuous.

There is no law preventing Nikon from doing that, and going after profits is a duty of Nikon's management to the shareholders.

To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.” - https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

Granted Nikon is a Japanese company, but preserving a company's good name and consumer good will can also be seen as a duty to shareholders. In other words, they are not legally compelled or even legally incentivized to act this way. They are only, as you say, allowed to act this way, which is not any kind of excuse.

> The thing is it's very hard to tell whether imported purportedly second-hand goods are authentic or not. Ebay could be held liable for facilitating counterfeit imports and that's what they came up with.

Why doesn't the principle of being presumed innocent until proven guilty apply here?

Because one can register more Chinese seller companies per year than any entity capable of "proving guilty" can process. Also because it's a criminal law principle and doesn't readily apply in civil litigation.

Lucky we don’t live in a country where you have to prove something is legal before you do it then…

Mostly because if you are caught selling something illegal you're in for some serious trouble, unlike overseas sellers in selective jurisdictions.

I think it has something more to do with the presumption of innocence

Presumption of innocence only works as long as there's enough deterrence in case you're proven guilty and enough resources to pursue credible suspicions.

Works to do what? The only purpose of the presumption of innocence is to protect an essential freedom of every democratic society. The only thing it’s ever supposed to do it protect you from the government, and it works to that effect very well, under all circumstances.

Works to maintain a society with minimal breaches to anyone's rights. Without the government's ability to pursue suspected criminals and prove them guilty you get to El Salvador kind of situation pretty quickly and your freedoms become lesser of your worries.

It’s not clear why you think the presumption of innocence is one of El Salvador’s problems, or why you think the presumption of guilt would solve them.

Presumption on innocence in a legal sense is a reflection of the reality that an absolute minority of the population are criminals, and a random person approaching you in the street is not out to rob you.

This assumption doesn't work that way in Haiti or El Salvador - you have to allow for hostile intentions of strangers or you'll get burned.

In a more benign plane, presumption of innocence allows you to pay strangers upfront and expect delivery of what you ordered. You can only do that because there are stiff consequences for misusing this trust.

You’re not talking about the presumption of innocence, or any concept relating to the legal system. You’re talking about the _social_ consequences of living somewhere with poor safety and low trust.

The presumption of innocence in a legal sense is the principle that any person accused of a crime is innocent until they are proven guilty. It is the most fundamental principle in any system of justice, and I still have no idea why you think it is the cause of any problems in El Salvador, or why you think implementing a presumption of guilt would change anything.

I lost $250,000 of Beanie Babies in 1998 by sending them from the UK to the USA in 800 separate packages to try to avoid grey import laws. It was illegal to send the Beanies because the same products were on sale in the USA.

This used to affect people trying to import Levi's jeans from the USA to EU too.

> It was illegal to send the Beanies because the same products were on sale in the USA.

What kind of law is that? Who is that protecting except the profits of specific companies? I know people got in trouble for importing quality chocolates because they were made by a company who sold the rights to sell chocolates under that name in the US to a different company. It didn't matter that the company authorized to sell them in the US also changed the recipe and used shit ingredients meaning that the products were no longer the same. Medications would be dirt cheap if it were legal for me to import them from other countries.

Weird how companies love to tell us that we'd better get used to the income and working conditions tolerated by employees in the poorest nations on earth because it's a "Global Economy" and they will source the cheapest possible labor and exploit the crap out of them, but the moment you try to buy their goods at the lowest possible price offered globally they'll drag you into court to stop it.

> I know people got in trouble for importing quality chocolates because they were made a company who sold the rights to sell chocolates under that name in the US to a different company.

Cadbury? I still get Flakes via Amazon. They ship from the UK in boxes marked "beauty supplies", which cracks me up every time.

Even the UK flakes seem to have gone downhill now that they are made in Egypt, much to the chagrin of Mr Whippy:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/26/cadbury-fla...

(I just love news items so thoroughly rooted in a country's national habits.)

Kraft ruined Cadbury after their hostile takeover. Fuckers.

They lied to get the deal done and then closed factories, dropped Fairtrade ingredients and dodged paying any tax in the UK as soon as they could.

Dang it, I thought this was just down to the smuggling. That’s a bummer; I remember them being much creamier.

Yeah, that was it! If I were going to sell the rights to use my brand's name in another country I think I'd have to insist that they maintain the quality of the product so as not to damage my brand.

I think it might be deliberate on their part. As in: if they can get away with using shit ingredients in a region, they will.

Bit of both. Hershey owns the license to the Cadbury name in the US, and they use a chocolate formulation that has a slight sour/spoiled/tangy taste. (The idea that they directly add butyric acid is a myth, but something in the process seems to generate it or something similar.)

It's just greed, been happening since thousands of years ago.

The allure of bureaucracy is walking into a vice

Was that actual loss or unrealized/theoretical?

As in you lost a bunch of Beanie babies that someone would for sure have paid $250K for?

Or, yikes, you lost a bunch of Beanie babies that you paid $250K for?

What actually happened in terms of the loss; are you saying that many of those packages didn't make it?

To clarify: a guy flew from Chicago to the UK and bought 800 Beanie Babies from me. I helped him package them and mail them and US customs snatched them all. He was the one that was actually out. I had his $250,000 in cash.

Note: If you hire an armoured truck to collect $250,000 in cash from the airport and then take it to an anonymous warehouse in the middle of nowhere to pick up a couple of boxes of soft toys the security guards will assume you are transacting a drug deal and will freak out.

Please get in touch with a Netflix executive—I need a 10 part limited series to fully immerse myself in this story

I hope you sold EXW!

Wasn't the Levi's thing something where someone had secured exclusive rights for some territory and then other parties would try to undersell those rightsholders so Levi's was careful not to sell wholesale to those kinds of buyers?

There was a period where a Brit could very reliably pay for an extremely nice holiday in Istanbul by making sure they returned with a suitcase or two full of 100% genuine Levis jeans. The only difference was the price discrimination model.

I used to live in Istanbul and I know of tourists donating all their clothes to shelters or just leaving them in their hotel room to make space for all the new cheap clothing they bought. Those were some crazy times.

Funny enough, many people from Turkey did the same when they visited the US in 2000s/2010s.

For the US/Canada it was the other way around. It wasn't uncommon for people from the neighboring Windsor Canada to go shopping in Detroit with cheap clothes on and return in new clothes with the cheap clothes from the morning discarded / donated.

I'm not sure if this has changed much or not (it is much easier to get an image of what a given car's passengers were wearing and compare it 8h later), but back in the 80s this was a viable tactic at dodging the purchase limits/customs declarations.

More recently: https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/cbsa-warns-cross-border-shoppers-...

(I'd be curious if anyone makes a weekend of shopping in Detroit to get the 48h $800 exception limit - https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/declare-eng.html#_... )

We'd also take those 99 quid flights to NYC and return with several designer watches. You had to ship the empty boxes and paperwork by FedEx though because if they found them in your luggage they knew what you were up to and busted you for import taxes, duty and VAT.

Only make sure you pack them in a clearly not-new state, otherwise customs might ask for import duties and VAT.

People always forget, that even as private person, import duties and taxes apply. Which has nothing to do with the Nikon example so.

Still is the thing with Polo between Polo and Indonesia Polo. Yes, Ralph Lauren Polo. The story is pretty funny. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/risk-management-how-ikea-lost...

Other companies too. Ikea isn't that big but the linkedin makes it that big.

Grey market imports are legal in the us. Are grey market exports illegal in the uk

You what

Beanie Babies, man; research it.

If you've never heard of the late 1990's Beanie Baby craze, you will be amazed.

But what happened to Beanie Babies could never happen to Vancouver real estate.

Your one bedroom condo will be worth $40 million by 2050, honest to god, no shit!

My favorite bit of Beanie Baby trivia is a divorcing couple had to pick through their collection one by one in front of a judge because they couldn't come to any agreement over who got what; there's a hilarious photo. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beanie-baby-fever-in-1999_n_5...

I wish someone would do a follow-up interview with them.

That's great, thank you. I probably sold them those Beanies. I basically extorted all the stores in the UK to sell the rare ones out of the back door and then sold them to rich husbands in the USA to give to their rich housewives.

I would buy them from Ty employees too as they had the limited edition ones. I remember one I sold for $13,000 that I was playing soccer with in my living room before I boxed it up and mailed it out.

Beyond pathetic. I hope they didn't have kids.

It really is one of those pictures that on face value is hilarious and tragic at the same time. But I suppose it is entirely possible they had an amicable and problem-free divorce otherwise and that it came to this because Beanie Babies could genuinely be flipped for a lot of money for a brief moment in time, a judge felt ill-equipped to divide the collection fairly and trusted the couple to handle it.

I highly doubt you can have an amicable and trouble free divorce whilst you end up in court over your beanie babies.

Ah yeah good point, I guess normal divorces don't end up in court and are resolved without having a judge or anything like that :D Bit of a morning brain failure on my part :)

Since they have so many "Beanie Babys" the whole thing seems like a compensation for not having kids (hopefully).

"OK, so we couldn't have kids. I totally accepted that. But I'm not leaving this marriage without some kind of custody battle, in a real court and everything, god damn it!"

> $40 million

Given enough inflation, it's pretty doable! It only would take 70% inflation a year, in the 7 remaining years, given the current price is around $1M.

We've got 27 remaining years until 2050, so a little under 15% per year would yield that 40x increase.

IKR!

Another step in the end of property. You don't own anything. You license it.

It does not seem like the end of property - somebody keeps owning what you license from him.

This is the same company that would really prefer for third-party batteries to not exist so people have to stay on the upgrade treadmill and not keep using the same camera body for a decade https://old.reddit.com/r/Nikon/comments/13ska1n/psa_thirdpar...

It makes sense that a manufacturer would protect their brand from people using third party batteries that might catch fire or otherwise cause issues, then blame Nikon. I used to work in a camera store and batteries were the most common issue next to flashes exploding and gimbal motors breaking due to user error. It's bad but still understandable. Especially in these cameras that seem to have heating issues anyway.

I wonder if that might have something to do with potential military use?

I know there exist range of everyday goods that can be used in order to make weapons and they are more tightly controlled than other goods, especially in import/export.

Does a (possibly) high quality lens fits into that? I don't know, but it rang a bell immediately I heard about the restriction.

This is just Nikon being Nikon. Nikon for decades would refuse to even tell you if a particular camera serial number was for a US or Japanese market camera.

Which...wouldn't be an issue, if, upon receiving your camera for service, they didn't refuse to work on a camera that wasn't in its proper market.

Note I didn't mention warranty service/repair. For decades, they wouldn't even touch a Japanese-market product at the US service center, whether you were paying or not.

At the time, Canon USA would happily warranty or otherwise service any Canon gear you sent to them, regardless of where it was bought.

Vacation in Japan, decide you want to buy a lens for your US Nikon, or maybe your US Nikon lens is lost/stolen/breaks and you get a replacement...years go by, it stops working so you send it to nikon for service...and promptly are told to get fucked, and it's shipped back to you.

I hear Canon is now pulling similar nonsense. I know someone who dropped several thousand dollars on a Canon mirrorless camera body at Abes Of Maine, only to find out (when the camera almost immediately had an issue) that the camera was a grey-market import and Canon told them to get fucked when they called for tech support. Abes Of Maine ghosted them until they threatened to do a chargeback ("goods delivered not as described", I believe.)

Oh, also: Nikon were dicks about their warranties, too. Non-transferable and they required proof of purchase, so you couldn't even buy an unregistered camera from someone else and then register it yourself.

Canon USA? At the time, they only cared if the "clock" hadn't run out, not who bought it.

All this is why I bought into the Canon ecosystem multiple times. Nikon is never getting a dime from me.

Maybe Nikon have changed, last year Nikon Japan did a great job servicing a D810 that I bought used (no receipt or warranty card) for a price that I considered good value for the quality of work.

Do other camera manufacturers pull this shit? I don't think I've heard of pentax doing it.

Tangent: For the first 10 seconds of this video I thought it was computer generated (and that was the reason this was posted on HN). The inflection in the voice just didn't match the expression on the face or the body movements (lack thereof).

Nothing to do with the content of the video but… Am I the only one seeing a weird synchronization between the sound and the video ? It looks (and sounds) like the sound is a bit too early or late with regards to the video…

Does the EU not have anything analogous to patent exhaustion?

I would have to see the exact complaint. One interesting piece is that cameras are sold in the US by Nikon USA, and in the EU by Nikon Europe. It is possible that some regulations like Weee compliance, or maybe right to repair (manuals maybe?) that this older model does not comply with all of the EU law. Still ridiculous, but a possible different angle they are approaching it from.

Because it can be used for war?

This tells me Raspberry 4 will never be for sale again. EVER!

Import/Export is a different beast than right to repair. He already has his hands full, and should focus on what he knows. Don't confuse your userbase and potentially damage your main goal.

Consider the situation where I go to Japan and buy a camera lens there and take it back with me to the US (it was cheaper there). The warranty on it is for Japan - not the US warranty repairs.

This is fine for me and noting that if it breaks I'll likely have to send it to a friend in Japan (and hope customs doesn't intervene) and have them send it in for a warranty repair.

If I was to sell this lens at US (or even slightly cheaper than US prices) to someone in the US and they tried sending it to the US warranty repair they would be in for a rude awaking.

This most often shows up with camera equipment and B&H has a page on Grey Market ( https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/find/HelpCenter/USGrey.jsp ) and you'll note that B&H offers the warranty repair on the gear (rather than the official licensed import warranty repair company).

You'll also note that a non-US resident buying a grey market item from B&H would face similar problems to what I would have hypothetically faced buying a camera lens in Japan.

> A resident of the USA may wish to make the buying decision based on price since the cost of shipping to a US service center or to B&H should be about equal. A non-USA resident should consider the cost of returning a product to B&H in New York for servicing as opposed to the cost of taking the product to a local warranty service center.

And likewise, for the video... the person has a (I presume) US warranty item that if imported into the UK would EU.

From the video transcript:

> ... for international buyers through eBay international shipping one of the benefits of eBay international shipping is that we may resolve Vero import issues on your behalf the Vero program is designed to protect you and protect rights owners intellectual property ...

As the seller/exporter of the lens, if you are shipping it to the EU without the proper warranty ( https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers... ) it is quite possible to find yourself in a bit of trouble if they tried to get a warranty repair on it.

Specifically for Nikon: https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=0000...

> What are Grey Market products?

> Nikon products that are not imported by Nikon Europe B.V. and sold through it's sales channels are considered Grey Market products. These usually are genuine Nikon products that were intended for other Nikon markets; therefore, they may not meet Nikon’s specifications for European products and they may not perform as expected.

> No Nikon Warranty

> Grey Market products may contain a limited warranty from the seller, but they are not covered by a Nikon Europe warranty.

> Not eligible for warranty repair service

> Not eligible for Nikon Europe Warranty repair service, you will be charged.

And so, the person is exporting to the EU and there is no Nikon warranty on it, and presumably there is no warranty from the person selling it which is in violation of EU warranty laws on products and Nikon doesn't want to get in trouble with the EU either.

> presumably there is no warranty from the person selling it which is in violation of EU warranty laws on products and Nikon doesn't want to get in trouble with the EU either

As the lens is so old it is no longer manufactured, presumably it is outside of any mandated warranty window. But supposing it wasn't - can companies be held liable if someone without their knowledge or consent imports and item into a jurisdiction where that item may not comply with all regulations? This is settled law? And the risk of that is higher than the risk of being sued for tortious interference with the second-hand sellers perfectly legitimate business/transaction?

This kind of argument is common in such threads - that unless companies trample over consumer rights in ways that just happen to drive company profits, they will be held liable for the actions of those consumers. What's not common is citing any legal precedent where this has happened.

Even though it is no longer sold, a used item purchased in the EU must have a warranty offered by the seller.

https://www.evz.de/en/shopping-internet/guarantees-and-warra...

> The legal warranty is mandatory and applies EU-wide for two years beginning from the date consumers receive the product. In the case of used goods, the period can be shortened (1 year). In addition, a commercial guarantee is often agreed between the contracting parties.

And so, the person goes to a camera repair (note that parts will be difficult to get) for a warranty repair within the year. They sue Nikon or Ebay about the warranty and then that goes back to the original seller.

Ebay is saying that they won't be able to protect you (the seller) from this or resolve the import issues if they occur.

Is this settled law? Likely.

---

That's the warranty part... the other part is that items with a trademark may be restricted by the mark holder. This is often done when there's a licensed importer for those goods. (I've also bought and sold board games to and from Europe - some of them are "nope, can't do that" others are perfectly fine - depends on the publisher and if they have a licensed seller of the game)

Note also the legal standing that Nikon has within the EJC: https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/1998/10/the-ecj-has-delive...

If Nikon wants to block grey market sales in Europe they are completely within their rights to do so within Europe. Ebay knows that Nikon will do this and someone is going to be on the hook for it (this has been around for two decades).

Is this settled law? Absolutely. That was settled in '98 and every page about grey market for EU points out that the mark holder may ban it.

Recently: Court of Justice allows destroying genuine grey-market goods when rights aren’t exhausted - https://trademarkblog.kluweriplaw.com/2022/10/21/court-of-ju...

This is impossibly insane. I sell lots of old camera gear from defunct companies. There is no way to repair it. Or items sold for parts - do they need a warranty?

I've never seen any EU sellers state that their used goods have a minimum 1 year warranty. Further down, it seems this needs to be explicitly stated: "The legal warranty period for new goods in Germany is 2 years. For second-hand goods, it is 1 year if the buyer and seller expressly agree on this at the time of purchase."

It also isn't true. Private sales are exempt from warranty in most EU countries. For instance in Germany you'll see lots of professional car sellers sell vehicles 'privately' to avoid having to give a 1 year warranty.

They try. It doesn't get them out of the warranty so, and opens them up to charges of tax avoidance.

I'm not convinced by your 1st citation. How does a private sale create a new obligation for Nikon, who was not involved in the transaction? And suppose the sale was intra-EU - am I to believe it is simply illegal to sell used goods in the EU if one is unable to provide warranty for them? Since every sale creates a new 1-year warranty obligation.

Or conversely, that each subsequent sale creates a new 1-year warranty obligation for the manufacturer, that was not involved with the sale, regardless of how old the item is?

And why would it be any of the manufacturer's business whether 2nd-hand sellers don't provide warranty? Since when are they in the business of privately enforcing consumer protections? Or legally compelled to do so.

As for the trademark exhaustion, presumably it refers to my claim that the transaction is "perfectly legitimate", even over the trademark-holder's objection. I stand by "legitimate", but concede that it may not be "legal". However, it is hard for me to express how vile and disgusting such a law is, effectively allowing trade between countries only for corporations, and using trademarks to isolate consumers. As another comment stated, they want to take advantage of price differences for manufacturing, but then prevent consumers from using those differences when buying. Legal, but not remotely legitimate, and a clear sign of the capture of the legislature by corporate interests.

And none of what you cited shows any kind of liability for a company arising from not policing their consumers.

The risk Nikon is facing, and product liability goes far beyond warranties and cover far larger periods, is that theoretically the importer of records takes all product liability risks. Now that lens is a private import from the US, and it is a genuine Nikon product. So, in a sense, that particular lense might cause a liability against Nikon EU, who has no insurance for that case. So yes, there is a risk.

Now, in that case, Nikon EU was not at all involved. It was Nikon US, and we do not know why. Because Nikon is allowing export of used gear from Japan to the US and EU all the time.

So, my theory, is that said auction was caught by some algorithm Nikon US (most likely some service provider) was using and flagged to eBay US. As a result, eBay prevented something very specific, the use of eBays program for international shipping. Note, eBay did not block the auction for US customers, nor did they mention, if I read the screenshot correctly, the export by the seller himself. eBay US just said we don't do that for you in that case.

This is far from screwing consumers or impeding property or repair rights. Heck, we don't even know why the auction was flagged!

Or you can buy a camera from a company that doesn't play these stupid games, like Phase One. The warranty is tied to the back, not the sale. They take care of import/export for you, when required. Nikon USA and Nikon Japan sell the same product and either could repair it, if they cared enough to.

Nikons repair service networlk is actually top notch. And they repair imported gear just fine, even when you are simply on vacation, part availability notwithstanding.

The video is nowhere close to be a right-to-repair topic, but rather a question what people can sell on eBay and to whom. And whether or not any of this affects your ownership.

One trivia about imports: As the actual manufacturer might be put of reach to enforce warranty claims, e.g. because it is a non-EU based company without a legal entity in the EU, the importer of record is liable for the one or two year warranty for used and new goods respectively. Or for any other product liability.

That why Incoterms, import declarations and customs papers matter much.

As concrete example, if private person A buys something from commercial seller B in a third country and person does the import into his home country, seller B is not liable for any warranty or product claims in that country. Seller B is liable for those in his own home country.

And I guess that might be the root cause for, in our example, Nikon (Canon seems to be the same so, judging from comments) is so picky about repairs and warranties on grey imports. US product liabilities and laws are quite special and severe, and I would understand if companies want to avoid any unnecessary risk here.

Because those topics are no problem in the EU, I never heard of a case where repairs have been rejected based on country of origin. Warranties might be different so, for reasons see above.

Edit: What Nikon says is actually very reasonable, and a lot of companies do the same regardong grey imports: we repair them for price X, but don't offer warranties since our local entities are not liable for it. That also means, the camera you bought while in Japan should be covered by Japanese warranties. Everything beyond that is basically good will.

Are sellers of used products (second hand, etc) to the EU required to provide a warranty? If so, is it the same warranty as if the item was new?

As I understand it, yes - they are required to provide the warranty and no, it isn't the same warranty as the item new.

https://www.evz.de/en/shopping-internet/guarantees-and-warra...

I belive there's exemptions for private citizens (as opposed to businesses)

It's ridiculous that a global corporation doesn’t provide global service.

Who cares? Camera industry has become extinct. Nikon just did not realize.

Louis Rossmann really needs dial it back after that synology thing. The timespan between the initial thought/idea/emotional reaction and actual video being online has gotten just way too short.

There's nothing good coming from this online drama content.

It's a crappy lens, maybe they just don't want it around anymore.

I know people on HN like to bitch and moan about "$insert_name_of_big_evil_company not letting me do what I want".

But there is more than this than meets the eye.

First, "grey market" is actually FAR more than just an inconvenience to $evil_big_corp. "grey market", ESPECIALLY in tech and chips, is a major source of so-called "missing trader fraud"[1] which comes in many forms including carousel fraud. This ends up adding up to billions in tax which has been fraudulently misappropriated. Before they started clamping down on it, it was a major problem in the EU in the early 2000s, but also in other forms elsewhere in the world.

Governments worldwide have been clamping down on missing trader fraud for some time now, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone that large consumer electronics companies, whose kit is an obvious target to the fraudsters, have to play their role in tightening the supply chain.

Second, if a company has a trademark then part of maintaining that trademark is to act upon illegal use of it. If you don't act on trademark infringement, whether counterfeit or otherwise, then theoretically your trademark could be at risk of formal challenge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_trader_fraud

It's a used lens, that's not manufactured anymore by the original manufacturer, so there's no way to get VAT on a new product. Also, if it's a legitimate nikon lens, then there is no trademark abuse.

It's just big companies being assholes to their customers (until customers figure it out, and stop buying it... btw, never buy HP printers!)

> Second, if a company has a trademark then part of maintaining that trademark is to act upon illegal use of it. If you don't act on trademark infringement, whether counterfeit or otherwise, then theoretically your trademark could be at risk of formal challenge.

How does trademark infringement enter the conversation? The products aren't counterfeit right?

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