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Comment by addy34 | Hacker News Reader

It does, but the only real requirement is to prevent duplicates. It's not a limited resource like domains or IP4 addresses. There's no justification for the subscription model aside from "because we can". They used to give out numbers in perpetuity, but eventually realized there was a lot more money to be made.

Dividing blocks over multiple competing providers is a good suggestion.

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Tbh I suspect part of the value is that it limits the amount of absolute junk filling the store. Requiring a unique ID for every product that costs some money is a very low bar for real products, but a high bar for AI generated slop tshirts that might not sell a single unit.

Interestingly, it doesn’t look like IKEA uses UPC barcodes at all and just has their own format and numbers. I guess since they only sell their products in their own stores, there is no need for it to be globally unique.

Does it though?

There's a lot of junk sold on Amazon and Aliexpress.

I've never seen actual junk that doesnt work from a fake brand with a legit UPC barcode, which seems to indicate it's an effective gate keeper, if people cared to look at it.

> It's not a limited resource like domains or IP4 addresses.

I'm curious why you say it's not a limited resource.

Although you could theoretically expand the length of UPC every couple years to keep growing, the reality is that all the systems communicating these numbers back and forth need to have a standard.

In addition, printed barcodes need to fit within the area they are designed to fit in, if they were regularly increasing in size it would impact various systems (e.g. conveyor systems scanners, item labels, etc.)

I wonder what happens if you stop paying? Do they reuse your number? That would kind make their service pointless if a number you get could have already been used in previous valid products.

UPC's do have a lifetime already, so it's not entirely outside of their model.

Large companies produce so many UPC's for short lived products, especially fashion apparel, that GS1's rule is that UPC's should not be reused for at least 3 years.

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