back to article We've been Trumped! China's Alibaba is a 'notorious' knock-offs souk, says US watchdog

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has put Alibaba's Taobao, the Chinese internet giant's online auction site, on its "notorious markets list" of sites that regularly deal in counterfeit goods. In a bulletin this week [PDF] the USTR noted that Taobao, which is the world's largest online shopping destination by gross …

  1. Oh Homer
    Mushroom

    "threaten America's creative industries"

    You mean those American creative industries that have all their goods manufactured in China to avoid paying a living wage to American workers, and whose sole claim to creation is the supposed "invention" of such things as simple geometric shapes that have been around since the Stone Age?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

      Maybe he's talking about the patent trolls?

      1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
        Alert

        Re patent troll AC: "threaten America's creative industries"

        Best patent application ever:

        Halliburton patent application to patent the business model of patent trolling:

        "Patent Acquisition and Assertion by a (Non-Inventor) First Party Against a Second Party"

        United States Patent Application 20080270152

        http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20080270152.pdf

    2. Trey Pattillo

      Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

      Uhmiraka don't make nutin' worth copyin'.

      They are in the wrong forest barking at the trees.

      The high value copies are trophy-wife fixin's.

      Purses, shoes, clothes, jewelry, perfume......

      Some for the guys but not much, a few watches maybe.

      Just sayin'....my deflated $0.0002 worth.

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

      "Living wage" rant... <facepalm>

      if these things were made in the USA, instead of China, they'd be built by robots. And usually the 'knockoff' part is harming the ENGINEERING side, not so much the manufacturing side.

      I saw a knockoff of an antenna once that, when X rayed, showed the original company's logo. The antenna was designed such that having the logo affected the tuning. So the cloners made a copy that looked like it was made FROM an x ray, complete with the logo [which was only visible in an X ray]. Clever, but not so clever. So the antenna cost MAYBE a penny to actually make; selling the knockoffs really only hurt the engineering side of the business, where all of the R&D and whatnot wasn't being paid for by antenna sales.

      Anyway, that whole "living wage" thing is ridiculous. A job is worth the money that the employee earns for the company. Paying someone MORE than what his job earns is bad economics. And that includes all of those "other costs" from payroll taxes to "OBAKACARE" (which is thankfully GOING AWAY). So you factor in how much it costs for an employee, and how much work that employee does, and what that work is worth to the employer. And if it's a net loss, you go elsewhere, or invent a ROBOT to do it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

        "Paying someone MORE than what his job earns is bad economics"

        Remind me again how much the Fire Brigades & Police earn for the "company", and lets not forget the teachers, road builders, road cleaners, emergency hospital workers and on and on.

        Ah I guess they don't count in your pit of self centred economics.

        1. Updraft102

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          Public servants are no different than any other workers. They perform a task that has a certain value, and the "company" (government) that employs and pays them is itself paid by the people who receive the services (taxpayers). To pay more than a given service is worth is a waste of taxpayers' money... your money. The main difference is that a for-profit company actually has to balance the books to remain in business, where governments can continue to operate with huge deficits for years and years, until the debt has built so high that the economy collapses or the currency is inflated to the "wheelbarrows full of cash for a loaf of bread" level.

          How is that self-centered? If we decided to pay everyone at the bottom of the pay scale more than the market value of their work across the board, all goods would end up costing more-- which means every one of us will effectively have a huge pay cut... and it would be a particularly regressive effect, harming the poor (who can barely afford goods as it is) the most, and the wealthy the least. It wouldn't even ultimately benefit the recipients of the higher pay, as the inflation of costs of the things they buy with their higher wages would outpace the increases in pay.

          You seem to think that employers can essentially print money and pay employees whatever they want, but that they're too greedy to do so. That money they pay employees has to come from somewhere, and that is always reflected in the price.

          If Apple made iPhones in the US with American labor, would ordinary people be able to afford them? Would the people who now enjoy those devices be better off with a vastly inferior product for the same money an iPhone used to cost? Sales would plummet, and that means Apple wouldn't need to employ so many people to make them anymore. They may not even be able to make enough of them to stay solvent using expensive American labor... so they'd be faced with doing as Bob said and automating, going back offshore, or simply leaving the market, which means people don't get iPhones OR the jobs making them.

          This is why living-wage arguments from the left fail. Gainful employment is not a welfare program where you're awarded benefits according to what some bureaucrat thinks you need! People are selling a service when they seek employment, and they're paid according to the market value of that service.

          If the service is of low value (meaning that the pool of people who want to perform that service is larger than the pool of jobs available), you may or may not be able to live on it-- and it's not the job of the employer to award benefits like it was a welfare program, nor is it the role of government to force them to do so. If you can't make ends meet selling oranges on the roadside, don't expect the government to fix the price of oranges to an artificially high level and mandate that people buy them there rather than at the grocery store so that the orange sellers can make ends meet. If the service you offer is not bringing in enough money, you'll have to offer a more valuable service.

        2. patrickstar

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          The work of police, fire fighters, teachers, road builders, road cleaners and hospital workers all have an economic value. Regardless of who actually pays. How do you think budget and hiring decisions work otherwise?

          And by the way - with the exception of part of the duty of police officers, there are solid privately financed options for all these around the world.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          @lost all faith

          I think you rather missed the point.

          Police / Fire Brigade protect / save the lower forms of intelligence in society. Without the pond slime us IT folk woukd have nobody to support. With nobody to support we'd have to get proper jobs.

      2. Hollerithevo

        Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

        Just read an interesting article of interviews in, I think, Tennessee, of blue-collar workers who thought that the threats to Obamacare were the same as the promise to build the wall: fun words to say to mark your territory, not which no one ever dreamed would come to be. One woman's husband was down for a liver transplant, which o course was off the cards once Obamacare was gone. They had voted Trump for other issues on the platform, not realising that they could not predict which promises he would keep and which were just said for effect.

        There are lots of people not very well off who rely on things paid for by the commonwealth of taxpayers: schools, road, health insurance (for the moment). The ones who are glad Obamacare is going away have no compassion for the people who are going to be in a terrible situation when it goes. Is this what is meant by making America great again: sending people back to desperation, suffering and fear?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What is meant by making America great again.....

          People are voting differently all over the world, America has Trump, UK has Brexit and Canada has Alberta. Alberta is a province so right wing they voted Conservative for 4 decades straight which ended recently when they voted, not for a centre party but a socialist party. It would be like America voting for a Atheist Communist President, shocking to say the least.

          Voting differently, for anyone other than acceptable candidates, is an expression of desperation. Desperation at political systems that only see voters as something to be managed and lied to during elections and sold out once office and power is gained.

          Which is why it is a good thing that people can see the promises of International Trade benefiting all to be yet more lies. Transferring manufacturing from countries with acceptable standards of living, human right and environmental laws to countries without such concerns has put the whole planet at risk with everything from Climate Change and global pollution, to destabilized political systems in Europe and the America's.

          The only thing that will change that is change, any change. When you are being pushed to the edge of the cliff in spite of braking and trying to steer away and it becomes clear there is nothing to lose it's best to accelerate and hope for the best.

          That is how it is for an increasing number of American's and Europeans and if voting doesn't result in the revolution needed........

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: What is meant by making America great again.....

            "The only thing that will change that is change, any change. When you are being pushed to the edge of the cliff in spite of braking and trying to steer away and it becomes clear there is nothing to lose it's best to accelerate and hope for the best."

            Well, actually, NO. If you live in the US and think there's "nothing to lose," even in the Rust Belt and coal country*, then you haven't been paying attention to the countries where folks "accelerated and hoped for the best;" just look at how well off folks in Venezuela are doing with their populist revolution. Or try trading places with a Dalit or Muslim family in India. Things can get A LOT worse here in the US, and voting to break the system by installing someone hell-bent on making things even worse, if not irreparable, is a step in that direction.

            The sensible response to the manifest failure of the US political parties to do their jobs isn't to drive the country off the cliff even faster, it is to replace said parties with better alternatives. (Really, now, Donald Trump was the *best* the conservative movement could come up with? That's simply pathetic.) Unfortunately, a plurality of folks where it counted were taken in by a snake-oil merchant instead. Sense isn't very common lately.

            *Bringing economic health back to these regions, especially the coal belt, will be enormously difficult, and I have yet to see anyone present a realistic, credible strategy to do that. Coal is gone and won't be back, for several independent reasons. The right question there is, "What can the coal region do or a living without coal, and how do we get there?"

            Posting as anonymous because, Trump.

            1. Updraft102

              Re: What is meant by making America great again.....

              Donald Trump isn't conservative, nor was he the choice of the conservative movement. He was a populist choice, not a conservative one. He's made some conservative-sounding statements while campaigning, but if you look at his history, that's not what he's ever been about. He's from outside the political mainstream; things have been going to hell in a handbasket with establishment politicians from both parties (which in practice is just one party... the establishment party).

        2. Bucky 2

          Re: "fun words to say to mark your territory"

          That's very well expressed. I hadn't thought of it quite that way before, but it makes perfect sense.

        3. Updraft102

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          Where have you gotten the idea that Obamacare has helped people? It's just driven up costs and deductibles; we still have the same number of uninsured as before, but now the insured pay far more for less coverage.

          If you don't think people have been suffering and fearful because of Obama's policies, you've not been paying attention. How do you think someone like Trump was elected? It's not because people were filled with Obama "hope."

          Obama's economics have only put us 9 billion more in debt (it went up as much in the past 8 years as it had in the 232 preceding years), with a record number of people "not participating in the labor force" (which the government then omits from unemployment calculations-- if you're so depressed about job prospects that you give up and go on welfare, congratulations! You're no longer unemployed! Another victory for the Obama administration).

          Downvote away, everyone... I know the left is sacred here, but everything I've written here is verifiable and factual.

          1. Rattus Rattus

            Re: "the left is sacred here"

            What site have you been reading? REASON and RATIONALITY are sacred here, not "The Left", like it's some monolithic organisation. It just so happens that many leftward-leaning ideas are frequently much more reasonable and rational than most right-leaning ideas. Not always, when leftie idiots are being just as foolish in their own way as rightie idiots, they face the same degree of scorn. Witness the reaction to a lot of the "safe space" bullshit, for example.

          2. TheVogon

            Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

            "we still have the same number of uninsured as before"

            Nope:

            Around 17 million people have gained health insurance since the core of ObamaCare took effect in 2013, according to a RAND Corp. study released Wednesday.

            The study finds that 22.8 million people signed up for coverage between September 2013 and February 2015, while 5.9 million lost coverage, leading to a net gain of 16.9 million.

        4. Hardrada

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          "Just read an interesting article of interviews in, I think, Tennessee, of blue-collar workers who thought that the threats to Obamacare were the same as the promise to build the wall: fun words to say to mark your territory, not which no one ever dreamed would come to be. One woman's husband was down for a liver transplant, which o course was off the cards once Obamacare was gone. They had voted Trump for other issues on the platform, not realising that they could not predict which promises he would keep and which were just said for effect."

          I'm a Yank, and when I last checked it appeared that the Republicans were split on how fast and far to go with the repeal. They certainly have not repealed it yet.

          "There are lots of people not very well off who rely on things paid for by the commonwealth of taxpayers: schools, road, health insurance (for the moment). The ones who are glad Obamacare is going away have no compassion for the people who are going to be in a terrible situation when it goes. Is this what is meant by making America great again: sending people back to desperation, suffering and fear?"

          You don't sound like someone who's lived in the US (and if you have, you could stand to pay more attention to how our government works). Almost all of the left-leaning states had state Medicaid programs, some of which were more generous than Obamacare.

          My home state's program would send you to the Mayo Clinic, had no copays or premiums for the poor, and only billed ~$5/15 (respectively) for people with a modest income. We also had a subsidized high-risk pool that was available to anyone and capped at 20% above the market rate, so it was cheaper than buying individual coverage under Obamacare.

          I know that California, Washington and New York had similar programs, so together with my state, they covered more people than there are in the UK. Add in Massachusetts and quite a few other states, and I think that half the US population or more was covered. A hundred-fifty million people with good coverage isn't exactly the Wild West.

          There was also nothing barring people in more miserly states from moving to more generous ones. It's not as though they had big real estate investments holding them down.

          Even the West isn't very wild anymore. You're more likely to see a sick hiker airlifted from a trail by a $5M helicopter than you are to be denied care if you show up in a clinic with no insurance. (It's illegal for hospitals to do that in in emergencies.)

          You might want to visit sometime :) There's some pretty cool stuff.

        5. hayseed

          Re: "threaten America's creative industries"

          I read such an article, and the people who worked in the area were aware that the plan was "Obamacare," unlike the opinionated worker who thought they didn't understand. The larger issue is that it is "coal country." Obama has issued regulations that work against coal. Understandably, it is quite possible that they are more worried about having jobs than the price of their insurance! The article I read didn't even consider that issue!

      3. Oh Homer
        Headmaster

        Re: "A job is worth the money that the employee earns for the company"

        Maybe you could explain that to the big corporations that pay minimum wages to the workforce that makes them billions in profits.

        Anyone who seriously believes that either wages or prices bear any real correlation to actual costs or profits, clearly doesn't really understand capitalism.

        1. Updraft102

          Re: "A job is worth the money that the employee earns for the company"

          "Anyone who seriously believes that either wages or prices bear any real correlation to actual costs or profits, clearly doesn't really understand capitalism."

          Anyone who believes they DON'T clearly lacks an understanding of capitalism, or any form of economics, or even simple math.

          Can you go buy a brand new car for $500 right now? An actual car that meets all of the usual definitions of what a car is, not a golf cart or some such thing. If not, why not? Wouldn't Chevrolet or Fiat or Volkswagen like to make oodles of money selling millions of cars for $500? Sales would be through the roof! They'd reach millions of customers who had never been able to participate in the new car market before. So why hasn't anyone done it?

          Well, they can't, because they can't build a car for $500 and not take a massive loss on each sale. The "actual cost", in your words, is far higher than $500, so you won't see one at that price. The carmakers are willing to compete to get sales, but they have to break even after all the costs are considered.

          The seller of an item can, of course, set the price however he wishes. If he sets it too low, as in the $500 car example, he'll make plenty of sales, but lose his shirt on the costs. If he set it too high, people would buy a competing product or just elect not to buy anything in that particular category. For every price, there is a corresponding demand that matches that price. It's up to the business in question to figure out what the potential demand for a product will be and to price it accordingly.

          With some goods, like Apple iPhones, the profit margin per unit is quite high. They're perceived as luxury goods, and priced accordingly. They're not priced SO high that only the rich can afford them; ordinary people can afford them in first world countries, but their price point reflects the perception that Apple wishes people to have, which is that their products are not commoditized, but are instead a step up from anything else you can buy. Not everyone agrees, obviously, but enough do to make Apple tremendously profitable selling iPhones at a premium.

          That, though, doesn't at ALL mean that there's no correlation between what you've called the actual cost and the price. There's a very strong correlation if you know what to look for. The market price of iPhones is whatever price will result in demand for iPhones that matches the number that Apple wishes to sell in a given unit of time. The difference between the per-unit cost and the per-unit sales price is what Apple's after-- the profit. What you've apparently not seen in this relationship is that Apple designs the iPhone to hit a certain point on the supply and demand curves, one that will provide the profit they want while managing the cost per unit of manufacturing. The components in each phone, the features each has, the corners cut or not cut, and the ability of manufacturing to scale production up or down and the effect of that scaling on the change in per-unit cost are all part of Apple's design.

          So yes, the link between the per-unit cost and the per-unit retail price is definitely there... you just can't consider any random product, multiply its sales price by whatever constant you wish to use, and from that deduce what the manufacturing cost was for the item. Some items are high-margin, some are low-margin, and some are sold below cost just to increase liquidity in the short term... but that doesn't mean the prices of those items are not strongly linked to the costs to manufacture them.

          1. Oh Homer
            Headmaster

            Re: The $500 car

            Your hyperbolic example fails to explain that the automotive industry nonetheless makes billions in profits that are not passed back to the workforce that produced them.

            The fact that the break-even point is higher than $500 doesn't magically alter the fact that the margin is nonetheless not zero, but billions, and therefore the price bears no correlation to the actual cost, and clearly neither does it bear any correlation to the token wages paid to those who actually created those profits.

            Capitalism is intrinsically an act of theft, justified by the supposed "voluntary contract" of a workforce surplus in which the employers have all the bargaining power, and the circular justification of presumed "ownership" of the means of production, each successive example of which is paid for with the spoils of the previous theft.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did you know?

    There is no such thing as man-made political climate change! I don't like science, but I love to comment on the Intertubes on my smartpadthing on topics I know next to nothing about. Thinking is bad for you, unless you make lots of money, then you don't need to think about anything. Nobody is hacking you, that's just your imagination. And other hypocritical phrases sure to please even the most jaded walrus.

    China makes counterfeit goods?! How can this be? I don't believe it, just like the hacking, it's not a real thing to worry about. Look away!

  3. a_yank_lurker

    Sort of Wrong target

    All auction sites will have problems with counterfeit goods, blatant knockoffs, etc. The problem is how to police the sites so legitimate vendors can thrive and frauds fail. Somehow, feral bureaucrats beating their wimpy chests does not seem to be a deterrent.

  4. ecofeco Silver badge

    Call me commie-nist..

    ...but I'm not feeling real sorry for luxury goods makers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Call me commie-nist..

      It's a long way from just luxury goods. I use high-end control desks from a UK company - they are specialist, high quality, developed and manufactured in the UK and they have made huge investments in their software and support. Yet go on Alibaba and you will find factories churning out fakes, silk screened and labelled up with their logos, loaded with software ripped off from this company.

      If it was my company it would drive me to despair.

    2. Roq D. Kasba

      Re: Call me commie-nist..

      How do you feel about brake-pad manufacturers? Or medicine manufacturers? This knock-off stuff enters the chain in all sectors.

    3. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Call me commie-nist..

      I'm pretty sure I said "luxury goods makers."

      Let me check that again. Wait, yep. Those exact words.

      As for counterfeit everything else, yeah, I've gotten screwed many times in the last few decades from knockoffs and there was no recourse other than the warranty if I was lucky. So what else is new?

  5. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Bring on the Chinese knockoffs!

    My variable-speed rotary tool from Harbor Freight is better built and has lasted longer than any of my Dremels. At half the price.

    I do have to love how a Chinese company is named "Chicago Electric" though.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What? Counterfeit goods. From China!

    Next you'll be telling me that America elected Trump!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What? Counterfeit goods. From China!

      They're not really knock offs if they're made at the same factories using the same processes as the genuine products and the only difference is either a mis-spelt or missing band name/logo...

      Ethically wrong and (hopefully) violating supply contracts, but knock offs makes them sound like cheap ripoffs when they're likely to be exactly the same...

  7. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Aaand - the price for Yahoo! just went down a bit, again. Intended or not, this is a nice christmas present for Verizon.

  8. Potemkine Silver badge

    Newspeak

    To be trumped: to be fist-fucked till the elbow. Example: That guy had less votes than her opponent but is now President, we've been trumped!.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "complaints pages were often not available in English,"

    Odd, last time I looked, eBay's pages complaint pages were in American English and not Chinese.

    Oh right, Chinese website for some reason must have English language on all it's pages. Gotcha.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: "complaints pages were often not available in English,"

      "Chinese website for some reason must have English language on all it's pages."

      Ah, hell, just run it through google's web page translator, right? If nothing else, the comedic factor alone will put you in a better mood.

    2. Rob D.
      Coat

      Re: "complaints pages were often not available in English,"

      As a wise man once said(*), "知彼知己,百戰不殆;不知彼而知己,一勝一負;不知彼,不知己,每戰必殆"

      Moral of this story - more Americans should learn to speak Chinese.

      * - Thanks be to Jimmy.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: "complaints pages were often not available in English,"

        So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles.

  10. Lodgie

    Used Alibaba twice, once for some Canon lens caps and again for something relatively inexpensive but branded.

    Both were knock offs and both lacked the quality of the originals. At least it was cheap tat. Great examples of this can be found in the Canarian Islands electronic shops, very dodgy purchasing experiences.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      "Great examples of this can be found in the Canarian Islands electronic shops, very dodgy purchasing experiences."

      back in the 80's, Hong Kong [then a UK territory] was infamous for its knockoffs. Being in the Navy at the time, when I was there, we were warned *not* to purchase ANYTHING outside of the China Fleet Club for that very reason - you just couldn't tell what was real, and what was fake! Apparently, there was also a risk of getting something like a name-brand camera that was only a shell [no workings], and so on. Or, so we were told...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Canon advises in the past days there are on sales counterfeit copies of their EF 50/1.8 lens (one of the cheapest one, for those who believe counterfeiter only copy "luxury" goods). They were discovered when they went sent in for repairs, and technicians found they were fakes.

      The problem is not only making copies (but branding them with your brand, at least...) but deceiving buyers believing to buy the original (although, sometimes they deserve it because they ignored any warning). Because it's always fine until it hits you.... there are people who got counterfeit SD cards and batteries buying on Amazon, for example. Some sellers have little issue to buy counterfeit goods and try to resell them through more reputable channels.

  11. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    FAIL

    Wrong Target

    Maybe look at all the Americans buying this stuff.

  12. John Watts

    Maybe Taobao is different but AliExpress doesn't seem to have that much in the way of fake stuff. Unless you want "fake" Lego (which goes under a different brand but is basically a copy). What you can get from AliExpress is a watch delivered for less than it would cost you to buy the padded envelope and post it to the next town using Royal Mail. The straps are rubbish but watch parts are fine. That's where the real risk to American (and Western in general) industry lies - pay the postage and get the product free.

  13. Chris G

    I bought a couple of pocket knives from DHGate, the sites that sold them advertised them as clones. They were made in the same factory the US Company uses but from slghtly cheaper materials, but still good quality. Oh and less than 30% of the original's price.

  14. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    So, just buy it on Amazon

    I was looking for a DVD of "A Town Like Alice" earlier this year and found it on Amazon, basically a DVD rip of the VHS release but decently produced and I was very happy to find it. I figured that being purchased on Amazon, from a US company, and having a UPC it must be legitimate - it had all the normal warnings about FBI and Interpol copyright infringement. However, when I scanned the UPC into my DVD collection it said it was another DVD. After digging around a bit I discovered that the US company selling it just sounded US - New York Films or something like that - and was located in China.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't worry

    According to King Donald, US blue collar workers will shortly be employed in vast numbers making nukes.

    That'll learn them pesky Chinese ;)

  16. Robin Bradshaw

    Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.

    <rant>

    Perhaps the USTR could show the Chinese how its done by cleaning up Ebay, which is every bit as bad as Taobao, or does ebay get a free pass because its American and can therefore do no wrong.

    They are impossible to contact, ignore all efforts to report unsafe electrical items, to the point you cant even give them a reference to the relevant RAPEX alert to demonstrate they are unsafe and banned in the EU.

    As an example: the Extra dangerous electrocute-o-daptor with lamp test feature., there are several RAPEX entry's for this one, this is one of them 1144/09: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumers_safety/safety_products/rapex/alerts/main/index.cfm?event=main.notification&search_term=1144/09&exclude_search_term=0&search_year=2009 (its a pdf)

    Here it is on ebay the first one i found: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Universal-International-World-Wide-Multi-Travel-Plug-Charger-Adapter-UK-3-Pin-EU-/262524545975

    And here is a wonderful video from bigclivedotcom demonstrating its exciting lamp test feature :) https://youtu.be/hvOTiQKkQMo

    So if the USTR would be so kind as to also add ebay to that shit list id be eternally grateful.

    </rant>

    1. Oh Homer
      Headmaster

      The USTR's witch hunt

      Sadly the USTR is not particularly interested in what's fair or even legal, as long as it protects American interests (i.e. money).

      As for who's actually entitled to what, America is one of the world's most notorious rip-off artists. Just look at Disney and Apple, as two of the more prominent examples, or frankly anything in America's vast portfolio of laughable patents, or any of the supposed "create works" coming out of Hollywood or the American music industry.

      The problem the USTR is having is simply that China is more industrious in its rip-offery, not that it's somehow more guilty. The standard characterisation of American exceptionalism would have us believe that America is unquestionably and always the Good Guy, and that everyone else must therefore default to being the Bad Guys, no matter what.

      The reality is very different.

      1. Sam 15

        Re: The USTR's witch hunt

        "Sadly the USTR is not particularly interested in what's fair or even legal, as long as it protects American interests (i.e. money).

        As for who's actually entitled to what, America is one of the world's most notorious rip-off artists. Just look at Disney and Apple, as two of the more prominent examples, or frankly anything in America's vast portfolio of laughable patents, or any of the supposed "create works" coming out of Hollywood or the American music industry."

        I was startled to read that Waltzing Matilda is an American song.

        It was Copyrighted in the US in 1941, so those criminals in Oz have been stealing this American creative product - ever since 1896.

        Sort 'em out Trump!

        1. Oh Homer
          Mushroom

          Re: Waltzing Matilda

          The Waltzing Matilda fiasco is just another example of America's copyright insanity, in which the actual creators are trumped by some fraudulent presumption to ownership, based on no legitimate claim or moral entitlement whatsoever, but a mindless and unchallenged land-grab.

          Meanwhile, the true origins of the song lie in Scotland, specifically a ballad called "Thou Bonnie Wood o' Craigielea", and the subsequent provenance was indisputably Australian long before it was fraudulently monopolised by some American opportunist, but apparently that is the sole qualifying criteria for "creative works" in the Land of the Free to Steal.

  17. DCFusor
    Holmes

    Knockoffs have always been an issue

    But now it's starting to hurt more, as the pie is shrinking and people are fighting more over slices (see: phone patent wars) than trying to increase the size of the pie - since we are finally realizing we live in a finite world.

    One wonders about posters who don't understand causality or context here. Unless you are positing time travel, the travails of things like govt assisted health insurance trace to the past, already existed and it's kinda tough to blame a guy who isn't even in office yet - for a rational critical thinker, anyway. Doesn't matter he might take the rest away or be a jerk (likely) vs the other one who was criminal. Not in power.

    Context - some jobs are for businesses that have to make money to keep going. Some are not. The specious argument about pay for public functions - jobs for government with the power to tax up to some pretty high limits have nothing to do with private industry. Again, not that the big boys haven't bought every law in sight to keep small entrepreneurs from disrupting them (I was once one of the little guys, but did OK despite, not because of, this).

    The truth is, even municipalities with the power to tax their constituents to death (or to the point where their state is being depopulated like Illinois) - are going bankrupt paying the extreme pensions to government workers that themselves exceed all but very high level (C suite) pay in private enterprise.

    Are you trying to tell me a cop retiring younger than someone in private enterprise at >>$150k/year plus defined bennie healthcare isn't getting "a living wage"? Really?

    Just because you want something, and even feel entitled to it - heck, I want FTL travel and a teraflop per watt, for examples - doesn't mean they are possible, exist, or are affordable. All the value has to come from somewhere, not just a printing press. Just as my right to swing my arm ends at your nose, I don't believe people have rights to command others to work for free. Health care, which I've been the recent recipient of a lot of, is difficult and expensive to do right - and I've paid out of pocket for all of, due to having savings because I had the discipline to live below my means for decades.

    Now, get off my lawn, you spoiled brats... You want something? We all do. Get out and make it, then you can have it.

  18. IGnatius T Foobar

    Alibaba, Amazon, no difference

    There is no difference between Alibaba and Amazon. Both are run by ultra left wing lunatics who hate Western civilization.

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