MetaFilter posts tagged with counterfeit

Santa's Shopping (Epi)Center

DarlingBri — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:10:36 -0800

34 industries, 62,000 stalls, 320,000 commodities for sale, 4 million square meters of selling space: welcome to the world-famous Yiwu Wholesale Market in the Zhejiang Province of China, "where Santa Claus comes to shop." As the factory outlet for the planet’s manufacturing epicentre, it's the perfect place to stock up on Christmas stockings since the city also known as "Sock Town" produces over three billion pairs of socks for Wal-Mart, Pringles and Disney each year. (Licensed exporting to 212 countries probably helps with Santa's distribution logistics.) All is not entirely kosher in Sock Town, however, with reports that "100,000 counterfeit products are openly traded and 2,000 metric tons of fakes change hands daily."

The Present and Future of Mobile Phones

filthy light thief — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:35:50 -0800

Jan Chipchase is employeed by Nokia in the "corporate anthropology" field, but he considers it "design research," as he's not an anthropologist by training. His work covers researching how people modify their phones in China, India, Ghana, and elsewhere, adding features or extending battery life. He also tracks how cellphones are associated with personal identity and how they are playing roles far from urban and suburban centers. In some locations, cell phone numbers are written above doorways for identification, when there is no official map or organization for streets. He also blogs about his experiences, and his most recent post, he covers the rise of "Super Fakes." The term "super fake" is often applied to designer goods and can refer to counterfeit money. But in terms of fashion products, imitation goods are more than an attempt to dupe the unknowing end-user to maximize profit. Chipchase's question, "What happens when a large % of your target market wants your brand cachet but is happy with a decent-enough quality fake?" is about branded technology, but the question can also be applied to knock-off purses. Knock-off electronics have their own following, with some websites devoted to such items. Such sites can do more than detail the successes and feature sets of imitation products, they may also add background details to news stories (the original story didn't detail that MediaTek is only now shifting to legit production, starting in production of knock-offs). Shanzhai, previously.

101 Stories on Counterfeit Goods

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:33:48 -0800

CounterfeitChic.com's latest roundup of world news stories on knockoffs. Via.

Funny Money

specialk420 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:51:32 -0800

Super funny money turning up on the world stage
Along with pranks going on in the gulf this week, some funny stuff going on with US Currency as well - Perhaps part of the explanation of the seemingly endless run on gold?

American Knockoffs

Kirth Gerson — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 07:45:57 -0800

A nation of outlaws. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

ThePinkSuperhero — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:47:20 -0800

Busted! In one of the biggest counterfeit busts in years, a 19-month investigation reached its climax on Tuesday as federal officials conducted early-morning raids throughout the NY metropolitan area, arresting 29 people, seizing more than $230 million in merchandise and ultimately dismantling three operations believed to have imported more than $700 million in fake products over the last 24 months.

How 'bout some antifreeze in your kid's cough syrup?

dejah420 — Mon, 07 May 2007 12:09:59 -0800

Fake Chinese Gylcerin kills hundreds, possibly thousands. So, if you thought melamine in pet food and food chain animal feed was bad, how do you feel about antifreeze in your medicine? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning to drug manufacturers, suppliers and health professionals that counterfeit drug additives have been using diethyline glycol, or DEG (commonly used as antifreeze) as a substitute for glycerin in cough medicine, fever medication and injectable drugs. Hundreds, possibly thousands have been killed.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:59:52 -0800

“I always say that if North Korea only produced conventional goods for export to the degree of quality and precision that they produce counterfeit United States currency, they would be a powerhouse like South Korea, not an industrial basket case.”

Stop the presses!

crunchland — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:07:03 -0800

Newspaper Snippet Generator

Fake money 2000 years ago

riffola — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:14:47 -0800

Great fakers scammed ancient Italy. An ingenious counterfeit-coin scam has been rumbled by scientists in Italy. But no one is going to jail, because the forgers lived more than 2,000 years ago.

counterfeit cars?

tomplus2 — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:30:53 -0800

At the CCC, we're dedicated to putting an end to the victimization associated with purchasing a counterfeit MINI Cooper.

Check out the new $200 bill.

sierray — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 07:55:57 -0800

Check out the new $200 bill.

Fake Bronze, Fake Dong

tpoh.org — Sun, 29 Jun 2003 22:02:49 -0800

Man Sells Fake Bronze, Gets Paid With Fake Cash. From the You-Can't-Trust-Anyone-Anymore Dept.: "A Vietnamese man who used cow fat and paint to pass off a lump of iron as valuable black bronze found buyers, but was paid in counterfeit bills."

Mack Twain — Sat, 17 Nov 2001 00:01:42 -0800

$100 million in fake software seized .The copies of Windows Millenium and Windows 2000 Professional were indistinguishable from the real thing except for their failure to crash every 15 minutes(I made that up).Ever burn a copy for friends? Is that wrong?

milnak — Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:53:45 -0800

Can you make change for a $200 bill? Looks like one store was able to.

Steven Den Beste — Wed, 02 Aug 2000 15:16:20 -0800

No more Mister Nice Guy. They've built a web crawler looking for piracy sites. It should be interesting. I wonder how many computers and how much bandwidth they're assigning to the job?