Chinese Police inspect a warehouse full of counterfeit goods. Photo courtesy of Gizmodo.com
We all know that you can get some pretty good fake watches if you have the right connections. Oh, and most women know someone who owns a really good knock-off purse that was bought for pennies on the dollar. These things aren't right, but over the years, we've grown used to them. I'm not sayin' they're right,, I'm just sayin".
Now, however stories are making it into the mainstream of counterfeit goods in the high end audio market. I'm not talking about discounted MP3's, although that's also a problem, but the actual hardware that we use to listen to our music.
I just finished reading an article on wired.com, that goes into pretty good detail about this whole market on high end audio gear being undermined by pirated goods.
Of course, it's not just electronics or entertainment kinds of things that are being pirated. Almost any name brand type of good can be counterfeited. And because of the proliferation of ecommerce sights, you can buy these goods easily and frequently without even knowing you're not buying the real thing.
The real eye opener for me in the article was this: "According to a recent study put out by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, counterfeit goods could account for as much as 10 percent of China’s gross domestic product — third economy, holla! Worldwide, it’s regarded as $600 billion dollar industry, fully half of it in the United States."
The article definitely deserves your attention. Check it out here.
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