I squee

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

...upon these delightful Chinese knockoff toys.

http://www.geekologie.com/2010/04/not_so_super_chinese_superhero.php

[Doktor Howl]

Vader the motorcycle cop! 

[Epimetheus]

Robert Cop is my favorite. Batman on a horse is good too 

[Doktor Howl]

Robert Cop is my favorite. Batman on a horse is good too 

It's like they lumped all their factory seconds together.

[Elder Iptuous]

why do they change the names?  are they selling them in some market that would allow the form/likeness to be used as long as the name was slightly different?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They have this thing now called "International Copyright Law".

[Doktor Howl]

They have this thing now called "International Copyright Law".

Which the Chinese have very little problem circumventing or simply ignoring, much as we ignored the illegal "product dumping" the Japanese did in the 1970s, and which effectively destroyed the American manufacturers of televisions and other appliances.

[Elder Iptuous]

They have this thing now called "International Copyright Law".

doesn't it protect the image that they are duplicating as well as the names that they are changing?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They have this thing now called "International Copyright Law".

doesn't it protect the image that they are duplicating as well as the names that they are changing?

To Dok: It's still illegal in China, because China recognizes international copyright law. They simply don't have the structure in place to reinforce it.

To Iptuous: It's interesting that you would bring that up, because as a 3d artist this is a very common issue, and you might not be at all surprised that China is the main perpetrator of design copy in the field of glass.

No.

3d art is protected under patent, not copyright. Which is, frankly, a fucked situation and I would like to see it remedied, even though with my focus as a controlled-organic/chemical artist almost none of my designs are copyable without direct instruction. I have had many friends whose designs are getting knocked off badly in China, and while that doesn't impact their sales, it does affect glass sales overall because people buy the cheapest first and don't always realize that the difference in quality will be so huge.

[Doktor Howl]

They have this thing now called "International Copyright Law".

doesn't it protect the image that they are duplicating as well as the names that they are changing?

To Dok: It's still illegal in China, because China recognizes international copyright law. They simply don't have the structure in place to reinforce it.

I'd hazard that the Chinese government has no interest at all in enforcement, until (such as in the melamine issue a couple of years back) the situation becomes intolerable, whereupon they'll execute a couple of schmoes, and pretend it's all fixed.

Dok,
Has a "no China" policy at the plant.

[Elder Iptuous]

the knockoffs are obviously a huge thing in electronics design that i am familiar with as well...

there was a story a few years back where some guys in China knocked off an entire company.  not just the product. they did the whole freaking company.  the organization, processes, procedures, products, facilities.... everything.
crazy.

also, you may have heard of 'capacitor plague'?  some corporate espionage in, like 1998 or something, by some tiawanese company yielded the secret formula for some japanese manufacturer's electrolyte solution (a black magic thing, apparently)  Unfortunately, it was an incomplete formula.  the capacitors have hydrogen gas buildup that causes them to bulge, and pop, and fail by spraying electrolyte all over your freaking motherboard/video card/etc.  This was discovered only after shit tons of these products were on the market, and there were still capacitors being used that had this problem just a couple years ago.  i guess they got dumped into giant bins with the good ones, and just had to work their way through the system like food poisoning.  it was a huge thing...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I actually don't think that the individuals working for the Chinese government is as uncaring as that. I really just think that it's a great example of how incapable a giant bureaucracy is of policing/regulating a massive nation.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have heard directly from Chinese citizens that the local governments are, predictably, hopelessly corrupt simply because people who want to be in power are what they are, and the whole nation is simply too huge for good oversight to be feasible. There are also factories trying really hard to produce good product and provide safe working conditions... and they receive no government support for it. Sometimes these factories, which are the Chinese equivalent of Intel, support an entire "village"... and a Chinese "village" is usually a metropolis larger than ANY US city.

In the US we know so little about China, and assume so much, it's retarded. Especially because we ARE headed to where they are, and by the time we get there, they will hopefully have divided into more manageable regions.

[Doktor Howl]

I actually don't think that the individuals working for the Chinese government is as uncaring as that. I really just think that it's a great example of how incapable a giant bureaucracy is of policing/regulating a massive nation.

I don't know.  All I know is that the quality of Chinese products is absolute shit.  Their steel ablates when you weld it, their teflon is adulterated to the point where valves fail within hours, etc.

Also, a monster run of counterfeit, under-tempered "Timken" bearings came out of China, and fucked up equipment all over the country.

It's either deliberate, or incompetence on such a scale as to not matter.

[Doktor Howl]

In the US we know so little about China, and assume so much, it's retarded. Especially because we ARE headed to where they are, and by the time we get there, they will hopefully have divided into more manageable regions.

Don't know.  Their principle problem is population.  We don't have that particular nightmare.