I agree that the objective is to drive down the price of the technology. But that's not what a *scam* imitation will do. Let me explain with an example. My partner recently returned from Shenzhen in China with a USB flash card, badged as a Sony VAIO device, and claiming to store 4GB of data. He picked this device up for about US$30. He put it into his machine, and sure enough the device registered as storing 4GB of data. But once you actually put more than 128MB of data on the device, and tried to access any of the files, it would simply stop functioning and could not even be reformatted again. The object of the scam imitation was not to drive the price of USB thumb drives down, but to *appear* to operate as a 4GB device whilst actually using cheaper parts, rebadged. To be honest I have no problem with knockoff devices if they function with the same or similar integrity of the originals. And I hate buying labels just because they are labels. My concern is with devices that appear to operate in accordance with specifications but actually do not. Economically, the effect of such an eventuality is actually to *drive prices of original devices up*. Because there is a need to delineate the real from the knock-off, the "De Beers effect" arises, and legitimate companies need to invest in expensive watermarking of products to ensure product integrity - and without a doubt the cost of developing such proof of product integrity is passed on to the consumer. It's probably more of an economic argument than a technological one. But it's still a concern that needs to be addressed. ____________________________________________ Joanne Jacobs, Project Manager Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) A Commonwealth Cooperative Research Centre http://www.joannejacobs.net/ -----Original Message----- From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Hunsinger Sent: Thursday, 29 September 2005 9:56 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Fwd: [school-discuss] $100.00 laptop while scam products are a problem, i think that the point is less to encourage scam devices as to establish less expensive derivatives. it is actually fairly cheap to produce an advanced x86 processor these days, under license or not, and if you have compilers the processors might become less important in respect to fucntionality. no? anyway, i think knockoff in this case are actually the point of the project in political economy terms. why else would you be moving the cost differential to that low of a point? you can argue that it is cost, but cost of production is sort of 'moot' for computers like these, markets are what matters, so how do you get past the basic idealizes profit motives of producers...? through knockoff producers aiming toward getting cheaper and cheaper instead of getting more expensive. On Sep 28, 2005, at 7:48 PM, Joanne Jacobs wrote:
I've just discussed this on my blog, and while I'm a fan, I'm concerned about the business logistics of releasing the device among nations that will incubate a grey market for the product and possibly also develop scam imitations of the MIT-developed device.
____________________________________________
Joanne Jacobs, Project Manager Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) A Commonwealth Cooperative Research Centre http://www.joannejacobs.net/
Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers _______________________________________________ The Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/