It definitely matters. Watch some of the teardowns of power adapters on YouTube: they look and work almost identically and you’d likely never tell the difference, but one is much more likely to set your house on fire if it malfunctions.

Yeah, I got some adapters from aliexpress seller that were basically re-passed burned down things with some major components obviously replaced (like the main high voltage capacitor) and everything essential from protection circuitry, to noise filtration stripped down and removed, fuse replaced by a wire, some components literally hanging by a thread (broken off part of PCB replaced just by non-isolated wires hanging in space).

Stuff my nightmares are made of now. Anyway, I always open all power adapters/supplies I buy from there, because my original education is EE, so I never used these. But the idea that some people are using such things is quite scary.

Not to poo poo on aliexpress itself. There are some exceptional quality sellers and products to be found there. You just have to know how to find them.

Mpow, mentioned as a culprit in the article, actually makes good chi-fi earbuds. They’re highly rated in terms of bang for your buck, and I’ve had good experience with them. But, if you’re not actively reading random chi-fi discord servers for recommendations, you’ll probably never see companies like that without them resorting to crazy amazon tactics.

Uch. That's pretty much why I never trust any other adapter than the one which came with my phone. It can burn your house down while really damaging your device.

Methinks if your house burned down, damage to some device is irrelevant.

If you care about getting the real deal instead of the cheap knock-off version, doesn't Amazon have marked official pages for those vendors?

Amazon Fulfillment can cause even that to go wrong.

https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...

Admittedly one could argue that this is the reason we have insurance. I don't know that my Apple X won't light my house on fire, as opposed to my knock off Snapple X.

That's what the UL or CE mark is for

Unfortunately I can't comment below this point, in the thread I started.

You're making the point I'm making. While I don't (to the best of my knowledge) purchase counterfeit items, I don't pretend that certification is anything other than certification. Hopefully certification comes with standards, and aren't self-reporting... but that's not always the case.

Too bad so many of those marks are fake on Amazon.

Are you aware that at least CE is 'self certification' ?

Only when a case goes to court, it will be determined if the certification was rightful or not.

JFYI, there is CE and C E.

https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H...

That's just a joke that arises from self-certifying 'CE', like 'QC passed' it's just a label that doesn't mean anything but makes some consumers feel good, just because you get used to seeing it and it looks like it must be good even if (or only if) you dont actually know what it means.

jaclaz, that's interesting, but Wikipedia alleges it to be somewhat of an urban legend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#%22China_Export%22

Disagree, because I've got a hand full of these from different brands in operation right now. One even from the major CPE-equipment manufacturer in Germany. I know because they looked 'fishy' to me when they arrived, and I researched into that.

I opend some of them non-destructively to check them out, and deemed them sufficient. They barely get warm at all.

Nonetheless I put them in some closed rack where they only could produce some stink, but no fire.

I'm too lazy to unplug them right now to upload photos to Imgur, or such, because it would disrupt some services.

Anyways, no urban legend. Just the usual bureaucratic disconnect from reality, saying otherwise.

Meanwhile another bureaucratic entity, the german customs really likes to hassle you because of exactly that sh..! :-)

edit: Some of them in continous operation for just over a decade, some others about 5 to 6 years, YMMV. (shrug)

First off it errodes the reputation of the real product. Fakes are never as good, and the real company will have to deal with people trying to return fakes as well as bad reviews.

I'd also say it absolutely matters depending on the class of product -since they are saving money somewhere; so by logic if the outside looks the same, they skimped on the insides.

Electronics can kill you, makeup can contain toxic chemicals, toys with lead, or parts that break too easy and hurt the user...

Not the least, fake books are just theft from the author, who probably isn't getting the best deal from their publisher in the first place. So only a shitty person would be cool knowing their book was just a really good fake.

Did it ever occur to you that some products are just generic, and the only thing the off-brands/off-labels skimped on is the marketing/advertisement, and maybe development costs? While meanwhile the brands themselves doing the same, because the marketing costs have to come from somewhere? Not to mention planned obsolescence...

Copyright infringement is not theft.

If you write a book, offer it for sale, I copy the book, offer it for sale, and someone buys the book from me who would otherwise have bought from you, that seems to me that I’ve stolen income from you in 3 steps instead of one.

If you design and sell a product without patenting it, and I copy the design and sell a competing product, have I stolen from you?

The only difference between the two scenarios is that one involves copyright infringement. Theft means a possession was taken. Potential income is not a possession. There are various ways to describe the harm ("damages" comes to mind) but "theft" isn't among them.

Well if you did patent it, it's stolen. The equivalent for books is copyright laws, so if the work is protected copyright then yes, you've stolen.

And theft is defined as stealing, which has "to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully" which applies fully here so...

You can nit pick definitions all day, but you'll find most people would consider this theft, as you're depriving the artist of the rights to their creation. I really feel people who want to argue the other way are a stain on this earth, because you're so happy to defend it...it's just mental gymnastics to a pathetic argument

Patents in their current incarnation are theft.

Lemme give an example of how I see this:

I have some idea to do something in a certain way, and because of that I declare it forbidden to everyone else to do it the same way, except they pay me something to be allowed to do it that way.

Wouldn't you think of something like F! How dare he/she/it/whatever?

I don't mean to nit pick, but it's seems like the only way to iron this out. "Theft is defined as stealing" isn't right. Rather: theft is defined as stealing property (or services). Property means real possessions in this context, not intangibles like IP.

A person can steal an idea (or market share) and it wouldn't make them a thief.

The fact that a victim of copyright infringement may end up disadvantaged to the exact same extent as if they were a victim of theft does not magically equate the two, even if the two involve stealing.

It is almost as if the efforts by the RIAA et al ( framing copying as stealing, would you steal a car? ) have worked.

My comment is in the red.

> Theft means a possession was taken.

Usually, but not always, which is why theft of electricity is a thing.

Unlike ideas and other intangibles that are subject to trivial copying, electricity falls into the realm of the physical world. Also, theft of services is an established type of theft along with theft of property.

What's being stolen in theft of electricity? The electrons or the holes?

Service. This question "is a copy equivalent and trivial to create?" is a pretty good way to understand the line in the sand regarding what stuff is subject to copyright infringement versus theft. We have theft of property and theft of service. We do not have theft of trivially copyable stuff because we have copyright infringement instead for that case.

Paintings, manuscripts, etc. are subject to theft because they are nonfungible. The content itself is subject to copyright because the copies are fungible.

Words can be used as metaphor.

If you are buying for instance safety gear such as belay devices, then hell yeah it matters.