How An External DVD Drive Becomes A Counterfeit Apple in 5 Minutes
Dong Men (东门= East Gate) in Shenzhen is an incredible place. You can find buildings with small shops that all sell one component of a mobile phone or computer per floor, and on the next floor another component. On Shennan Central Road there is such a building named 华 Hua 强 Qiang (China Strong) 电 Dian 子 Zi (Electronic) 世 Shi 界 Jie (World) where you can buy external DVD drives.
In this photo series the whole procedure of counterfeiting is captured.
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On Shennan Central Road there is a building
where you can find external DVD drives. |
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Up the elevator you can see a red banner with yellow characters:
“Severe prosecution will be engaged against those selling counterfeited products illegally“ |
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| Here is the empty red casing |
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| Then a sticker with the Apple logo came out of a drawer. |
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| Adhesive plastic removed. |
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| Sticker was placed |
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| And ready is the counterfeit Apple DVD drive. |
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| Just outside of the building is an official Apple dealer |
Apple does not make any external DVD drives, to my knowledge. The counterfeit DVD drive, play only, no burning is possible, was on offer for 150 RMB, which is a little bit less than 23 US dollar.
Happy World Intellectual Property Day 2011!
Thank you for your reaction Riccardo. Yes, it's quite an amazing phenomenon. Thanks for pointing out that Apple do make external harddrives. The one I feature takes external very literally I guess. Please keep sharing your IP related adventures.Cheers,Danny
Very interesting Danny. This happened to me with a digital camera case, not the case per se, but the small black case you lodge the camera in: I had my own camera bought in Europe but lost the case so I was willing to buy any case, better if colored for me to find it easily in the house and certainly with no logo. The lady said she only had them with logos. As I was telling her again a friend of hers came over with a plastic bag full of logos to attach to the case I wanted, thinking that maybe Sharp was no good for me: he came up with at least two dozens of Canon, Nikon, Nokia, even Volvo logos in cheap metal, to apply to the case. I rested my "case" and got one for Christmas. By the way, Apple does make external drives. They're called superdrives MB something. Riccardo