Taiwan Group Responsible For 90% of MSFT Piracy 229
Stony Stevenson writes "Microsoft claims that a small group led by a recently jailed Taiwanese man was the source of almost all high-quality pirated copies of its software up until his arrest in 2004. The claim suggests that Microsoft practically wiped out commercial piracy of its products with the arrest of Huang Jer-sheng, the owner of Taiwan-based software distributor Maximus Technology. Microsoft announced today that Huang and his associates. who were all recently sentenced to jail time, had been responsible for the 'production and distribution of more than 90 percent of the high-quality counterfeit Microsoft software products either seized by law enforcement or test-purchased around the world.'"
High quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:High quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you people have against recovery disks? The way I see it:
Pros:
Cons:
By the time you remove the bloat-ware, you're still better off. The vast majority of customers will have a better experience using recovery disks. If it really bothers you, then you already know how to do it yourse
Re:High quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Surprise!
THAT is what makes "recovery disks" crap, even more than the bloatware and crapware.
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Re:High quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:High quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:High quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can rescue, troubleshoot, surf with, and easily install from a variety of live Linux CDs.
The tools are there to build something similar:
http://www.911cd.net/forums/ [911cd.net]
using Windows PE exist, but MSFT doesn't bother. Too bad, really. It would make user lives easier.
Re:High quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously, he modified the software extensively before selling it. The fact that it was high-quality is, of course, what tipped people off that it wasn't an authentic Microsoft product.
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By what standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's high quality; it just doesn't meet your needs.
Vista is the first Windows infestation to officially, publicly acknowledge what serious MSFT-watchers have known for some time: the population of usees and customers are two entirely separate, non-overlapping groups.
The usees, of course, are the poor sheeple who bought a PC and naively expect Windows to "work" because it's the "market" "leader".
The customers are abviously the MPAA, RIAA and other "content" industry groups (collectively known as the MAFIAA (Media Authoritarian Fanatic Ass-farking of America) to friend and foe alike). Of course, "everyone" knows that all major media content these days is made using Macs or *nix boxen.
Their customers are happy as the proverbial clams with Vista. Especially since they never have to actually touch it!
Relative to windows (Score:2)
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Of course there is. It's called "paint".
High quality? (Score:5, Funny)
So they were responsible for 9 out the 10 pirate copies of Microsoft Flight simulator then?
Re:High quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot needs a +1 "obligatory" modifier, so these sorts of jokes can be tagged as "obligatory" instead of "funny."
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Toro
high quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Why doesn't MSFT sell these "high-quality" products instead of the crap they've been selling us for years.
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Ah yes, Hobson's Choice...
If the theater only has one movie, it's true that you have a choice of watching it or not, but it's not true that you have a choice of movies to watch.
I think the OP was complaining about the lack of choices for software to buy, not about the ability to choose to refrain from buying computers. Assuming you've decided to give up on the old abacus and join the 21st century, if you walk into most stores, yes, you are forced to buy Microsoft products. You only "choice" here is Hobs
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While it may seem grim with the lack of software choices at stores, are you aware there's plenty of quality operating systems available for free (legally)? Operating systems such as Ubuntu, OpenBSD, Solaris, just to name a few.
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quantifying the unquantifable! (Score:5, Insightful)
90% sounds like a nice marketing department developed figure.
Re:quantifying the unquantifable! (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys, on the other hand, seem to have been selling 'legitimate' copies of Microsoft products for real cheap -- That really does cut into Microsoft's market, which is people who are willing to pay for their products in return for either a clean conscience or to keep the MS police at bay.
Microsoft has no problems killing those pirates.
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And furthermore, if more people used OpenOffice, Microsoft Office would be less popular.
Any opinions on whether the pope is Catholic, or if bears shit in the woods?
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"Is the Pope a Nazi"?
Re:quantifying the unquantifable! (Score:5, Insightful)
While I loathe and detest MS and their general operating methods, (particularly the whole BSA garbage), they are entirely justified in prosecuting this crew for fraud/forgery etc... though they may get bit by the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome as they, among others, have been claiming that every kid with a torrent client is a threat to the stability of the economic system itself. </rant>
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Re:quantifying the unquantifable! (Score:5, Informative)
So they're only talking about the stuff they've confiscated and not claiming it's 90% of everything that exists.
Re:quantifying the unquantifable! (Score:5, Insightful)
So they're only talking about the stuff they've confiscated and not claiming it's 90% of everything that exists.
It is very hard to know how much casual piracy there is. However, it is far easier to know how much high-quality piracy exists, because we are talking about actual physical products here, tangible evidence. They are also manufactured somewhere. Then, assuming that law enforcement captures such high-quality piracy in a random sampling manner (that is, all such forged products have the same chance to be caught - a working hypothesis, debatable of course), then this Taiwanese group was the source of 90% of that. So, presumably (by statistical inference) this group is responsible for 90% of high-quality piracy.
It's a little surprising that a single group is so dominant in this area, actually, I wouldn't have expected it. However, the more interesting question is what will happen now: if suddenly 90% of these forgeries vanish off the market, what will the people buying them do? Will other suppliers fill the gap, or will the buyers turn to casual piracy, or to alternate OSes?
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However, the more interesting question is what will happen now: if suddenly 90% of these forgeries vanish off the market, what will the people buying them do? Will other suppliers fill the gap, or will the buyers turn to casual piracy, or to alternate OSes?
It's not that interesting a question, methinks.
As these pirated copies were sold off as genuine, I'd guess that most of the users actually believed they were buying legitimate copies.
Therefore, most of those people will be off buying legitimate copies, directly increasing Microsoft's revenue (as opposed to casual pirates, who indirectly increase Microsoft's revenue by giving them free mindshare).
People will turn to alternate OSes when two conditions are met:
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However, the more interesting question is what will happen now: if suddenly 90% of these forgeries vanish off the market, what will the people buying them do? Will other suppliers fill the gap, or will the buyers turn to casual piracy, or to alternate OSes?
It's not that interesting a question, methinks.
As these pirated copies were sold off as genuine, I'd guess that most of the users actually believed they were buying legitimate copies. Therefore, most of those people will be off buying legitimate copies
I'm not sure. If Windows cost them $10 before and now costs the full $150 or so, they won't just run to buy legitimate copies. I'm not saying they'll go off and run Linux - they might look until they find another pirated version, or get someone to help them download and burn one. Perhaps only a small minority might be motivated to seek alternate OSes, that is why I left this at the end of the list of options. But I seriously doubt the majority will just happily start paying full price.
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If Windows cost them $10 before and now costs the full $150 or so, they won't just run to buy legitimate copies.
All Microsoft Windows installations in internet cafes in the Philippines are pirated. The economics don't permit them to buy a full license (it's about 6,000 pesos for a single and presumably legitimate Microsoft Windows XP license at Octagon[1]) and still make a profit, the economics also doesn't permit them to go to alternative O/Ses because they need the games to turn any kind of profit[2] at all.
I'm not saying they'll go off and run Linux - they might look until they find another pirated version, or get someone to help them download and burn one.
The latter, I believe. Oh well.
[1] Octagon is happy to sell notebooks preinstalled with Linux and no O/S,
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I'm not sure. If Windows cost them $10 before and now costs the full $150 or so, they won't just run to buy legitimate copies. I'm not saying they'll go off and run Linux - they might look until they find another pirated version, or get someone to help them download and burn one. Perhaps only a small minority might be motivated to seek alternate OSes, that is why I left this at the end of the list of options. But I seriously doubt the majority will just happily start paying full price.
Then again, not everywhere in the world does Windows cost the same. IIRC, in Taiwan the price is nearer to $10 anyway...
However, if the price of the pirated product was lower, then yes, your original question stands. But somehow I think that majority of those users will still buy legitimate copies -- if they had intended to pirate software, they would've helped themselves to a free copy.
I'd wager many of them just thought they were getting a bargain.
I do, however, hope that this will drive at least som
Nature Abhors A Vacuum (Score:4, Interesting)
Also been in Mexico City where street vendors sell about any software title on the planet - some slick copies, some shoddy.
And I doubt the 90% figure. Looks and smells like some marketing drone pulled it out of his @ss.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Well Taiwan accounts e.g. for over 80% of the world's laptop production (at least that's what they claim here [taiwanembassy.org] - table in German only, but should be easy to read). So it would make sense that a lot of the industrial copying of software would be there, too.
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That's pretty much it. They're talking about 'high-quality piracy', not casual piracy as in downloading from the Pirate Bay or burning your friend a copy. High quality piracy in this context means that CDs are pressed, covers forged, everything in order for the product to look like it is authentic. It is then sold as if it were in fact authentic (as opposed to casual piracy, where no money trades hands).
In fact it's more like trademark fraud (or fraud in general) than piracy.
If there is such a thi
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Probably because it's not a very big area. There isn't a large commercial market for forged copies of Windows because TPB has the need covered.
Re: as opposed to casual piracy, where no money tr (Score:5, Interesting)
In the cases you give I am deprived of the product which is "pirated". Copying does not deprive the source of the product. You are making a very very strange comparison between copying and theft.
Let me put it this way ... if someone can take my paycheck, and leave me with exactly every cent in that paycheck, then they are welcome to it and I invite everyone to do the same.
not that I've ever encountered pirated software mind you
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If someone can copy all of my paycheck with the result that my paycheck remains unchanged in any way - then I am very very happy for everyone to do so.
Is software less valuable when more people use it or more so? Does counterfieting software, and increasing the market share of the software, make it less vauable? Or, are you (in a very cunning way) just trying to prove that copying software is an extremly different thing to property theft.
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Your argument is only valid in for software that was never intended for profit. Yes, copying retail software does do real harm and IS real theft by any rational standard of law. If you prefer to think there are no laws and software is exempt from property protections, than
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No, copying retail software is not theft by any standard law. That is why you need lawyers to work cases because people like you can not understand the difference between two unlawful (but completely different) activities. In fact, the illegal actions that can be done with retail software are several. One is unauthorized use, another is unauthorized distribution and another may be unathorized copying. All those are
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Re: as opposed to casual piracy, where no money tr (Score:5, Insightful)
Copying software doesn't deprive somebody of the version you copied, it deprives the creator/owner of their ability to legitimately sell copies of their work. That's what you are stealing when you copy.
Your same silly argument could be applied to counterfeiting currency: copying real money doesn't deprive anyone of their legitimate currency. The problem is, it devalues money by depriving the government of its ability to regulate the supply and value of money. That's why the Secret Service exists.
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As I say in another reply - counterfieting does indeed devalue money. But (perhaps perversly) counterfieting software actually enhances the value of the software.
Yes it's wrong. Any business caught using pirated software deserves to get slammed. But don't underestimate amount of value added to software when it is heavily pirated. It increases the market share of the software - and when the pirating people need to use it legitim
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From dictionary.com: steal - 1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
Intellectual property is still property, and taking a copy of someone's work without due compensation is stealing. Rationalize away!
Do copyright laws need to be looked a
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Your example is wrong (Score:2)
When someone copies software without authorization from the copyright holders, he is not making all other users of software poorer or cheating anyone. In fact he is increasing the wealth of society because some people who cannot afford that piece of software, now can.
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I used to pirate software (games) all the time when I was a student and for a few years afterwards. Why? Because I didn't have the money to buy them. Did that hurt the rights holders? No, since I couldn't have bought them anyway.
These days I don't pirate games - I can afford to buy them, can't be bothered to worry about malware, and Steam and sim
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Copying money differs from copying software/music/movies in that you can (theoretically)
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However, this argument runs into problems because if we follow their model -- one copy per device -- we're not following reality either. Before MP3s I would have a c
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And as I understand it, devaluing the currency is what the rest of the US government exists to do.
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However, the article and comment are both talking about professional piracy - burning discs and printing manuals and shrinkwrapping in boxes that purport to be the real things. When someone honest goes and buys one of those, $60 that was heading to MS is snatched away. The fact the money
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You will do that only once. After everyone has taken a copy of your paycheck and you go to cash it somewhere else and they cash it with beans, I am sure the next check you get you wont be so happy to share it with others.
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By looking at the pirated stuff that you found, and then applying statistical sample you can get the percentage of the source. Though it comes with a catch. The catch is that the number you found is +- a specific number. That number could be +- 2 percent or +- 20 percent.
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90% sounds like a nice marketing department developed figure.
The jail times. (Score:2, Informative)
"Huang was recently sentenced to four years in jail by a Taiwanese court. Three co-defendants received between 18 months and three years in jail. Six individuals were originally arrested in the case."
I wonder how rich they are off it.
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Of course, due to the huge drop in piracy that this represents (-90%!), I can only wonder about what a +90% upsurge in global warming is going to do to this planet. Yikes.
Nightline:Thieves are amoung us. (Score:4, Interesting)
So now... (Score:3, Funny)
OMG (Score:3, Funny)
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New pricing scheme? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good show, but hardly enough (Score:4, Insightful)
It's darned good that they caught the bastards, but wake me up when we stop 90% of the actual piracy in Asia.
This strikes me as a fluff piece for nervous investors.
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Toro
Re:Good show, but hardly enough (Score:5, Informative)
It's darned good that they caught the bastards, but wake me up when we stop 90% of the actual piracy in Asia.
This strikes me as a fluff piece for nervous investors.
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Just as a matter of interest, do they pirate things like Linux distros? I can see that people might sell convincing fakes of Redhat boxed distros, but I don't know if they'd sell. Perhaps if someone was getting what they thought was a support contract that turned out to be bogus?
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Just as a matter of interest, do they pirate things like Linux distros? I can see that people might sell convincing fakes of Redhat boxed distros, but I don't know if they'd sell. Perhaps if someone was getting what they thought was a support contract that turned out to be bogus?
Oh yeah, the little quick-stop right outside my office in Shenzhen, China, sold pirated boxed copies of Redhat for about $1 each. I always wondered what the point was....
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This is absolutely the kind of thing Microsoft should vigorously pursue and prosecute. I'm not apologizing for the criminal who was counterfeiting. I'm just in doubt of how much of a dent it makes, whether the 90% figure is exaggeration (it certainly sounds it), and whether this is a major bust, or a small one dressed up as a PR stunt.
I can remember the street value estimates applied to cocaine busts of an earlier age. Exaggerati
Re:Good show, but hardly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no demand.
See, it goes like that:
* Counterfeiter fakes software.
* Counterfeiter and in between person pose as distributor, selling the windows copies with a SMALL discount.
* Computer shops, always looking for a small gain (as margins are super slim) take that. Mind you, way talk about omaybe 5% less price, but if your margin is only 5% on the product, that doubles your margin.
The shop may not know the software is fake (it was a little chaper, but it could just have been a sale), and the end user definitly does not DEMAND fake software. The whole reason it is so high quality is that the purchase chain (shop, end user) do NOT REALIZE it is fake.
Criminal like hell. Nothing compared to copy some software where both parties know it.
Re:Good show, but hardly enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Criminal like hell. Nothing compared to copy some software where both parties know it.
>>
This appears to be the Slashdot consensus morality:
Make a perfectly functional copy, upload it to Pirate Bay, charge for advertising: No problem.
Make a perfectly functional copy, sell it on a CD-R, charge $1 for it: Very little problem.
Make a perfectly functional copy, sell it on a CD which looks real, charge $100 for it: Criminal like hell.
It would appear, on the basis of available evidence, that the Slashdot consensus doesn't give two bits about IP rights as applied to software, but thinks they are really, really important when applied to the distinctive branding on cardboard boxes. I suppose Microsoft should have invested more in Pretty Box Rights Management? It would probably make them more popular around here.
Re:Good show, but hardly enough (Score:4, Insightful)
See, if I ask you to copy me software, and you do, we do something illegal, and we can discuss the moral. But we both KNOW it. It is a fact, I dont pay, we know what we get into.
In this fact, there is the additional dimension that not only is software illegally copied, but it is done so to swindle an unsuspecting third party for money. It means that while the copy person knows it is fake, the person paying does not know so, and in fact THINKS he purchases it legally. Besides the obvious moral issue it opens that third party to legal claims, because he is comitting a crime by using this illegal copy, albeit not knowing it.
One case where "I did not know" is a very sad defense.
And this "betraying another unsuspecting party" does add tremendously. If I steal software, this is between me and the company putting it on the market, and the person allowing me to copy. If I make counterfeit software, I involve a third party that does not want to be in this game.
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A) unless the violator is taking a notable profit, OR
B) but we do care about Trademark infringement.
I'd like to think its the latter. That's the way I personally lean. I feel that a company goes through a lot to keep its good name and when it stamps a product as its own, I can expect that the product has a particular set of qualities to it. When someone infringes on that trademark, not only are they profiting at the expense of the trademark owner, but
Geek Divas (Score:2)
90% + 90% + 90%... Do they actually sell anything? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I wonder:
A - Is it 90% of the 10% left from the previous "pirate" operation?
So, after three or four captures, it becomes clear they are actually selling legally less than 1/100 of a single copy.
B - Are the "pirates" stealing copies from other "pirates" and repitating them?
So, 10% of the copies would be legally sold and 90% would reach the final clients after being "pirated" about twenty times.
good/bad pirate (Score:2)
And yes, I know the Pirate Bay may well be making bank. But I still bought one of their t-shirts. We're in a war, you know!
Re:good/bad pirate (Score:4, Insightful)
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it's not that black and white. if someone copies a song that doesn't mean he has decided that the artist is not allowed to make money with their work. I copy quite a few CDs (and that's legal here in the netherlands, whether you borrowed the CD/DVD, rented it from a library or downloaded it), and dont want to pay for CDs. I will gladly pay to see a concert however, and regularly buy one of the band's t-shirts (us
The "low quality" software (Score:5, Funny)
hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Maximus! Maximus! Maximus! (Score:2)
Will Huang Jer-sheng and Emprorer Bill duke it out like gladiators?
Will Gates fix the fight by embracing our pirate/gladiator hero and then extending a poison dagger into him?
This sounds like a reality TV show in the making.
Strategic FUD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this couldn't ever really happen, but it does make you think...
Keys (Score:5, Insightful)
An exact copy of the pretty box and manuals and holograms and stuff is fine, but if it's an exact copy of the CD contents itself, it won't activate properly. Do they use hacked versions of the binaries? You'd think that would stand out (failed updates and such). Anyone know?
Re:high-quality (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no, it is not.
I surmise pirates really do offer better quality, as they conveniently remove the WGA and similar "protection measures", thus ensuring the user's copy of Windows will never ever get blocked by Microsoft. For instance.
Though I suspect that "high-quality copy" means "CD and packaging virtually indistinguishable from the original retail copy", not "a better product". Nevertheless, sometimes pirate copies are of quite higher quality than the original.
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One of my professors bought a copy of MATLAB to use for solving some filtering equations. (He taught the DSP courses) He installed the program on his laptop, but whenever he wasn't using his internet access, he couldn't use MATLAB correctly. I'm not sure why.
He finally just installed a pirated version and it worked flawlessly.
Technically, he wasn't pirating the software either, since he paid for a full licence. They weren't cheap, either. It runs about $25k for a full v
Re:Why copy protection? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is 90% of professional piracy, therefore:
1) There are other vendors (see the other 10%), who really probably can expand to fill the spaces - ESPECIALLY since if these guys were apprehended so long ago there is a fine vista market ready for targetting. If you've already managed to circumvent the protection then you're only going to be limited by distribution and manufacture, which is hardly that big a hurdle
2) 90% of HIGH QUALITY piracy, NOT 90% of torrent downloaders and casual pirates. WGA, supposedly, protects against this, which is also a huge problem
Just getting pissy with copy protection is hardly worthy of mod points.
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No, they were not. We talk of high quality - the vendor bought from a distributor, who got it somewhere cheaper than from MS.
SOMEONE up the chain made a hugh profit.
This is the whole crux here - we dont talk about software someone who wants a pirated copy buys. We talk of softwarte that I could buy and sell a customer. Either cheaper (a LITTLE), or for the full price, and not me nor the customer would have t
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Yet, those "high quality" copies are sold in place of genuine Microsoft products, with prices close to the original price. Those copies are fighting against the "gray market" originals (original copies brought from another country).
While "gray market" usually refer to hardware equipment
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Low quality is...everything else.