[ryanlol]

>It's a fact that when buying watches, you have to watch out for fakes, because people pass fake watches off as the real thing.

Sure, but I don't think that this makes manufacturing, buying, or selling fakes immoral. Most fake watches are sold to people who know that they're buying a fake watch.

>It affects the company being faked.

I don't believe you. Rolex isn't losing any sales because of fakes.

>And it's illegal, so you're helping a criminal enterprise.

This hardly seems like a real argument. There are many places where it's criminal to get high or be gay.

[jdietrich]

>Most fake watches are sold to people who know that they're buying a fake watch.

Counterfeit watches are a serious problem; the American Watch and Clock Institute sell a DVD on identifying fake Rolexes, with the target audience being professionals in the watch industry. Innocent parties can (and frequently do) pay large sums of money for worthless fakes.

https://www.awci.com/online-store/dvd/

It's one thing selling a replica "Bolek GMT-Master" with a standard ETA movement in a white box, but it's quite another thing to sell a very convincing counterfeit complete with Rolex-branded packaging and a counterfeit certificate of authenticity. If the counterfeiters are so honourable and have no intent to deceive, why don't they discreetly engrave the word "REPLICA" on the caseback, case, movement main plate and bracelet?

The moral line in the sand is putting the word "Rolex" on the dial. I have absolutely no issue with someone making a watch that copies the form and function of a Rolex watch, but I take great exception to someone using their name.

Trademark is an absolutely essential part of modern commerce. Trademark infringement is tantamount to identity theft - counterfeiting is a fundamental attack on the reputation of the counterfeiting victim and has a corrosive effect on trust. There are legitimate arguments against patent and copyright law, but I see no legitimate argument against trademark law.

[ryanlol]

>Innocent parties can (and frequently do) pay large sums of money for worthless fakes.

Are you talking about online or offline scams? The fake watch seems pretty useless if you're just scamming people online, you don't need to ship the buyer anything at all. A fake watch would only act as a temporary cover for such a scam possibly allowing the scammer to scam more people, but it's completely unnecessary for the scam itself.

Offline, how does that even happen? I guess maybe if you're a pawn shop operator.

>If the counterfeiters are so honourable and have no intent to deceive, why don't they discreetly engrave the word "REPLICA" on the caseback, case, movement main plate and bracelet?

Why would they need to do this? They aren't scamming anyone, a vanishingly small fraction of their customers are. If a factory started doing this they would just be unnecessarily putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

I don't know you, but I'd guess that you're probably demanding far higher standards from watch counterfeiters than the businesses you actually deal with. Unless you're the most conscious consumer ever you're almost certainly regularly doing business with companies committing far worse offenses than trademark infringement.

[SamReidHughes]

All the watch companies that adopted anti-counterfeiting measures believe otherwise.

Edit: And the fake watch makers copy those anti-counterfeiting measures. That's how we know your story about buyers being aware of what they're buying falls apart.

[ryanlol]

What's an anti-counterfeiting measure? Is the rolex rehaut engraving an anti-counterfeiting measure? If yes, how is it distinguishable from decoration?

Sure, Rolex has their LEC but that probably has more to do with identifying OEM crystals than anti-counterfeiting.

What anti-counterfeiting measures were you thinking of? I can't come up with many.

[SamReidHughes]

Freaking Seiko 5's had etched crystals as an anti-counterfeiting measure, and you want to pretend Rolex's aren't? Get real.

[ryanlol]

Is it a measure to combat counterfeit watches or to separate OEM crystals from third party ones?

It's usually not very hard to source OEM crystals, so to me it seems more likely that this would be about third party crystals and not counterfeit watches.

Can you think of any other supposed anti-counterfeiting measures besides the laser etched crystals? If this is something that the watch companies actually pursued it would be weird if they stopped at just that.

[SamReidHughes]

They're going to put this conversation in a chapter about motivated reasoning someday.

Seiko 5's had laser etched crystals as an anti-counterfeiting measure, and then, because counterfeiters copied that, they switched to open casebacks, an anti-counterfeiting measure that is used across the industry.

"Counterfeiting costs the watchmaking industry billions each year."

- Nick Hayek, CEO of the Swatch Group.

[ryanlol]

>They're going to put this conversation in a chapter about motivated reasoning someday.

It's hilarious that you're so invested in this that you resort to attacking my character.

>they switched to open casebacks, an anti-counterfeiting measure that is used across the industry

I would assume that open casebacks are used because they look cool, not to prevent counterfeiting.

>"Counterfeiting costs the watchmaking industry billions each year."

>- Nick Hayek, CEO of the Swatch Group.

I think this is bullshit, I doubt you can find any data that would support this claim. I can't. I'd bet he just took some estimate of replica industry total revenue and decided that's how much it costs the legit watchmaking industry.

[sho]

> "Counterfeiting costs the watchmaking industry billions each year."

I take this with the same giant heaping of salt that I'd take with claims that the record industry loses billions per year because of mp3s, or movie companies because of bittorrent. They were never going to see those sales. The market size at price $0 is much, much larger than that at anything higher. Wishful thinking at its purest.

I second, with emphasis, ryanlol's rejection of your ideas about counterfeits being somehow immoral. I don't buy counterfeits but would have zero moral qualms about doing so - it doesn't even enter my mind. To be honest I have difficulty believing anyone seriously believes buying a counterfeit watch is truly immoral. If you actually do believe that - wow, we live in different worlds.

I find it hard to take seriously anyone who outsources their morality to whatever the law happens to currently be wherever they currently are. Laws vary wildly across both time and space. Anyone claiming their morals just follow "the law" is actually admitting they don't have their own morals at all.