Comment by binarysolo
5 days ago
So consider the alternative (because this happened to us): 5-6 years back, one of our brand stores sold a thing (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DKG3NX7) that created an entire niche of products, and 6 months after our success, a buncha clones came out of the woodwork.
On Amazon, they created listings that imitated our copy and images. On AliExpress/Taobao/etc., they ripped off our images and pretended to be us. Deciding which product/listing is the original product is super nontrivial especially when there's international trademarking and IP law (or lack thereof) involved.
The amount of product images on Amazon these days with incorrect shadows or perspective lines... wow.
If Amazon detected and banned any seller whose product images were gen AI or which didn't match user photos, it'd go a long way towards regaining trust.
Getting 6 months, you were lucky! I've heard of kickstarters that were ripped off on AliExpress before they even finished their own product...
Doesn't that just mean that they brought little more to the table than an idea?
That is the whole point of copyright/patent law. Society benefits by having interesting ideas brought to market, and society misses/looses out when people who bring ideas to market are punished by copycats, stopping new ideas/innovation.
You wouldn't have had an industrial revolution without copyright/patent laws.
In the modern world where we have done most of the low hanging fruit a new novel idea could be even more valuable for society to protect.
It's an interesting debate. One more thing they did was prove there was a market for the idea.
I think we should severely limit copyrights and patents, but not get rid of them entirely.
Or they're just ideas.
Yep. That happens. But delisting some items that cost less but not others doesn’t fix your problem. So…?