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Originally Posted by scottiebabie /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Do correct me if I’m wrong here but since nobody legally “owns” any of the pertinent designs and hence litigation as such is moot, the case is closed....
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I can't say at this point what the legal avenues are, or which remain, if any. That's not really the primary point with me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottiebabie /img/forum/go_quote.gif
....All we’re doing now is discussing the ethical and business issues....
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And that, to me, is the primary point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottiebabie /img/forum/go_quote.gif
....If the issue is now down to voting with our wallets I believe Headphonia and Meier Audio (or any other company for that matter) may have a very simple solution.
The American public has amply demonstrated that they do vote with their wallets. Drop the price of the products ‘til it becomes an incredible value and all might be forgiven. That’s the modus operandi of the majority of imports we buy and if we don’t beat those up, why pick on anyone else. Afterall how many of us query about the products we buy if they are clones, copied, imitated, original, innovative or otherwise as long as the price is right?
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First of all, it's not just the
American public. I'm sure I can find €40.00 DVD players--placed on top of cheaply built, cheaply priced shelving--in entertainment systems all over the world. That being said, I do see where you're going with this. And, you're right that in an ideal world, I should know if, for random hypothetical example, children are working with dangerous chemicals to assemble my CD-ROM drive; or if the animal hide in my shoes was obtained in cruel fashion; or if my DVD player's schematic was simply a rip-off of another company's design; etc. Maybe many of us wouldn't care if we found out our DVD player's design was direclty lifted from an original design from Toshiba's product development team.
But, 'round here at least, headphone amps are different--well, at least to me (and a lot of others here). The relative distance between the designer/manufacturer and the final consumer here is small--more intimate. Our opinions give voice to the products we end up with in a much more immediate way than with most products we use in our daily lives, with our input through our posts collectively afforded significant importance in the world of headphone amps, and, in many cases, even the headphones made by bigger companies (like SHURE, Sennheiser, etc.).
If it is found that someone lifted another's headphone amp design, value for value, some of you may not care, and so may continue to seek out a "clone" product on price alone. Though I can't prevent it, I can (as the webmaster and one of the moderators of the site) prevent it from being advertised here, because it matters to me and many others. In our little world here, we have, for years now, demanded and been served with new cool products, and a lot of that activity comes from our headphone amp segment. While Head-Fi does not constitute the entire marketplace for such products, I can safely say that there are a good number of people and small companies who depend on the community at Head-Fi to provide a significant portion of their livings, and, thus motivated, work to develop those new cool products. I've been around Head-Fi since day one (obviously), and have been a part of the audio and headphone audio community since before Head-Fi. From its beginning, one of the primary roles that I always wanted Head-Fi to serve was to encourage the growth of what was, at its founding, a far smaller (but growing) marketplace, to motivate the development of new and better products to serve the headphone audio space.
Your simplistic explanation ("drop the price of the products") is just that--too simplistic. Earlier in this thread, someone said this: Quote:
Originally Posted by someone in this thread earlier
....If the Headphonia could be sold for cheaper and is the same then taht says somethign about the original....
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My interpretation of that sentence is that the poster was saying that even if one amp is the direct copy of another (and, again, we're still going on the words of others here, and can come to our own conclusions--or not--based on those words), because the copy could be priced significantly lower suggests that there's something wrong with the price of the original. To me, your "drop the price of the products" suggestion is similar, in that neither recognizes or rewards the value of the work in the original design as it contributes to price, but only takes into consideration the price discrepancy between the two in a vacuum. As someone else said in this thread, it can take countless hours to get one's design, and the values therein, adjusted to achieve what one is seeking to achieve with his product. (And, as might be evident, the price difference between products of similar--or identical--schematics could still be explained even further by differences in build quality and other things.)
I realize what I wrote above may be a bit rambling, so let me state it more concisely: I see where you're trying to go with your post. You're suggesting that if we don't take the time to look into whether or not all of the products on our desks, in our entertainment systems, on our nightstands, etc., are based on the value for value "borrowed" designs of others, maybe we shouldn't do it here. And to that I'm saying I disagree, to the extent that, within the confines of this community, we generally (and understandably) do care more about how business is conducted. And, yes, maybe we should in all aspects of our lives with all the products we use, but, in a hobby market as limited in scope and scale as ours--and served by a small (but growing) number of manufacturers/designers who really do wish to keep providing us with cool new products--it's easier to pay more attention to what is going on and how business is being conducted, and it's easier to care more.
