Or you could just let him slit your throat. I didn't say the solution would be easy.
The solution isn't easy - it's societal, as with rape and murder as the metaphor holding in the extreme case so vividly points out.
It hinges on what people think is fair involving their rights to artistic and intellectual property, as well as labor conditions, accuracy in reporting of content, and integrity of product support.
And like with rape and murder, often the victim or the victim's family get doubly screwed over when society does them wrong via allowing the rape/murder to happen without having some sort of agreed-upon redress for the initial assault.
Hell, the title of the thread does nothing but blame the victim of intellectual property theft for the theft. It belittles the hardship that the criminal activity puts the Glessers and their employees through. At no point does the OP pay attention to the easily-recognizable underlying issues that they must be facing.
Here's just a few hardships that I can attest to from reading first hand accounts on the forum (this thread included), or that I can easily predict with only rudimentary logical skill:
1. People buy the knife to look like they have a Spyderco when really they have a knockoff that could be pot metal for all they know.
2. People show off the knockoff to demonstrate "How close they're getting." People oooh and aaaah about it. I.E. people advertise the fakes.
3. People see the fakes, see the afis talking nicely about how good the fake looks and figure they should get one instead of saving another week/month/year for a real Spyderco. Humans and other animals experience hyperbolic discounting at alarming rates.
4. People who don't know they have a fake, and even some who do know, post some negative review about the "Spyderco" they bought that sucks for whatever reason. Although it is never really said, I hazard a guess that cheap knockoffs are part of the reason why Sal has the standard response of: "Send it in" when people post that kind of stuff.
5. People who buy fakes send the broken one in to Spyderco to fix/replace because the packaging is faked.
6. If something is to be done, Spyderco has to pay lawyers in MINIMALLY two jurisdictions to possibly get some sort of compensation (most likely at a huge initial cost).
Name one accountant who would list a single one of those things as a positive addition to revenue, or probable cause of positive revenue stream. I couldn't find one if I tried.
Although I like the idea of serial numbers, they won't do much to curb the real issue. They'd simply be a talking point for the afis, like model numbers are currently. People who know care enough know the difference between the C27 and the C34. People who want the big pointy and scary-lookin one they saw in that movie looking bada$$ will buy the knockoff instead of the real one, even with extensive serial numbers.
To me it is kind of funny that as a society we'd throw someone in jail if he stole 10 Spyderco Military models from SFO, but we won't put someone away for knowingly selling 30 knockoffs at 1/3rd the price even though functionally they're both costing the company similar amounts of money in sales opportunity. Effectively, we have a system in which there are right ways and wrong ways to steal from American businesses. It would seem that the better at stealing you are, the more people demand that you're respected for the crime.
