Counterfeiters counterfeit anti-counterfeiting notice

From MakerBot co-founder Zach Hoeken Smith's photos from Shenzhen, China, a counterfeit Mickey Mouse hat with a prominent anti-counterfeiting notice.

(Thanks, Jeffrey!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: china • Copyfight • Disney • fashion • Funny • happy mutants

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chellberty

As we all know that mouse should have been in the public domain a Lonnnnnnnng cat time ago.
Jake0748

I like how Mick is pointing out the distant UFO over his left shoulder.
nachoproblem

“Who counterfeits the counterfeiters?”
- ImmutableMichael
  
  That’d be me (or me).
Boundegar

The surprising part is, kids today have no idea who Mickey is. If you’re going to counterfeit, at least pick something relevant. Like Barbie.
- http://profiles.google.com/maurice.reeves Maurice Reeves
  
  I think you’re quite mistaken. Most kids know EXACTLY who Mickey Mouse are. Never mind the millions who visit Disney World, Disney Land, Euro Disney, etc every year, but the Disney Channel has had Mickey Mouse shows on for a long time. In fact, this morning, a house full of kids for Thanksgiving and the minute Mickey floated on the screen they all screamed “It’s MICKEY!”
  - Boundegar
    
    There’s a Disney channel?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Norm-Tedford/1220611758 Norm Tedford
  
  Don’t tell Cory that.
niktemadur

Well yeah, totalitarian © abuse (extension of the Sonny Bono laws, for example) is part of the Disney magic, isn’t it?
Then again, it looks like a case of hardcore Engrish, à la “Translate Server Error”.
http://www.seriouseats.com/images/20080717-servererror.jpg
Ping Kee

Haha. Cool picture. This kind of thing is common. In fact, I’m looking at my bag right now, which states in big letters on the side, “An original A.R. product designed in Tokyo, Japan those bags not bearing this mark is not genuine”.

Disney went high-tech several years ago and introduced a hologram sticker on packaging to distinguish fakes from the real thing. Within months, the holograms stickers themselves were being faked.
http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

i would actually pay clean non ironic money for this hat. I would be king of the meta-hipsters.
JPhilipp

What’s that on the hat? Looks like a ripoff of Felix the Cat (1923).
cellocgw

Just thinking that the text is factually accurate — there probably aren’t any applicable laws, so there ya go.
- Jonathan Roberts
  
  Are you going to take that chance? Mickey dares you.
Jonathan Roberts

I like the ones that have longer pieces of text undermining the basic message of the product, like the DVD I saw whose reverse side was a scathing review of the same movie, or the the t-shirt with a picture of a fedora and the title “Fedora style”. Behind the main text is part of an article by Ask Men http://uk.askmen.com/fashion/fashiontip_200/218_fashion_advice.html talking about men “having their style dictated to them by their mothers, then by their girlfriends, and then by their wives. There are also those men who escaped the trap of wearing someone else’s style only to find themselves with no style whatsoever.”
Kaleberg

Surely there are franchisable characters here: the glamour boy rock star with the copyrighted face, the bored, cynical babe with her royalty collecting pet vampire bat and the ant-pirate hacker, gender uncertain, who can delete piratebay.com from a DNS with a cold glare. They get into their club house by kicking or slashing through an FBI warning sign. If nothing else, the constant use of anti-piracy stigmata as part of the character identification would debase the copyright police even further.