“Faux-dini”: 2.3 oz. Windshirt, <$15 – Initial Review and Sourcing

[Ian]

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[scree ride]

I took a bus tour myself, then I stayed at a Holiday Inn. I know all about American misconceptions. We should never, ever let the plights of others get in the way of our entertainment. Especially when we don't even have to make up our own excuses. We're not exploiting kids, we're feeding the hungry.

My apologies to Valerie. I don't mean to imply that this is a bad product. As with everything, the reviews will tell. At some point it probably was or still is licensed under Jack Wolfskin. My comments would apply to my Korean made stove as well as my American made pack. The resulting discussion has absolutely nothing to do with you or your original post. It was really nice of you to share and I hope you do again.

[Ian]

I sent the ebay link to Jack Wolfskin to see if this was a legitimate product or not. Here is their response:

Dear Ian,

Many thanks for your mail and the interest in our company.

This jacket is an fake. Our logo is never on the right chest.

You could visit one of our British dealers on either http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com or http://www.blacks.co.uk, if you wish to purchase anything. They offer an extended JACK WOLFSKIN range and also do shipping overseas. You will be able to find the exact costs for postage / shipping on their homepage.

We hope that this information is of any help to you. Do not hesitate to contact us in case of further questions.

Best regards

Ines Wiegand
Endverbraucherkommunikation

JACK WOLFSKIN
Ausrüstung für Draussen GmbH & Co. KGaA

Jack Wolfskin Kreisel 1· D-65510 Idstein/Ts., Germany ·www.jack-wolfskin.com
Phone: +49 6126 954 0· Fax: +49 6126 954 158·[email protected]

[D S]

I really wish you guys would take your "let's save the world from itself" discussion somewhere else.

I came here to find out about the performance and sizing of this windshirt, not all this extraneous stuff.

[Ian]

http://www.ice.gov/news/library/factsheets/ipr.htm

To report:

Contact the IPR Center
Website: http://www.iprcenter.gov
Email: [email protected]
Report IP Theft: http://www.iprcenter.gov/referral/
Mail: National IPR Coordination Center
2451 Crystal Drive, STOP 5105
Arlington, VA 20598-5105
Telephone: 1-866-IPR-2060

[Jon Leibowitz]

Thanks to this thread the shirt is now 17 bucks! haha.

Well, I just ordered one. I wear a medium and got a XL.

I'll post impressions when I get it in another thread that is not crazytown.

[scree ride]

I better hide my candy.

[Delmar O’Donnell]

Normally I'd apologize for being OT, but this thread is long ago cooked, so here goes:

Intellectual property (IP) is a western concept. As a westerner, I "get" it. (Our own cultures always seem to make more ‘sense’ than foreign cultures.) But the concept of IP is confusing to many people in eastern cultures, who can’t understand how anybody can “own” an idea. It just doesn’t compute for them.

Here in the United States, for example, a certain company “owns” a certain shade of red that only they may use to advertise and sell their products. Chinese manufacturers think that’s the silliest thing in the world–to them it’s like saying you “own” the sun or the moon. You can argue all day long about the investment it takes to build a brand name, and how using that brand name is “stealing,” and it just doesn’t compute for the vast majority of easterners I’ve discussed the issue with. It’s a design, an idea, it’s letters in an alphabet, a graphic, not an actual physical item that can be stolen, is their view. Different world view, different morality.

Same phenomenon in academia. Chinese students are known to plagiarize more than, say, Euro or NA students. Western professors catch them and punish them severely for it. “What did I do wrong?” they wonder in honest puzzlement, not grasping the concept of what plagiarism is. “It’s an idea, it’s words, how can you steal an idea or words? I am honoring these thoughts by repeating them, not stealing them!” Different world view, different morality.

Then they’ll observe how terribly we treat our own parents, and consider us to be highly unethical people. Or they'll be disgusted how unhygenic we are when using the toilet. Different world view, different morality.

That’s why I use the term “Projectile Moralism.” Many of us westerners think our morality is the ONLY acceptable morality, and seek to move heaven and earth to make sure the rest of the world falls in line with ours. It makes us feel good — feeling smugly self righteous is a good feeling, it's validating, we're saving the earth, etc. We feel good when we've successfully forced our world view on those– those unenlightened people who live over there.

There are many, many brands of morality on earth. Western “media headline” style morality is but one of them. Travel the world a bit, and you start to understand why the rest of the world thinks we’re so pushy and offensive (speaking as an American, here). It has to be our way or the highway. Accept our morality, or you are evil.

It’s just like Tom said: “…maybe, just maybe, they might have developed value systems that are every bit as legitimate as ours in their cultural/historical context. Our incessant attempts to impose our own on them has led to much needless suffering down thru the years…”

[Anonymous]

Vacation hasn't started yet apparently.

Just wanted to say this in relation to Delmar's last post.

I call B.S. There is some truth to that in a broad sense, but Chinese businessmen certainly know the difference between utilizing or recreating an idea in a general way (say like using a specific combo of merino and polypropylene for specific purposes that another company pioneered), and purposely using a name brand logo in order to fool people to think that they are buying a certain name brand with the motive of profit. That is outright deception in ANY culture.

They understand western culture perhaps better than you think they do, and money and profit is THE universal language in this sad, dark world.

I have traveled the world enough to know that while there are certainly cultural differences between different peoples, but since we're all human, we're still basically more similar than different at the end of the day. Plenty of world wide studies on core psychology strongly suggest that.

And just because something is part of someone's culture, doesn't make it innately sacred, right, acceptable, or ok to agree with or support. Take female genital mutilation in Africa. It may be my western ignorance on my part, but never in a million years will i agree with such practice, never will i support it, and always i would speak against it.

Also, there is a big difference between distanced tolerance of another's cultural practice and outright support that perpetuates, especially in the monetary sense which seems to influence or effect more than anything nowadays. I'm not free of that support, i don't even know how to completely free myself of that besides going out into the wilderness and trying to live a completely sustainable, cut off from civilization lifestyle.

[Jon Leibowitz]

I'm sorry to add oxygen to this fire….but do people here really think there is any difference whatsoever between this shirt and any other windshirt made anywhere in China, India, Malaysia, etc.? What is the difference between this 10 dollar shirt and a $130 windshirt from Montbell…or anything made by REI, or NorthFace, or Brooks, or La Sportiva….? Nothing other than a brand name. NOTHING at all. You're $130 montbell windshirt actually cost about 3 dollars to make just like this one…and the pour soul making your shirt got paid the same shitty wage no matter how much you got ripped off for it.

Has anybody on BPL not purchased a montbell product here because of horrid labor conditions in China? I doubt it. Does anybody here actually know with certainty that a word MEC or Patagonia peddles to us is true about their labor practices other than what is said in their marketing materials? I certainly have never been to a factory in China making Patagonia clothing and I doubt not a single one of you have either.

Apple Computer has gone more out of the way than practically any other American company that exists today to try and guarantee their factories (electronic vs garment, I know)are meeting fair labor standards and even with threats to cut off supply chains and constant audits, Apple still finds egregious labor law violations on a constant basis.

It's the unfortunate nature of outsourcing and unless you purchase 100% American made gear, it's all the same crap made by underpaid folks living under the same horrible labor standards.

I'm not hear saying you shouldn't care or try to make the world a better place but I am saying that this windshirt is no different than any other windshirt you may buy. The fact that it's 10 bucks simply makes it closer to the reality of what it costs to produce.

[Delmar O’Donnell]

Justin, I call BS on your BS of calling my BS, BS. :-)

Your reply is entirely culture-bound. You'll score points, maybe, with other westerners, but many easterners would disagree with your perspective. Don't let your insistence that the world conform to your own moral system, spill over into Moral Imperialism. The "sad, dark" world is not as broken as you think it is, nor breathlessly waiting for you to fix it. But if you disagree, then spend your energies on actually doing something, rather than wasting your talents writing rebuttals on an internet forum. Neither you nor I are changing anybody's mind about anything; we're just irritating people at this point. And I think I'll go waste my time on something else for awhile.

"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters." — Plato, Dialogues

[Roger Caffin]

I find the response from Jack Wolfskin interesting – more for what they did not say than anything they said.

Reading between the lines, I would guess that they knew all about the fakes and the eBay vendors, and a) knew they could do nothing about them, and b) were not greatly fussed anyhow.

Why this conclusion? They seemed mainly interested in pointing Ian to their retail outlets, not in doing anything about the eBay vendors. It looked like a boilerplate response.

My understanding, from talking to Westerners who live in China and do business in China, is that they do not have or even understand the concept of Intellectual Property, nor do they have any concept of a legally binding agreement or a contract. It drives Westerners crazy, trying to do businesss there in a Western manner.

Cheers
PS: Personally, I think this thread has some merit in the Gear channel, as it does inform our buying decisions.

[scree ride]

It has a name on it.
While it may be acceptable in other cultures to present myself as somebody else, (and somehow I doubt it), it is not here and right, wrong or indifferent, those are the standards that we live by. That is our culture.

[Jon Leibowitz]

So are we talking about the morals of ripping off a corporation (Wolf Skin or whatever they are called) or the morals of essentially supporting slave labor? If it wasn't mislabeled, would it make it more OK to buy it?

[Dale Wambaugh]

Roger said, "Reading between the lines, I would guess that they knew all about the fakes and the eBay vendors, and a) knew they could do nothing about them, and b) were not greatly fussed anyhow."

Any manufacturer can contact eBay and have counterfeit merchandise removed, after eBay got sued into the Stone Age over Louis Vuitton luggage a few years back. On the other hand, if it's not brought to their attention, this stuff slides under the radar. Keep in mind they are handling many millions of items (and they make a profit by all of them). Note that the logo is legible, but not mentioned in the listing, so you won't catch it on a search. This sort of thing is common with pocket knives, where they show a photo of an expensive knife with the logo well displayed. What you get is a cheap copy and the name isn't mentioned. They are playing on our own greed and wanting something for nothing.

The Chinese aren't alone in this by any means. You can find knock offs all over SE Asia and they are sent all over the world. I don't completely buy the cultural excuse, but I can see your point. The Taliban has cultural differences too, but I'm not buying that either!

[Jon Leibowitz]

Good point about the Taliban. Moral relativism only goes so far. But when you go down that road, you have to ask yourself….are there some morals which are universal? One could probably soundly argue that not murdering people and not raping/beating women for trying to go to school are universally accepted morals….on the other hand it's pretty darn hard to argue that intellectual property rights is a universal moral :)

[Anonymous]

"The Taliban has cultural differences too, but I'm not buying that either!"

Nor are they trying to sell you their culture. What they ARE selling us is a one way ticket out of their country, so they can get back to living according to their own values, whatever you may think of them. They're not trying to sell us windshirts, either, so I don't know why they got brought into the conversation. ;0)

[Dale Wambaugh]

Copyright infringement isn't comparable to murder, BUT, these factories are bound up in corrupted officials, abused workers, pollution, theft of materials and patterns, etc. You really are buying into a whole quagmire of issues and you don't know how far it goes. As with illegal drug sales, you can toss out all the issues with the drugs themselves, and you are still left with the criminal enterprise that profits by it.

I do know that the practice is illegal in the US and punishable. Gauging by the penalties listed below, the citizens of this country take the matter seriously. Whether you feel that copyright infringement is immoral, it is without a doubt considered a criminal act. If you knowingly buy such merchandise, you are taking part of the crime, just like downloading pirated music.

"Copyright infringement is the act of exercising, without permission or legal authority, one or more of the exclusive rights granted to the copyright owner under section 106 of the Copyright Act (Title 17 of the United States Code). These rights include the right to reproduce or distribute a copyrighted work. In the file-sharing context, downloading or uploading substantial parts of a copyrighted work without authority constitutes an infringement.

Penalties for copyright infringement include civil and criminal penalties. In general, anyone found liable for civil copyright infringement may be ordered to pay either actual damages or "statutory" damages affixed at not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work infringed. For "willful" infringement, a court may award up to $150,000 per work infringed. A court can, in its discretion, also assess costs and attorneys' fees. For details, see Title 17, United States Code, Sections 504, 505.

Willful copyright infringement can also result in criminal penalties, including imprisonment of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 per offense."

[scree ride]

Mislabeled or sleazy business practices?

[michael levi]

this shirt is light and cheap, i have a montbell tachyon already though.

[Roger Caffin]

> One could probably soundly argue that not murdering people and not raping/beating
> women for trying to go to school are universally accepted morals

But one would be certainly wrong. Not universally, for sure (been off-planet recently?), and not even globally.

Murder over an 'affair of honour' (however you may define that) is still quite 'legal' in many countries, especially the Middle East. As for women trying to go to school – definitely punishable by execution in some countries.

For that matter, duelling was accepted in America at least into the 1840s. "In 1838 former governor of South Carolina John Lyde Wilson published The Code of Honor; or Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Dueling." Note that this acknowledged that a fatal shot was possible and acceptable, and happened in perhaps 20% of duels. Andrew Jackson boasted of fighting at least 14 duels.

What are morals anyhow? They are just the accepted norms of behaviour within a culture. There are no absolutes anywhere.

Cheers

[Jerry Adams]

"What are morals anyhow? They are just the accepted norms of behaviour within a culture. There are no absolutes anywhere."

Maybe 150 years from now, having wars like we do today will seem as immoral as slavery 150 years ago seems today

Not to mention dumping CO2 into the atmosphere with abandon

(seeing as this thread as already gone far astray from the original post : )

[Ian]

The one thing that I've really come to love about BPL is that this is a community of thinkers. Deep, deep, deep… thinkers. What are morals really? Do we really need words like right and wrong?

So you want to throw a little acid on a girl to prevent her from going to school. Who am I with my dang western eyes to pass judgment on you? Young lady, we'll just call those scars badges of cultural diversity.

The extinction of the western black rhino… yesterday I thought that this was a bad thing but now I'm not so sure. I now find some comfort knowing that while this beast is no more, poachers…. excuse me (too harsh)…. benevolent traditional Chinese medicine hunters were able provide bazillions of Chinese with rhino horn because who am I to judge them?

Laws? Sheesh! What in the world have I been thinking?!? It's just a little federal law.. barely a felony. If you weren't looking really close, you'd almost miss it. More of a guideline really.. except technically a crime (air quotes).

So counterfeit goods are sometimes used to fund terror and criminal organizations… do those terms really mean anything anymore? You know what they say… what you call a lunatic blowing up buses in the middle east based on your judgmental code is an misunderstood explosion artist to others (you judgmental fool you!)

So what if the reputation of a business is tarnished when a backpack spontaneously falls apart at a trailhead, medicine contains a sub therapeutic amount of product, kid gets lead poisoning from her Thomas the Train, garment catches fire at a party… the critical thing here is that you saved money and weren’t judgmental!

Why, you can probably buy your moral code at Walmart on sale!

So congratulations BPLers! Stay nice and warm in your counterfeit wind shirt while casting stones at the real villains like dastardly cottage industry folks offering gear in exchange for TGO votes.

[Anonymous]

"But one would be certainly wrong. Not universally, for sure (been off-planet recently?), and not even globally.

+1

"What are morals anyhow? They are just the accepted norms of behaviour within a culture. There are no absolutes anywhere."

A timeless truth that we just can't seem to wrap our heads around, no matter how much blood and treasure is spent. The values of long surviving cultures have generally selected for survival of the culture in a particular historical context, as incomprehensible and abhorrent as they may seem to us. Lord knows we have enough problems here at home that reflect on our morality to keep us busy for generations. Why not start here and save our smug sense of moral superiority for that far off time when our own house is tidied up? We're not going to force them to adopt our morals in any case. That much should be clear by now.

"One could probably soundly argue that not murdering people and not raping/beating
women for trying to go to school are universally accepted morals"

One could also argue that we are partially responsible for the mayhem by trying to cram Western style education down the throats of a people to whom it is an alien concept, while simultaneously engaged in a war with them.

[Anonymous]

"The one thing that I've really come to love about BPL is that this is a community of thinkers. Deep, deep, deep… thinkers. What are morals really? Do we really need words like right and wrong?"

I feel your pain, Ian. I'd probably feel it even deeper if you could see fit to ponder how far we've gone astray here at home and direct some of your righteous rage inward, where it might do some good. The world is a very big, rough and tumble place full of all sorts of people who don't agree with each other on how to behave, i.e. the meaning of right and wrong. We've had quite a go at sorting the world out over the past 50 or so years and, as near as I can tell, precious little to show for our prodigious expenditure of blood and treasure. Meanwhile, if you can believe government statistics, something like 10% of our kids go to bed hungry every night
while our politicians take a meat ax to food stamps while preserving agricultural subsidies for the wealthy, our infrastructure crumbles, our freedoms are slowly disappearing, drug use is rampant, our prisons inhumane and overflowing(4th Amendment stuff according to the Supreme Court in a recent California case), lordy I could go on, but I think this is enough to make my point. Don't get me wrong, I find all sorts of behavior in various parts to of the world repugnant by my own code, and I've seen some pretty nasty characters/behavior up close, but I also realize that in the long run we can do very little to change it at any acceptable cost; and that as long as our own house is a mess, our moral pronouncements ring hollow in the ears of many who do not share them. Better to deal with problems we have a chance of solving, IMO.

Edited to clean up.

[Author]

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