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Perhaps there needs to be a new open standard for authenticating physical products. Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a
by mabbo 9y ago
Perhaps there needs to be a new open standard for authenticating physical products.
Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a public key for the company and product. At each sale of the product or passing of possession from a supplier to a vendor, the keys would register a transfer. Anyone in the supply chain could use the company's public APIs to say "I have this item, does that make sense? Or did someone already sell this one?".
Companies could sue anyone selling unverified goods. Border police could easily identify fakes. Customers could confirm authenticity. Sellers could prove they are or are not selling fakes.
- Cacti 9y agoAnd every physical good you ever purchased would be tracked and accounted for until you die. Don't you think it would be far easier to just enforce the laws we already have?
- mabbo 9y agoHow? The problem is that it's hard to enforce these laws. I'm proposing that we need to make it easier to enforce them.
- reportingsjr 9y agoThis exists under the name bitmarks. Bunnie Huang wrote a blog post about this just a couple of weeks ago: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981
- 1024core 9y agoFrom Bunnie's blog: Disclosure: I am a technical advisor and shareholder of Bitmark.
- Cacti 9y agoThis person's suggestion is to replace serial numbers with a blockchain code? When will the madness end? /edit mistakenly used UPC instead of serial number.
- gvb 9y agoUPC is a product code (what it is). Bunnie's blockchain code is a serial number that is (theoretically) impossible to guess or fake. This prevents scammers from guessing/faking serial numbers to scam him out of product.
- Cacti 9y agoSorry, I didn't mean UPC, I meant serial number. You can generate unique, nearly impossible to guess serial numbers using all kinds of methods without any need for a blockchain.
- cracell 9y agoA UUID would work fine. Every product gets a UUID and it goes into a public DB hosted by the manufacturer (or a 3rd party that verifies who is publishing the data). Then anyone can query against that database to verify if a product is legitimate.
- antsar 9y agoWouldn't counterfeiters scrape that database for legitimate UUID's? You could allow consumers to "claim" a UUID as theirs (and when I get a product with the same UUID, I can assume it's a dupe), but that requires every consumer to actually do this...
- Scoundreller 9y agoMake it difficult to scrape? At the end of the day... we know these things get leaked anyway...
- cracell 9y agoYes. I did not think it through well enough.
- Cacti 9y agoThe proposed blockchain solution also requires users to register.
- ikeboy 9y agoYou mean like https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16049037011 https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16049037011
- atomi 9y agoYes, and encourage consumers to file chargebacks for products that fail authenticity.
- slezyr 9y agoOr more simple way from china https://www.mi.com/verify/#secur_en https://www.mi.com/verify/#secur_en
- IncRnd 9y agoA counterfeiter could simply duplicate a valid proper key. This is an exact analogue for client-side validation, which doesn't work in the presence of active malicious counterfeiters.
- ksk 9y agoThere already was such a standard. Physical good stores. A large chain will not risk their reputation by selling you a dud, or counterfeit item. They're also easier to sue in your local jurisdiction than some random online seller, etc etc. People have made their choice, and they would rather save money by shopping online.