I'll try to explain this from the point of view of someone who has tried to bring a bloatware-free hifi system to market: Chinese copies + Amazon = flood of sh

I'll try to explain this from the point of view of someone who has tried to bring a bloatware-free hifi system to market: Chinese copies + Amazon = flood of shit It takes years to design, test, build prototypes, measure, re-design, re-build, calibrate, certify and produce a good hifi audio amp. That means you start your product journey with $500k in debt and unless you can show how you're going to sell enough units to recover this, your project is dead before it ever started. You typically need to sell at 8x of your real costs, because shipping companies, import agents, wholesalers and retailers all want (and need) their margins. If I expect to sell 2,000 units per month (which is A LOT already) for 2 years, then I need to add about $10 to my costs per unit to recover the R&D expenses. And that means as long as Amazon is happy to turn a blind eye on IP-infringing blatantly obvious clones that typically even re-use my product images or slogans or brand names ... then my "original" product will be undercut by $10x8 = $80 in price by Chinese clones. They don't have R&D to recoup because the can just buy my product, x-ray the PCB, and then make duplicates. And trying to get Amazon to follow the law is like playing expensive whack-a-mole with lawyers. It won't help to recover money. That means as the manufacturer, I have exactly 1 way left to recover R&D expenses: I lock down the software. And then I either shove ads in your face, or I bully you into a subscription. Or if the ads pay too little, both. I hate the situation as much as you do, but I also see no better way forward. Nowadays, you need to plan for the flood of shitty clones on Amazon a week after launch. (Or in some cases, even before the original product clears import customs.) And that means you treat hardware as cheap and disposable, because your competitors do that and unless you join them, you're at a huge market disadvantage, because the average customer cannot tell the difference between a low-quality and a high-quality capacitor. (And Amazon doesn't care.) https://www.cultofmac.com/news/selfie-stick-iphone-case-gets-cloned-before-it-even-exists https://www.cultofmac.com/news/selfie-stick-iphone-case-gets... (And please note that these guys even had US patents on the product. Didn't help them, though.)