I'll preface this by saying that I haven't been in the mechanical keyboard scene too long so I'm not personally acquainted with anyone, actually. I feel that in light of this situation, we should learn from this and understand how it got to this point. I see a lot of misdirected energy focusing on retribution rather than resolution, and that is frankly the wrong way of looking at this.
I think you see a lot of people making jokes about retribution as a way of expressing how disgusting this IP theft is. I don’t know anyone who is serious about killing them, DDOSing them, or anything else extreme. There’s a lot of joking about it since the action is quite reprehensible and affects a beloved member of the community.
Problem
As it has been said before, the reason for these existing is because they are filling a void that couldn't or wasn't otherwise being filled by CC himself. Consumers want the best bargain, no matter where the product comes from. When consumers want a product that can only be bought second-hand at exorbitant prices, they will look elsewhere until someone fills that gap. Now that gap has been filled.
If this was all about filling a gap, they should have come out with a competing product that people wanted.
For example, I remember when Tickle Me Elmo was the must have toy for Christmas. It was so desired that shelves could not be kept stocked and people were flipping them for insane profits on Craigslist and eBay. Following your argument, it would have been okay for someone to step in with a counterfeit Tickle Me Elmo and, instead of calling it that and made by Tyco, call it Me Laugh Muppet by Fisker Pride.
That is not gap filling in the economic sense; that is fraud and IP theft done to make a profit while demand is outstripping supply. The manufacturer has every right to produce as many or as few as they like and to price them where they want. If the other company wanted to compete, they should introduce a competing product, not a counterfeit with a different maker’s mark.
This is not to say that I don't admire CC's work- I do. The Mint CC is actually one of my favorite keycaps of all time. But if I see that Mint CC pop up on that site, there's no doubt that I'll be spamming that F5 key with wallet in hand. It's available, cheap, and looks "good enough". I have no allegiance to CC and he has no allegiance to me. Since I'm not a collector, any intangible value (emotional or otherwise) has no purpose for me. I just want my keyboard to look pretty.
While you’re right that you have no allegiance to each other, one would hope that you could see the moral and ethical problems of someone stealing someone else’s copyrighted works and remarketing it as their own at a similar price point.
If you want your keyboard to look pretty, get something that matches from one of the multiple cap artisans out there.
Remember, cap makers are artisans, any kind of theft, counterfeiting, fraud, and so on hurts them considerably since they do not have massive profits and profit margins. It’s just as terrible to knowingly support the counterfeiters as it is to counterfeit.
Possible Solution
I'm also involved in the electronic cigarette community and clones, replicas, and counterfeits can be found around every corner. There have even been times when clones have even appeared before the original product! The way this is solved is by constant innovation. It is incredibly important for makers to keep innovating their products to remain competitive in the market. But truth be told, it's a bit more challenging to improve creative work rather than hardware design of a ecig mod. Lawsuits against Asian vendors pretty much amount to a stern finger-wagging, because while the laws against this may exist, it's another matter entirely to get authorities to actually enforce it. I suppose I'm a bit cynical because I've seen this happen so many times before with copies of vaping products, though I do wish you luck in your case.
You’re confounding copyright with patents. How exactly does one innovate a piece of art or trade dress? You make aesthetic choices that are pleasing to people. If you were to “innovate” a piece of artwork you could very well be stripping away the aesthetics that make people like it in the first place.
For example, how would Apple innovate if someone stole the trade dress of the MacBook and marketed a laptop that looked identical, ran OSX, and was the same except it had worse build quality, had a pear logo instead of an apple, and called the company Pear? Following what you said, they should completely change their iconic trade dress and, instead, do something like make blocky monstrosities.
Apple is always a bad example to use since so many people hate them and they do over-litigate, but if someone made a direct copy of their trade dress, I damn well hope that they would do something about it and that people would be outraged that someone counterfeited their product.
Or, what if someone started counterfeiting Blek le Rat works? He was one of the most influential street artists and remains an icon to this day. If someone were counterfeiting his works, how is he supposed to “innovate”? Change his style altogether? Move to studio art? If someone counterfeited his stuff, there would be outrage in the community since people acknowledge that your style, your technique, your images make up who you are, they identify you and accord you respect. Imitating styles and developing your own I is one thing, but you never copy someone else’s work and call it your own.
I'll readily admit that I'm not very well informed on how most vendors sell their keys, but I'll say right now that these little thread sales won't cut it. You all need to streamline your selling process and make it as easy as possible for the consumer to get your product. Yes, I get it, you're making works of art and I'm sure they're very special and need to be made with love and care, but keep in mind that many of us don't really care for glorifying your product just because you made it, we just like how it looks. We have money and we want shiny stuff. Get some web sites up and running, start adding serials, ask admins to remove high-priced CC sales, do whatever you need to do to preserve your product.
So all artists who are in demand should overproduce, potentially oversaturating their market and decreasing the value of their product just because people want them? Sorry, but that’s not how it works. An artist is free to make as many or as few of their works as they want and sell them however they please. If someone is not happy with how it’s done, there are other artists to support. If you want mass production, grab some of the Hammer caps. If you want a piece of art, try to get that work legitimately instead of supporting counterfeiters.
Really, what most of your argument, the arguments on Reddit, and the arguments supporting this guy come down to is a sense of entitlement. Guess what, you’re not entitled to anything in this world outside of your basic human rights. Life is tough and you don’t always get what you want. How you deal with that disappointment is what defines you.
You are no longer a little mom n' pop shop. Congratulations, a lot of people want to buy your products! You can either learn to adapt to your new-found success or fade away. The onus is on you.
The onus is on him to keep producing a quality product at his standards, to keep finding and producing things the market likes. That’s the only imperative for any artist. They are not beholden to the market to meet demand.
