Lamptrons shady Business
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2024
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/ der8auer
Thanks to Christian Solmecke from WBS Legal for the statement regarding the keys:
@wbs_legal
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Music / Credits:
Outro:
Dylan Sitts feat. HDBeenDope - For The Record (Dylan Sitts Remix)
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Paid content in this video:
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Samples used in this video:
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:29 Hardware monitors & Lamptron ST060
2:22 "Free" software?
5:37 We test CD keys
7:42 This is a big problem!
8:55 What WBS Legal says
12:17 Summary/Conclusion
13:51 Outro - Věda a technologie
Quick Update: The Video was shot a few weeks ago. I was in contact with different Shops in Europe and they removed the items from their stock and are considering legal action against Lamptron.
Even after several emails, Lamptron did not reply to me. Interestingly their website is not available right now "404".
The website is working ok here in Portugal.
in bulgaria to but i notice my browser say the site is not secure !
It works in Denmark, but the site is not secure.
So lamptron is illegal
It works for me in the UK although it looks like it was made in 1996!
I know what is going to happen, they will pledge bancruptcy and rename the entire product lineup something else and start selling them again as its another brand. That is an common practice and it will be exploited over and over again. Cheers!
The china business model
Yeah probably going to be seeing stuff from Nortpmal hitting the market in the summer.
lamptr0n :)
@@kroks06 Or "masterscool" 😂
Something wrong with the Ada 64 license in China. You might say...Ada Wong.
"this video is going to be category financial mistake" 🤣 We appreciate your sacrifice!
I've been living in Shenzhen/Hong Kong since 2019. This is the typical Chinese company way of working.
Software licences and intellectual property is never taken into any regard.
That email is also a email service provider in China, 163 mail. It is owned by NetEase, Inc same as the 126 mail service provider, also own by the same company.
That Skype name is also a telltale that the company itself was a one man party way back in the day and as it grown they kept the same info, as is also very common in companies around here.
Honestly nothing to see here, it is the typical modus operandi of most Chinese companies: software bundled are always with non genuine keys, who for the Chinese market really doesn't matter that much because of the "sharing environment" practiced here.
Although you are totally right in your analysis and conclusion, and the community should be informed about this kind of situations.
I see it as a rejection of the "software licence" model, pioneered by Bill Gates.
You can't buy software, you can only rent it.
Rent-seeking business models do not fit well in a communist country.
hey man since you do seem to know a bit or 2 about the chinese manufacturing business.
how open are these people to suggestions and help from outside? Obvously this company does not deserve help or anything.
but stuff like the electronics market in china who produce custom motherboards/gpu's/coolers/cpu's even.
@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 just a bit or two, from what I see here.
Regardint your question it depends to be honest.
Some companies want to do the right and improve when faults are pointed. But most don't care. If their price is right compared with the rest of the competition, they know they will sell and no boycott for a small percentage of the consumer base will change such.
I can tell for sure that for more than one time I tried to help companies fixing their manuals in English with no success. They simply don't care.
Even if for us it is stupid such approach, they try to spend the less as possible in "lozalization" of their products, so a rag tag manual written by the imput of the simplified Chinese in Baidu translate and then copying the output in broken English is enough. They just do because it is required by the market they want to sell to, not because they want to add value to the experience of the customer.
Of course I'm not talking about all companies, some really care about the west and in their image integrity.
A couple months ago I saw a topic about some Chinese mini PC with malicious key spoofer baked into the device's firmware that automatically activate Windows no matter how much you reinstall Windows or change your SSD. And there's also many discussion about avoiding any non trusted Android TV box brand because of the same malicious code issue
It makes me very aware to avoid those shady chinese brand that came out of nowhere and suddenly become popular
They used to have a Spotify clone 163music that let you download every song as a mp3 file. I can't read chines but since the UI was a 1:1 copy of Spotify it was still easy enough to navigate lol. I think they changed it later that you need a Chinese ID to use the program.
In a case like this, a consumer has no way of knowing tat a bundled license key isn't legitimate and shouldn't face legal repercussions unless the consumer is full aware that the key is illegal.
I have had a few cases where I reported illegally sold keys and even had one case where the software company gave me a replacement key for reporting the illegal activity.
"even had one case where the software company gave me a replacement key for reporting the illegal activity"
That's rad, based company
They used to offer some decent fan controllers back in the day. Another company heading to extinction… but choosing this path.
I bet Lamptron was bought by chinese, now they using the brand to do this. They always destroying good companies with shady practices. Get maximum money out of the brand then bankrupt it, buy another brand and repeat.
They'll just change names!
Yeah, i still own the Lamptron FC5 v2 and is working as expected. Sad to hear they are doing shady business. Probably the brand was sold many years ago to a random player.
They also used to offer some real nice modding tools for early PC modding. Such a shame.
I have a Lamptron fan controller in a computer that I built in 2011. It still works great.
That AI translation is freakin amazing.
its freaking me out is it also changing his lips to make it look like he's speaking english?
Right? And scray too.
Amazing? Yes. Weird and discombobulating, also yes. Der8auer, please don't do this. If the original interview was not conducted in English, please just add subtitles. Don't give him a fake Australian (?!) AI-generated voice.
@@HwAoRrDk what would be the fun in that, then? As long as he's clearly stating it's AI translated, there's nothing wrong going on.
@@HwAoRrDk As long as he tells it is AI Translated and the person gave him permission to do that, there's no issue.
As a person with questionable digital morals, this is outrageous. It would be one thing if they were selling this garbage for
The previous vid I mocked Lamptron when they stated Aida64 as their "partner" on their website, while their CPU cooler screen can't even display Aida64 correctly. LoL
I'd just like to know when Finalwire is going to bother improving support for AMD hardware. Especially on AM5 it's a joke compared to the sensor data available for Intel. There's even open source software with significantly more information available.
Martin doesn't have nearly the resources for HWinfo yet he's constantly updating and improving support. I'll happily pay for his work but it's really hard for people to justify buying AIDA64 when they charge top dollar, do the bare minimum and much of it has remained largely unchanged for years.
Kudos for revealing these vendors that employ such 'questionable' business practices.
I know one store that opens each Lamptron box and destroys the Aida64 key in, they know that those are pirate keys so they destroy them. They have notification that Aida64 key does not come with the box, you need separately purchase it.
they wanna monetize their leftover stock, as they already know it's impossible to get their money back
Very interesting, how you can still really see Solmeke's style coming through even after the AI translation.
Funny German laws, charging a customer that is being scammed sounds as thick as it is !
Haha no doubt. Govt just wants money money from all sides
Couldn't agree more. Same goes about windows keys. Microsoft doesn't care and have said nothing about re-sold keys, those keys intention were for companies (the same key can activate a ton of PCs so reseller wins, customer wins). There's no law against that, MS cares only if you're activated. The only problem is that some Ebay sellers sell keys that are KMS generated, you can tell when you activate windows (it doesn't say digital license, it says something else and you can be de-activated at any time)
Yeah, Germany is one of those countries where people who are downloading pirated content are tracked and fined.
Meanwhile, in my country of the Netherlands, your ISP doesn't have to share customer details connected to the tracked IP addresses with the copyright defending organisation (known as BREIN). Because ISPs don't share details, nobody has been fined as of yet, but BREIN has, of course, appealed again. I've used a VPN for the last 10 years just to be safe. BREIN keeps a database of IP addresses related to downloading pirated content.
only if you are very obviously supporting illegal activities by laundering their money. If an offer is way to good to be true a normal human being with common sense can be expected to see that something is wrong with it. For example if someone offers you a key for a brand new software that costs 100€ on the developers website for only 10€ it should be obvious that it can not be a legit offer. Similar to websites offering you to stream movies for free that are still in cinemas. I know you can't assume common sense everywhere and there are certain people who don't have it but at least in Germany it is assumed as a given.
I would argue that it isn't obvious to the consumer in the lamptron case since the cooler is definitely in the high end price segment and also looks otherwise like a legit product.
@@megapro125 With same logic steam -90% sales and bundles would seem fake.
GPU sales when MSRP is 1k and is selling for 500-600.
Lamptron has always been like this. Even back in the day when the 5 inch bay stuff was big they were shady af. I mean they are selling fluff that most folks don't need so the margins can't be great. They used to tell people they'd be at some conventions and such and never turned up.
They also use Asus ROG, Gundam and EVA designs on their GPU braces, lighted case side panels and mouse pads. I'd be surprised if these other parties had licensing agreements in place.
Who can use a design or character is way less of an issue than fraudulent keys claimed to be genuine as well as making the core functionality of the product dependent on said fraudulent access. I mean, we only have like sixty years max until Evangelion characters are public domain.
Ich muss sagen, die AI Translation und die Stimme sind saugut gemacht!
Great work, taking the effort and cost to id this for everyone else.
I always learn more than I expected to, watching your videos. This is especially true since I have some interest in setting up a monitoring system.
I find the idea that the Ebay case is precedent for this a little bit questionable -- you are buying a product as a customer and can expect that it entered the EU in a law-conforming manner. The arguments provided appear to put the onus on the customer to check each and every product they buy to see if there may be something illegal in them. Especially for say electronics with many moving parts, this can be an undertaking, and I think that this would not hold up in court. Another thing that should be stressed is that you are not buying an "expensive thing" like a windows license for pennies on the dollar (a "too good to be true" thing), additionally a key and a license are a clear distinction so the products cannot 100% be compared.
None of it will hold up in court. Even he himself bought more "illegal" products fully knowing about the fake keys. It's all a joke. Also, the company should just tell the customers to pirate their own Aida version and save the legal hassle.
I understand that there are reasons why you might not want to be a "middleman" distributing 3rd party software. But Lamptron shouldn't advertise that AIDA comes with their product. They could simply make it known that the user is expected to purchase Aida64 separately for full functionality.
No-one would buy these if they didn't come with software that works for the advertised purpose (hardware information display). But I could see European distributors/retailers could dump the existing stocks with "does not come with software" and destroying the illegal keys to get some money out of them if they cannot otherwise get refunded by Lamptron or whoever sold these to them. This kind of crap is very common when dealing with importing junk from China. And this is what these are. Overpriced Chinese junk.
Lamptron took the term shady to a whole new level. I would avoid them like the plague!
Man I'm glad I found this video in time. I was about to buy one of these monitors. I will not support these business practices.
Oh, and they're still nice, color, high res screens. Mine was 4", looks like a big phone screen and was like $25.
@@aggonzalezdc Fortunately I found other brands with very similar screens, so I'll get one of those instead.
@@sebastianborgignons4932 still a waste of money unless it's an actual external processor, but you do you.
@@aggonzalezdc It is. All I needed was the monitor. The data processing bit I made myself.
@@sebastianborgignons4932 well then it's definitely a waste of money cuz you already did all the hard parts that might make sense paying for lol
RIP Lamptron.
Thank you for that valuable public service announcement.
This is some solid journalistic work.
Thank you for doing this.
thx for the heads up
Danke for the info. It's nice to see that I'm not the only tech reviewer (albeit a rank amateur compared to you!) that is exposing the cheap keys scam!
I believe that criminal legal actions against users is German thing, at least in Nordic countries just using software illegally isn't criminal but the developer can push for civil case. Spreading software illegally however is crime in Nordic countries so there's the piracy part.
Either way all of these screen things seem more or less scams, not that they wouldn't be cool or work, just the pricing is sky high. 300€ for basicly NH-D14/15 or Dark Rock or what similar there is bundled with 20-40€ screen with
The norms around this in China are very different from the west, however if you are going to sell your devices in europe, you got to respect the law and don't include pirated keys.
They don't have to rely on paid software at all for similar statistics.
To me it also sounds the sellers in Europe didn't do their due diligence.
@@zeprahzzz Why should they? Sellers themselves are also human, and they expect that if someone is selling them something, that person should have everything in place. A different thing would be if they'd gotten tips like this one from Der Bauer before and they ignored them. That's something we don't know, however.
@@itisabird Stores are ultimately responsible for what they sell, they just had to go through the process of using the product once.
They should have noticed the red flags, and dug deeper. It's also not that they are just selling one product either. It's quite a few lamptron products with the same issue.
@@itisabird because ultimately the seller is responsible, think the lawyer man touched on that as well.
😮
The AI translation caught me off-guard, the lipsync adjustment is surprisingly convincing.
Suddenly this video got very interesting.
I always enjoy your videos thanks bro
Knowing how he usually speaks, that AI translation is shockingly good. It still has some uncanny valley vibes, but damn...
The first time I noticed the PB5-926 tattoo! Interesting planet choice 😄
I spotted that long ago, very cool Roman! Big Stargate fan I take it?
@@heslo8767 Yes, he literally owns a prop from the series AFAIK
@@Wasmachineman Ah awesome!
Thank you DerBauer! This hungarian approves your video.
Lol! Lamptron.. Never trusted that name, never used them, seems my intuition was right (and i don't mean the AmigaOS GUI API) lol
Thanks for reminding me to renew my AIDA64.
They should use open source software, it is only a mini display after all. They can even legally brand it as their own if done right.
The e-mail is owned by Net-Ease.
I personally do not cae about stealing from businesses, even if another business does it, but still interesting to know.
Thankyou for taking the financial hit for your viewers
Always appreciate you calling out these scams
Good job mate.
they sold the best analog fancontrollers 20 years ago but since then never heard anything about this brand
Ai generated translation worked surprisingly well.
Thank You for the information.
Not buying their shit.
Can you do a review of GOverlay? It's an USB display for sensors and some other neet stuff.
Highly doubt an end consumer would suffer any legal consequences in practice unless maybe they try to knowingly resell it. For that there needs to be intent, or at least serious negligence. And we're not talking about anything supsiciously cheap here, these products are quite costly. They advertise the bundling of the software, and either special versions or single-version OEM software lisences for 3rd party software, as a tool or complilent to go with a piece of hardware is very common.
Heck just from the last couple of years of system building, sales and upgrades, I got a small drawer nearly full of slips and packaging cut-offs from all kinds of bundle-lisences customers said they didn't care about. I think nearly half of them are Acronis lisences from Kingston SSD packaging.
(If you buy any Kingston SSD, fold open the double cardboard layer *_above_* the plastic window with the drive - there will be an Acronis lisence key there. It's trasferrable post-activation to other computers too, no Kingston drives needed, as long as you log out or uninstall the former install first. It's no veeam, but it's noob friendly and absolutely decent for backups, imaging and drive migrations including resizing).
OF COURSE !
That AI translation is insane 😱
YES!! I got a Lamptron GPU holder with a screen on it. ADIA 64 was totally a hacked app you cant update it!! Came with a keygen app and driver workaround app as well and installing it was very strange brought memories of back in the days of Windows Vista. A few years later I got an ASUS AIO and it can use ADIA. The Installing ADIA differences were like night and day. Not only that I probably installed who knows what else with the keygen. Pretty sure lamptron is in China nothing will happen to them and they will continue to do things this way I got that GPU holder at least 3 years ago.
As others stated, IP is laughed about in certain countries run by demigods. Good investigative work, almost bought one of their products awhile back, glad I didn't go through with it.
If I didn't know that lawyer was AI translated I never would of guessed, freaky how good it is.
I also love it. Pretty sure in 2-3 years it will be much more common and hopefully cheaper, too
Even his mouth looked like he was speaking the words
German Law is wacky lol
Watch out GAMERS NEXUS
Good job.
So many companies do the same thing with alot other screen companies..all the keys thst sre bundled with it..I actually agree with this considering it'd the only app that works with sny screen for monitoring.. we need an alternative
As for people being guilty of money laundering, I wonder if the translation might instead be "fencing", which means knowingly recieving or buying stolen goods?
They think their software is far more valuable than it actually is
Yarg 🏴☠️
I actually did buy a key once, but it expires in 3 years.
Selling illegal keys is crazy...
Thanks for the "financial mistake" xD
trying to visit their website. and in the "ABOUT US" they write "Lamps electronics Co., Ltd., originally started its business operation in Germany"
Need to get Legal eagle for the US implications
I know for sure that it's jail-time, if someone is guilty of conspiracy to distribute software when not authorized. At minimum, it's a lawsuit case. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but U.S. copyright law, has a tendency to lean towards hefty civil actions. A ring that distributes, surely is subject to property seizure and jail time.
Вот так детективами и становятся))
I needed to watch it in both Versions, Just to See how you integrated Christians Statements in english.
Also the cooler unit itself, i mean its supposed to expel heat right, having a LCD placed right on top of the heating plates ?? would that even work for very long, wouldnt the plastic melt or the screen or parts get to hot and break as you said its cheap LCD, then placing it on top of a heat pipe system doesnt seem like the LCD panel itself would last very long if the unit got hot since its just air cooled ??
Some ASUS motherboards also might have AIDA64 Extreme (with ROG theme) via their Armoury Crate software. My ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero have got AIDA64 Extreme v6.85. I was able to download it, install and activate. Sadly, AIDA64 itself can't be upgraded online (it give error). Still you can compare\copy\paste files from 6.85 to 7.20 and it will work.
And you reckon these are also non-genuine?
@@HazewinDog ASUS pirates?
Also the HC070 box art prominently uses a gundam image in the product and last I checked using another companies copyrighted design to advertise your product was poor form and probably also illegal
Shout out to your collegaue, I bet 99% wouldn't even consider there's something fishy going on.
The problem here in USA for example the website is still available…. Unfortunately I have one of the product because I bought after your first video for my 011 rog Liam li because match the alluminium pattern …. So if you want I can send to you the key and maybe ask to make some legal action here in the USA as well. By the way you are my best tech CZcamsr so far ❤
Just noticed your Stargate tattoo! is it the address for PB5-926, from Serpent's Song or Der Sturz des Sonnengottes?
Havent heard of Lamptron since years ago for fan controllers
Thanks for the heads-up... sad to see a company that once made decent products go completely into scumbag mode.
@Roman at what point will you be able to tell if the delidding tool will work for AMD Ryzen 9000 series? Also I miss seeing you XOC! I haven't done anything sub 0 since I ran my 6700k at 5.4ghz at -5 degrees about 8 years ago and I know that most cpus will run that now all core on a dec AIO setup. Also id like to see what under volting AMD can do in terms of temperatures esp in a delidded CPU. Cheers Tim
it would be Fraud , deception and something to do with intellectual copyright laws here in the US. I think. I know it wouldn't have anything to do with money laundering lol. I'm not a lawyer but I have watched Matlock. German law is weird. how does money laundering have anything to do with this?
Cause knowingly making money off something illegal is money laundering! In the US it would be one of the many charges given!
@@martytube821 no. Money laundering is exactly like it sounds. Taking dirty money and 'cleaning' it. Like a drug dealer owning a small business and claiming he earned his drug money through that business. Unless they're saying this company is dealing drugs or robbed a bank or some other illicit activity.
So it about a 300% markup for the little screen.
How d9oes the person sueing see that you bought a key from ebay/ keysites?
For many software, a key is not valid without Certificate of Authenticity that you must be able to show.
But in EU they cannot forbid key resale. If software is originally sold with key per e-mail or some such, you have no way of knowing that the key isn't valid, so it's likely outside your responsibility anyway.
To be kept in mind that if you buy from dishonest sellers who sell stolen keys, the problem is you can't trust them to not sell the same key again every few weeks. So the keys end up flagging up eventually as pirated. Or the original purchase of the key by the reseller is flagged as having been made with stolen identity and stolen credit card, when the original credit card owner files a complaint or chargeback.
Just out of curiosity. What AI tool do you use to translate the videos? It seems to work really well for German -> English translation. I might find a use for that at my work if it can to Swedish -> English well.
Genuine software from Mainland China😂
That AI translation is Amazing!! Do you mind sharing the company/tool that you are using?
well that sucks, i remember a couple of years ago lamptron made a really cool fan controller with nixie tubes, shame theyve turned into this
Not the main subject of the video, but the AI translation was awesome! I am assuming the lawyer was speaking German, but the lip movements were quite good for the English!
happy to hear! It's perfect for exactly these cases
Dang Roman, you may end up in court because of this video.
At least it would be as a witness and not in the hot seat. 😮
Excellent work with this PSA
I bought a cheap aid key off a site. Same think happened to me. Worked till I tried to update it.
I just checked their website and they changed it from AIDA64 Business to AIDA64 Trial version
damn, the AI translation was good, it took me a glance upward to the top of the screen to realize it was being AI generated.
Those key selling sites also do this. You get a key that works for one version. Once I realized that I just bought a legit one for my Wigidash.
yeah last aida64 key i bought cheap from a keysite stopped working months later. i just leave it now telling me its not a legal copy.
Displays seem cool but all the extra cables, money and trouble doesnt seem worth it at all, might aswell put the money towards an overkill cooler and keep the machine silent. I liked the idea of the Deepcool Digital coolers thinking it had local logic in it and did not need extra wires just power like a fan but needing RGB, USB header and power is too much.
The fact that it's not a self contained display and just shows up as another monitor in Windows is what kills it for me.
I would like it if the display did it's own graphical processing and was fed data through USB and a system tray app.
@@volvo09 Considering we don't even have smart fan controllers past the Corsair iCue Commander Pro, I don't see why any company would bother to spend money in R&D to develop such solution.
Thanks Steve, wait...
i love my new wigidash
Category : Financial Mistake.
Take my up vote please.
Send Nintendo after them..... They seem to get stuff done 😅
I thought this was kind of well known about the Aida keys
Aida64 doesn't work with amd drives sadly. And have expressed they have no interest in fixing it.
No Lamptron No!! Argh. Have many of their fan controllers.
As the end user that buys one or two of these products I doubt you will get in trouble. You are not the professional and you can expect from a company that they checked all the legal stuff before selling it in your country. I do think if you are a commercial buyer or seller you are expected to double check what you are buying and selling and in that case you might get in trouble. That is how it works at least here in The Netherlands.
commenting for the youtube gods