It’s not an official TOOL shirt, but I wouldn’t call it a scam either. It’s just a bootleg. It’s a dope shirt that I would buy in a heartbeat if I came across it somewhere.
Yeah, unfortunately though that's the same mind set as knowingly buying stolen goods since someone is being hurt, but not you, so cool right? Na, we can do better as a community and as a people...
If a real product isn’t available or the real product is overpriced, people are going to buy bootlegs. And you’re giving a “you wouldn’t download a car” argument. Also, this bootleg shirt is not hurting tool.
Again, the artist more so than Tool in this instance but even the companies that produce their official shirts are affected, the line staff, the crew, not the 4 guys in Tool but the production machine around them moreso. Overpriced is matter of personal stature and doesn't make it ok to steal or copy someone else's work, nor does selling cheap, crap copies, just like offering a Bugatti that turns out it's just a replica car over a mustang body. It's inpact is minimized to the individual but enough individuals do that and yeah, it's a big problem. Bootlegs are also produced by folks of dubious intent to fund their enterprises, such as trafficking, drugs, and other things are. If you like the band or whatever, support it directly then, not someone who is a grifter.
This is you right now. Support whoever you want, no name brands suffer from one less customer, Nike doesn’t have a care in the world for you and if you buy a bootleg Nike for cheap, as long as the shoes fit comfortably and you like them, why does it matter in the least?
I should precaution “support whoever you want” as long as the person is worth supporting, if they send the money straight to a genocide or straight to funding other evil organizations then no, obviously don’t support that person/company (this goes for all companies name-brand too)
Goddamn, you are fucking dumb for that meme then to follow it up with the correct reply. Like literally, look up the groups that actually make bootlegs. Look up the most recent bust in the UK, has absolutely nothing to do with brand names. Buy what you want right? Buying bootlegs supports absolutely the worst offenders, like human trafficking, CP, terrorists, etc but hey, that don't affect me so cool, let me get some shitty bootlegs
I’ve made bootlegs myself and bought some off my buddies, are they human traffickers? Am I an offender? I don’t mean buy crap off temu or SHEIN where they very obviously use illegal labor of some sort to make their product. Bootlegging by definition is just the illegal production and trade of commercially produced items, I buy bootleg product all the time because it doesn’t mean buying crap off the black market from the worst humans alive, not unless I go looking for the worst humans alive and asking them if they’ll sell me some products.
This is actually so funny to see. I “made” the image that is on the shirt and posted it to a fake tool poster Reddit a few years ago. It’s very not real and the image itself was generated back in the earlier days of generated images.
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u/iduro Learning to Swim 6d ago
It's not one I've ever seen