Let's put this into some context and perspective in terms of the "illegality". These knockoffs are being sold not at 50-60% of Nordost's prices, let alone the 10% stated above by a poster concerned about the counterfeiting. The Odin Gold IC's I purchased are being sold at 1/20th of 1% of the quoted retail price of the real thing lol! There was not much chance I believed them to be actual Odin Gold haha!
The idea that Nordost is being damaged in any real way is ludicrous as the buyer for one product is simply not the buyer for the other. So it's pretty ridiculous to suggest Nordost is being harmed in any meaningful way. If someone wants to suggest that there might be an issue with someone reselling and representing the item as the real thing then that is another issue entirely and far more reprehensible IMO. Save your outrage for that.
So as far as any outrage I feel toward the Ali-express sellers of the interconnects I bought, I'd put it at about the same level of outrage that I feel toward people driving 2-3 miles per hour over the speed limit. That's illegal too, and much more likely to actually be harmful. As you can tell, I'm not losing any sleep over that either. I do that for things that are actually important.
I'm not really interested in "slippery slope" type arguments here. It would be great if we lived in a black and white world but unfortunately we do not. Once again: context & perspective.
Continue on with discussion about the actual cable (which as I've said, is really quite good).