All artists who use samples of other artists music ask for, and pay for, permission to use it.
You know that song "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve? The music is pretty much 100% a sample of an old Rolling Stones song. And the Verve didn't ask permission to use it. When lawyers for the Stones contacted them, they didn't even bother going to court. They settled for giving all royalties from the song to the Stones, in exchange for not having to pay any additional damages. In other words, bottom line, the Verve has made exactly $0 from that song, and will never make a dime from it.
As far as the difference between electronics and musical instruments.........it's a matter of where the cost of production lies. In electronics, the components and the assembly of the device are a small part of the overall product. A capacitor is a capacitor, and a solder joint is a solder joint. As long as you put together the capacitors and resistors and stuff in the same order, with soldering that doesn't come apart, every item you build will function identically. The thing that makes an electronic device valuable is the design of it. Sure, poor quality components and sloppy assembly are a factor in the overall quality of the final product, but the real craftsmanship is in the original design.
With musical instruments, the basic design is already defined. A bass is going to have strings and a neck and pickups and a bridge. The craftsmanship is in the execution of the design; the choice of woods and hardware, and the precise assembly of those components. The cost of a Sadowsky is not in the wood or the pickups or any of the components, it's in having Roger Sadowsky personally select the woods and components used, and his impeccable attention to their assembly. You're not paying for 9 pounds of maple and ash; you're paying for Roger's experience and wisdom.
So really the only way one bass company can steal from another is if they were to kidnap the people building the basses and force them to work. Essex cannot build a bass to compete with Sadowsky; they's have to have Roger himself. Or they'd have to hire a highly experienced luthier, which would increase their cost, and of course the luthier is going to hand-build far fewer basses than a factory assembly line turns out, so the cost goes up even more. Pretty soon you figure out that you do pay for whatt you get, and you get what you pay for. The craftsmanship in musical instruments is mostly in the choice of components and the assembly, not in the design.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case with electronics. All you have to do is copy the design. There aren't any people hand selecting capacitors and carefully fitting their leads into a circuit board, because it doesn't make any difference. You can buy 1000 high quality resistors, and every one will be the same. You can save some money on cheaper ones, and they'll be less consistent, but they'll still be pretty close. The craftsmanship in electronics comes from the engineer that designed the device, not in it's assembly.
....but really, i was asking about reliabilty on the behringer powerampps and someone comes in here preachin about the ethcics of buying behringer (which i have no idea what these ethics are about0 and that they stole from qsc and that i should really spend 6 times more money for something the same................oh well....last time i ask for advice
I looked at the pictures posted and they do not look "exactly the same". Sorry, I'm not seeing the carbon copy likeness. 
