Personally I'm surprised by the attitude here, fakes have no place are poor quality and do nothing for watchmaking.
I think we're all quite aware of the crap nature of fakes - hence the slightly amused posts above. Some watch forums even go so far as to ban any discussion of fakes, which I think is stupid, and doesn't make them go away.
I've never actually seen a fake watch in my life, to the best of my knowledge, and would never buy one - see what I think about them at: http://www.willswatchpages.com/fake-and-replica-watches.html - but, in a perverse way, to know more about what makes a fake a fake is adding to the sum of watch knowledge! Fakes, as you say, do nothing for watchmaking, but the collector should learn to know what to look for, and not all fakes are obvious to the novice.