Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
WHEN YOU BUY A FAKE PURSE YOU'RE BUYING DEATH!!! This is just ridiculous. According to the New York Times, that fake purse you bought down on Canal Street last time you were in New York was made by a Colombian child working for Al Qaeda in China:
Most people think that buying an imitation handbag or wallet is harmless, a victimless crime. But the counterfeiting rackets are run by crime syndicates that also deal in narcotics, weapons, child prostitution, human trafficking and terrorism. Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that profits from the sale of counterfeit goods have gone to groups associated with Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group, paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.Sales of counterfeit T-shirts may have helped finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. "Profits from counterfeiting are one of the three main sources of income supporting international terrorism," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.
Because clearly, an organization dedicated to going after counterfeiters has no incentive to exaggerate and the statement that "profits from" counterfeiting have gone to groups "associated with" terrorism leaves no room for ambiguity. Look, I'm sure that there is some truth to this, but the over-the-top rhetoric is ridiculous. Child labor and international terrorism have many causes, and I highly doubt that even if everyone in the world stopped buying counterfeit goods either scourge would go away. After all, this kind of fear-mongering has worked so well to reduce drug use and copyright infringement ... oh wait it hasn't at all. The real problem is expressed with admirable briefness my Miuccia Prada:
"There is a kind of an obsession with bags," the designer Miuccia Prada told me. "It's so easy to make money."
--Sam Boyd
COMMENTS (7)
But this isn't cause for a serious reexamination of copyright law, nooo....
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | August 30, 2007 6:17 PM
... Written, of course, by an author whose recent book is a paean to the days when a decent piece of luggage was unaffordable luxury, and the average worker simply crawled back from the Triangle Shirtwaist factory to their rat-infested hovels clad in their soiled rags, like their station in life mandated.
You have to love the self-satisfied cluelessness of a phrase like, "Luxury brands also need to teach consumers that the traffic in fake goods has many victims." Takes quite a bit of chutzpah to anoint oneself the defender of Hermes *and* the impoverished.
To be fair, I'm all for enforcing design patents, within reason, and I certainly don't condone the buying or selling of fake luxury goods (counterfeited tags and all). But Thomas' attempt to link the counterfeit market with everything from terrorism to child labor (as we all know, no brand name company ever uses child labor in their Chinese subcontractors' factories!) is somewhere between pathetic and offensive.
Posted by: tWB | August 30, 2007 6:34 PM
Yeah, you aren't subsidizing al-Qaeda when you buy a fake Gucci bag.
Just when you buy gasoline.
Posted by: DuBaun | August 30, 2007 7:08 PM
Excellent post. I, too, found my withers unwrung by the original article. Its absurdities were so great that it really doesn't need any parodying, but I do feel a bit better knowing I wasn't alone in my rage at being lectured to about the value of protecting luxury goods in order to stave off the terrorist menace.
Frankly, I was insulted that the goober who wrote the piece would imply that anyone reading the article would bother to waste money on the "real thing" let alone the fake version. I blow my money on drugs and illegal weapons and everyone knows *that* has nothing to do with terrorism.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | August 30, 2007 10:15 PM
The terrorism stuff is of course absurd, as you "fund" terrorism in Central Asia no more or less than you do when you buy any product manufactured there, but I'm somewhat miffed by the tone against the concept of slave market goods in general.
When you buy a fake Prada bag on the street- no, you're no funding al-Qaeda. You're still funding an operation that relies almost entirely on child and sweatshop labor. And you can equally thank the moronic fashion industry in general for fabricated value of a piece of leather tied together with string that makes a damn logo worth four hundred dollars.
Posted by: August J. Pollak | August 31, 2007 9:14 AM
Well, but august J. Pollak, what's the connection between counterfeit and slave labor? What's the evidence that paying full price for prada or whatever you aren't also still paying for slave labor? There's no evidence that real prada pays more to its workers. In fact, as far as I know, lots of counterfeit stuff isn't really "counterfeit" but just the same crap sold out of the back of the shop while you are paying full price out of the front of the shop. The very notion of a "real" bag with a logo vs a "fake" bag with a logo makes me giggle. Its like paying extra money for the seller to hum a song while you pay.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | August 31, 2007 11:08 AM
I found your web page from bing and it is superb. Thankx for providing such an informative post!!!!
Posted by: johlynesmail | January 29, 2010 1:55 AM