Response to Rise of the Superfake

It seems about every ten years the New York Times Magazine will publish a piece that hangs on the moral ambiguity around purchasing counterfeits. I recall this one about shopping for counterfeits on Canal St. in NYC (how quaint: IRL purchasing of fakes); and now the latest one published last week looking at the rise of the “superfake”.

The TL;DR is that the author, enticed by an online ad, and a network facilitated by online intermediaries, caves to the pressures of commercialism and pecuniary recklessness and buys a “superfake” bag online, delivered to her door through a series of transshipments in Europe and the Middle East.

The author addresses the surface issues those in the brand protection space would immediately raise – counterfeiters don’t pay taxes, don’t have good labor practices, feed into criminal networks, and ride on the work of legit businesses, designers and creators.

Beyond the demand side, where most countries have not placed liability on end consumers (unlike France – where she travels, feeling a little guilty/thrilled about her crime); she pins the blame on the supply side problem which is mainly on the pressures for local Chinese officials (where the superfake factories are in Southern China) who wouldn’t pursue suppliers because of the local jobs creation (and concomitant corruption payments? -- something she doesn’t mention) despite China’s anti-counterfeiting laws. Ultimately, the production, marketing and distribution is compartmentalized into blocks (or cells), which are distributed, and relatively anonymized, ensuring the network remains robust even when one block is taken out.

What to do? Time Warp Again...

Thinking back to the Canal Street article published 10 years ago now – I am reminded of a global policy initiative that cratered around that time: the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). It’s got a number of good policies worth looking into and dare I say resurrecting for the next quarter century with some tweaks, given how the trade in counterfeit goods has become increasingly intertwined with online commerce.

I suggested in a think tank piece last year that we raise from the dead these and other new public-private-partnership ideas. Check out my full thesis here at the East-West Center, courtesy of the Korea Foundation.

Resurrect ACTA, but for Digital Trade

For the policy wonk in you, read the whole text of the ACTA here. But some of the good parts are found in articles 22, 25, 28, 33 and 36: provisions addressing civil judicial provisional remedies, disclosure of information to right holders to assist in the determination of infringement, tackling counterfeit goods in-transit and in small parcels for commercial purposes, encouraging more information sharing from online service providers to detect and deter infringement, domestic and international cooperation mechanisms, including the formation of a committee to monitor implementation and operation. Wonder if any of these would have helped prevent the superfake problem we face now???

Great writing by Ms. Wang, the author of the NYT piece, despite her lapse around IP protection - and I love how she ends the article quoting her fake bag seller's (she knows what's up) chengyu: 一分錢一分貨（you get what you pay).