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Read the comments on the other article.

There's a link to contact the author on the New York Times page. I went ahead and asked:
http://www.iacc.org/
See "About Counterfeiting -> The Truth About Counterfeiting"

Yes, feel free to read this or refer to the IDC report if you really care.

http://www.iacc.org/news/index.php?id=82

For anyone interested in complaining to the member companies about this... here is a link to their membership list.

Some members are no surprise and don't care if their customers hate them (RIAA, MPAA). Others are more likely to respond to bad press (Apple, Microsoft, Vivendi). Other sponsors are directly responsible, such as the government agencies (many in the USA and Canada) and the states of North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Send a letter or e-mail, maybe this crap will not happen again, at least not in academia where it is so easily detected.

I love the brag. The Industry Conclusion is correct, though not the way they want it to be.

Conclusion:
The campaign will live beyond the event as the Web sites will remain live, and students will be reminded by the giveaways to Break the Chain of harmful of harmful events that can result from counterfeiting.

They are going to have a hard time living this one down. Fake blogs, with more than 300 myspace friends, including Justin Timberlake! What they have managed to do is indelibly link their brands to fake. Hyped, expensive fake regardless of real quality. How do they expect anyone to trust them again? Their stuff is better why? Because they spend money on BS like this? Because the "real" stuff comes from a sweat shop with a sharper whip? It's hard to imagine a better example of the harm imaginary property does and they festering pile of lies that supports it.

People in the market for a 10~100 dollar (fake) Rolex are not the same people who are in the market for a 5,000~10,000 dollar Rolex

Bingo. I think only you, in this entire discussion so far, even read the FP, much less TFA.

Counterfeiting != Piracy, people.

The RIAA has a pretty good argument (even if they use massively inflated numbers) when they say that the average person who pirated popular-song-X might have bought it instead. That doesn't scale up to tens of thousands of songs, but as a one-off, they have a valid point.

When the IACC tries to make the same argument, it falls completely flat. These jokers make the RIAA look reasonable by comparison. The average person simply will not ever buy a $1500 handbag or a $5000 watch. This organization doesn't protect the average Joe (they even admit the counterfeit goods usually have comparable quality to the real thing, making them harder to spot); They don't protect the manufacturers (since counterfeiting results in no lost sales); They don't help anyone but the mega-rich.

They make sure Paris Hilton doesn't need to run home and change because her cellmate wore the same (if $10k cheaper) shoes to the press conference.

Maybe you are unaware of this, but going after counterfeiters is one of the main missions of the FBI. They do this sort of thing all the time. (See this pdf.) I'm not sure who you think the "real criminals" are that they ought to be chasing after , but as far as the US government is concerned, anyone who tries to short-circuit the capitalist machine is a "real criminal," much more so than a mere murderer or rapist. So feel free to write your congressman and tell him that, "as a taxpayer" you think the government should stop protecting corporate interests. But, frankly, that sort of demand is laughable when you're talking about a country that has on multiple occasions invaded foreign countries on behalf of just one corporation.

Just because you are unconvinced or never heard of something does not make ME a moron.

You can't sue a company in China. The only thing you can do is to crack down on the smuggling.

Here's a breakdown of what the US Customs seized in the first half of 2001. Note this is only what it seized; who knows how much actually gets through. US Customs Seizures. In the 2000 figures you see Consumer Electronics at 3%. Not much, but yes, it does exist.

As for what Philips is doing; in India, they conducted 27 raids in 19 months on factories making counterfeit products story.

From the Aussie ZDNet, a story about a huge shipment of counterfeit Nokia phones. story.

Doing a google search about China and counterfeiting and you find mostly software and playstation game piracy stories. But you can find stories about counterfeit consumer electronics if you look.