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DNA-Tagging Used To Nab Counterfeit Olympic Goods
Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about the way Olympic officials are fighting counterfeit 'official' Olympic merchandise. Invisible ink containing DNA strands from an unnamed Australian athlete is used to write on almost everything sold -- that's around 50 million items. A team of 'logocops' then travels around Australia, using scanners to check merchandise at random. Over 120,000 items have already been identified as counterfeit and seized. The story has more details." Sounds like SF, but then ... flying cars aside, plenty of humans now have radio phones and organs they weren't born with. There are some other interesting applications named toward the end of the article, too.
sell blue dresses. Don't want to know what kinda DNA is on them!
Sig it.
I came real close to rolling my car the other day, and DNA tagged my underwear....
Could this method of tagging things with DNA be usd for a whole bunch of other purposes to uniquely identify items? However, I dont think this would work, if something were sufficiently profitable, it would be worth the while of some underworld cartel to get the equipment needed to extract the DNA tag from an original and replicate it and tag their own couterfeit items in the same way.
Sorry, No sig!
I'd almost believe it if I heard the claim that the athlete lost a whole leg to the process...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Is this real? If so, what sort of scanner do they have that can test for a particular piece of DNA is a small, portable unit (which is certainly what they're implying)? Or do they just confiscate a sample, and analyse it in a lab at a later date?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Have we become such a greedy people that we must make sure that no one else can make money from any idea that someone or some group claims to be theirs. The Olympics have been around for ever, yet we let someone own the name, and make other people pay to say this is official. We are in such a need for money that we must tag our merchandise with DNA to insure that no one else sells it. Oh and by the way, you can duplicate DNA without having to go back and get more samples from the donor, but hey what do I know.
Only the one person who buys a DVD will be able to watch it!
"Please supply a blood sample to start playback"
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Remember when the olympics was about competing atheletes? Now it seems to be a New World Order Olympics, with gagged atheletes, super-corporate sponsorships, DNA tagging of merchandise, random searches and seizures of Australian citizens, dispatching of the secret police to nearby countries, etc.
Next time he or she commits a crime, there'll be no worries about the DNA evidence! I can just see it now...
"Can you explain how your unique DNA got onto this crowbar?"
"Well, not exactly, sir, but you can see it's the official crowbar of the 2000 Olympics."
- Brian
This brings new meaning to the marketing phrase "A little bit of us goes into everything we make."
--
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
What is the point of authenticity in Olympic games goods? Unless you actually win a medal, the rest is just junk that will not survive the decade.
/. should change the name from Anonymous Coward to Anonymous Moron.
1) The counterfeit items are more likely to be junk and not last.
2) The IOC isn't getting a cut of the counterfeit stuff, and we all know how much they like their kickbacks... err, bribes... errr, cut. Yeah, that's it.... They just want their cut.
NecroPuppy
---
It's much closer to the truth.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
The athlete's DNA was most likely simply 'copied' using PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This is a
h tml
standard technique that sort of mimicks the DNA
replication process that goes on in real life. It's the cornerstone of the molecular biology revolution.
See http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~jbrown/pcr.html
or http://www.accessexcellence.com/AB/GG/polymerase.
I'm no DNA expert, but the general concensus is that there are no portable DNA scanners.
This whole thing sounds like a scare tactic to me. Plus, how are consumers to actually know if their vendor is legit?
"Nothing prevents people from taking a sample of that concoction of DNA off a T-shirt and PCR'ing it..."
No, but making the counterfeit DNA tags may be quite difficult. The DNA tag probably consists of a short sequence that is present at only low concentrations. To be able to make PCR copies, you first have to figure out what primers to use, which may not be too easy since the sequence is kept secret.
If they're smart, it will be mixed in with a lot of trash sequences as well, to serve as decoys. Since we have no way to pick out what's the real key sequence, we would have to copy them all -- and it's very easy to generate astronomical numbers of decoys.
Of course, if someone were to get hold of the test equipment they use, then the problem becomes a lot easier.
...but one has to wonder how they "extracted" the DNA material... and just how much of it...
BlackNova Traders
So won't exposure to certain wavelengths of light (UV, etc.) damage the DNA? If a rack of Olympic Windbreakers are hanging in a shop window, couldn't the tags have their special ink altered by direct sunlight?
Like a lot of you, I wondered how they can non-destructivly authenticate DNA in the field. Take a look at the PSA/DNA web site. This is a sports memorabilia authentication company with a gimmick. They include synthetic DNA in a special ink which is used to tag an item. A special laser can make the tagging visible. Does the laser prove which DNA lot was used to tag the item? NO way! Eventually, someone will figure out how to make an ink that glows under the special laser, and their system will be worthless. Presumably, a sample could be taken to the lab, and analyzed, but this would be expensive, slow and destructive -- the very things they claim not to be.
Bootlegging stuff is a cornerstone of a small, but important market. It's the freedom to innovate, just like Microsoft.
But the IOC doesn't view it like that. They are just so afraid that a small-time vendor here or there might cut into their billion dollar profits! So, off to jail with you - heathen! How dare you try to make money off of our amateur sporting events!
Greed is a powerful thing.
There is an equal mix of humor, honesty and trolling in the above statements
sig not found
I have a hard enough time getting DNA to survive a few days in a pH buffered solution, let alone stuck to a friggin' t-shirt. What a bunch of crap. DNA hydrolyzes faster than my kid sister drops a load in her drawers at a cheesy horror film. And as for scanners? Uh-huh. Not even worth a reply... Shamino
Butchers make the bestest meat; sugar sugar sugar beet!
Damn, I knew it was too good to be true. All these years of offering sacrifices in the temple of Nylon, only to discover that he's a counterfeit Olympic god. I'll bet Zeus is pissed.
Somewhat on-topic: is it common for Australian parents to not name children they believe will grow up to be athletes?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
You are all forgetting that the Olympics are now the intellectual property of whatever well-heeled mucky-mucks are able to bring them to a city. How dare you think that just anyone can draw five circles on a T-shirt and get away with selling it without paying tribute to aforementioned mucky-mucks in the form of a fat licensing fee.
Of course, I can still remember when the Olympic atheletes actually held day jobs and competed for their love of the sport. (Yah, yah, I know, how quaint.) It really is no fun at all to watch the Olympics any more.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
My question is, when is MS going to pick up on this for their PID cards? Have you ever looked closely to the Certificate of Authenticy that you receive with MS products? Talk about elaborate. There's even color changing ink that changes color from heat when you put your finger on it. There are more security features on a MS PID than there are on a $100 bill.
kwsNI
Intertwined Quickies, Aussie Style
.02
[ Sex ] Posted by quux26 on 12:35 PM September 14th, 2000
dagget purchases a DNA-tagged USO shirt, rufDEV ports CueCat to that $35,000 Cray up for sale on eBay, some people over at CERN started watching way too many episodes of Weird Science and a Norwegian kid is busted for owning his very own Mia Hamm clone. Coincidence? Can you blame him?? We think not.
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
I see, sort of like the "race against piracy" with copy protection in the Commodore/Atari/Amiga days... :)
Well, it's a little different. We're not talking about something that makes it harder for the consumer to use merchandise that they've rightfully purchased. We're talking about, basically, a theft deterrent.
Just like banks used to throw ink grenades into money bags during a heist, where as now they have moved on to discrete, traceable transponders that are glued between two real dollar bills. Usually on the bottom of the money drawer.
An interesting side note... one of my friends used to work at a bank. During a holdup, they had these "transponders" on the bottom of their drawers, so she slipped them into the piles of money. The robber said, "Wait a second..." Grabbed the stack of money, leafed through it, and then pulled "one" bill out of the pile... a particularly thick bill. He threw it in her face and laughed, "Nice try."
I guess they'll come up with smaller transponders in the future...
Weird, huh kids?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
My great grandfather was selling Olympic stuff at the 1904 St Louis Games. He didn't have the IOC permission beforehand and didn't get sued even though they knew he was doing it. They didn't even ask him to stop. So was he a counterfeiter or not?
I'm wondering if the courts would consider 96 years of not protecting your "trademark" enough to allow me to sell stuff down near the stadium.