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$200B Lost To Counterfeiting? Back It Up
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a story about how the recession has impacted product counterfeiters. In it, the reporter regurgitates the oft-repeated claim that counterfeiting 'costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year.' Techdirt's Mike Masnick asks the Times reporter to back up that assertion, noting two recent reports (by the GAO and the OECD) that suggest the actual number is much lower, and quoting two reporters who have actually looked at the numbers and found (a) the real number is probably less than $5 billion, and (b) the $200 billion number can be traced back to a totally unsourced (read: made-up) magazine claim from two decades ago."
Trying to get more free money from the government?
Gasp!
I don't see how counterfeit products could do much damage to the US job market. Most of the legit products are made overseas too, right?
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
On one hand, they are trying to salvage old media, and on the other hand they are trying to kill efforts like Wikileaks.
It seems pretty obvious.
CNN can just say anything they want, even if it's completely inaccurate and has no sources to back it up. They can just say their source is secret, and nobody is even going to ask.
Wikileaks, OTOH, shows you the actual docs. That's why they are being persecuted as criminals.
Encyclopedia Britannica is written by an unknown number of employees under unknown circumstances, and they cite no sources clearly (In the best case, they just cite a bunch of sources that might or might not back up their claims, and there's no direct way to check them easily).
Wikipedia is edited by the general public, each edit can be easily identified and accredited to a single author, and all sources are directly linked to in most cases.
And yet, Encyclopedia Britannica is considered more credible than Wikipedia, even when it's been shown that it's far more inaccurate, not to mention outdated.
Old media has to die, but the almighty economic powers that run this world won't let it go without a fight.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Five billion dollars is still a lot of money.
But put the numbers in perspective.
US GDP $14,260,000,000,000 (2009 estimate, courtesy of the CIA)
$200 Billion equals 1.4% of the GDP
$5 Billion equals 0.035% of the GDP
One is a problem worthy of immediate attention. The other is a problem to worry about when nothing else is pressing.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
The difference is between effective government and ineffective government, not the ability of a government to provide a just society. Hang on, I'll put it simply: you need to learn more than what your daddy told you. It's a big, big world out there.
Let's look at two modern western nations and see what the results are:
USA vs Norway
GDP per Capita (World Bank)
Norway: $55,000
USA: $46,000
Life Expectancy
Norway: 80 years
USA: 78.2 years
Poverty Rates
Norway: 7%
USA: 12%
Employment Rates:
Norway: 3.5% (April 2010)
USA: 8% (April 2010)
Income Inequality (Lower is Better)
Norway: 25.8
USA: 40.8
Vacation Time
Norway: 25 days
USA: 14 days
Awww boo. Reality is a bitch, ain't it?
Well, did the person selling the fake skirts make it clear that they were fake (or at least, did the customers know)?
If so, then all they wanted was a skirt that looked a particular way; they didn't care who made it. Your ex's store, or the designers who supply her, can only try to compete in three ways, it seems to me.
First, quality; their skirts may be made of better materials than the fakes, or may be made with better techniques. If so, try to differentiate based on this. Of course, some people are satisfied with synthetics instead of natural materials, or poorer materials instead of finer ones, or single stitching instead of double stitching, so it won't always work, and the price difference may remain substantial. (There was an interesting article in the NY Times the other day about the Italian fashion industry and wool quality)
Second, price; how cheaply can the real skirts be made? Maybe it would be more efficient to sell skirts out of a van, instead of out of a store that is expensive to lease. It looks like the fake guys are winning on this front, but there's no reason that they necessarily have to.
Third, brand; there may be some cachet that can be used to make money out of the brand of the manufacturer or the distributor. Some people presented with identical products from different vendors at different prices may prefer the more expensive one as a form of conspicuous consumption. (You can see it elsewhere; a real Picasso is worth a lot, but a forgery, no matter how identical, is worth a lot less to people who care about this sort of thing) It can work, but it has problems. Some people don't care about brands, but just want a nice skirt. If the fake is good enough, they'll probably buy it since it costs less than the same thing from elsewhere. Some people care about brands, but are excluded due to artificially high prices set by the people controlling the brands. They'll deliberately seek out the fake skirts in order to most closely approximate the real thing.
I suspect that the ex et al have been trying to compete only on brand, and perhaps partially on materials (although usually brand justifies more of an increase in price than materials). If it's not working as well as they'd like, perhaps they ought to try a different approach?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.