The globalization of supply and distribution channels, multiplying the links in the control chain, has also boosted the criminal trade. The crooks not only copy labels; O’Neill says they duplicate consumer authentication items like the Underwriters Laboratories symbol, which is meant to guarantee the safety of electrical devices. “There have been problems with electrical cords” says O’Neill, “and even with Bluetooth devices that have burned people’s ears.”
Without a doubt the explosion in e-marketing has facilitated the growth in fakery. Taylor says, “The Internet has made the ability to move fake or diverted goods more seamless. It makes it much more difficult to police; there’s no brick and mortar facility to monitor.”
Not only does buying over the Internet prohibit hands-on inspection, but the identity of the seller is often masked. There are, according to Frederick Mostert, chairman of the Authentics Foundation, more than 205 million Internet sites. On his blog he writes, “According to the Annual European Anti-Counterfeit report… 80 percent of counterfeit goods were purchased online in 2008.” (I wish he’d give my daughter a call.) Despite some successful lawsuits against eBay and Google, those sites (unwittingly) provide ample opportunity for counterfeiters to reach a global audience. The proliferation of Internet sales and auctions is virtually unregulated.
While the distribution of fake goods reaches all corners of the globe, with fake vodka (spiked with potentially deadly methanol) coursing from Eastern Europe to the U.K. and fake pesticides finding their way to Ghana, O’Neill confirms that the epicenter of the counterfeit trade is in China.
Caroline Joiner, head of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, was quoted in a Gotham Gazette piece estimating that one quarter of China’s non-farm workforce is hard at work turning out fakes. The country badly needs to find jobs for the vast hordes of workers who each year migrate to its overburdened cities. The push to put these laborers to work appears to outweigh China’s urge to comply with world trade agreements. Authorities, after all, need go no further than Beijing’s Silk Market to find vendors hawking fake Polo shirts, Prada handbags, Calloway golf clubs, Cartier wristwatches, and Louis Vuitton suitcases. Although some make a pretense of avoiding scrutiny by conducting business in stairwells or alleyways, they seem to operate with the acquiescence (if not  protection) of the police force.
Although buying knock-off Nikes may seem harmless, those campaigning against counterfeiting point not only to the jobs lost to intellectual property abuse – some estimate the number at 750,000 in the United States alone – but also link revenues from these activities to drug trafficking and even terrorist activities such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Without a doubt the industry relies on horrific exploitation of child labor; opponents describe eight-year-old children chained to machines and made to sleep on cement floors. For all these reasons, industry groups and law enforcement officials have dialed up a sterner response. One trade group is estimated to be spending as much as $10 billion a year to combat the surge in fakes – small change compared to the profits at stake. And that is the problem: the profits are enormous – and the risk of discovery is still slight.
Valerie Salembier, publisher of Harper’s Bazaar, and the energy behind that publication’s aggressive assault on counterfeiting, has focused on consumer education. She and her colleagues have hosted several annual summits highlighting the damage done to the luxury trade, and the dreadful by-products of counterfeiting. The response by readers has convinced her that the message is getting across. “Three million women read this magazine,” she says. “We get mail all the time saying, ‘I had no idea that my purse parties could fund child labor’.”

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