I think it's very simple, amazon and all such stores should be held liable for the fraud and lost business as if they themselves created the counterfeit goods. macys wouldn't be given a free pass if it sold counterfeit nikes in their B&M store. so why does amazon get one, they take a 15% cut just like macys does.
Amazon is a lot more powerful and influential than Macy's is. I think this is at least partially caused by the increasingly important political relationship between major employers like Amazon and governments.
Amazon likely tells governments that being held accountable for things like this would dramatically hurt their business, and therefore cost jobs. No politician wants to be blamed for lost jobs.
Iirc, this was orchestrated by the progressive wing of the NY Democratic Party and was a fairly controversial decision.
The progressives still represent a fairly small contingent of the left, and don’t really have the influence to materially alter policy decisions, especially at the federal level. Much of the US still isn’t very interested in progressive politics, especially given the migration of moderate conservatives to the Democratic Party.
2020 is going to be a make-or-break election for progressives IMO.
By which point they'll run the money supply as well. Surely the introduction of Libra may make a proper Amazon-coin more palatable? They must have teams and teams watching this with eagle eyes..
This seem to make a lot of sense, so I assume there must be some serious reason for the fact it isn't happening already. Is this hard to implement legally? Is there just not enough incentive to do so?
The cost of suing Amazon (which is how a customer would hold them liable) greatly outweighs the cost of almost any counterfeit good they might happen to ship.
The government is not likely to step with criminal enforcement unless they are presented with proof that Amazon purposefully ordered the fakes, or knowingly sold fakes.
Generally speaking, retailers are considered victims, not perpetrators, of counterfeiting. That's because when a retailer sells a counterfeit, the retailer has to process the returns and deal with angry customers, and then they're left with worthless inventory.
Again, the exception is if the retailer knowingly traffics in fakes and tries to defraud their customers. Proving that takes some pretty specific evidence though.
I don't see why police can't simply use civil asset forfeiture seize an entire warehouse, just like they seize homes from owners who might not know that another resident was selling drugs out of it. Proving that the owner knew of the crime isn't necessary to seize an instrument of crime.
Because Amazon will fight back. I guarantee you that very few people with 50 billion dollars of cash in their bank account have their homes taken via civil asset forfeiture.
If Amazon does not go out of its way to fix this and eradicate the problem completely, it is knowingly trafficking in fakes. Amazon absolutely should be held accountable for providing such a convenient platform for counterfeiters.
There are lots of problems with that approach, unfortunately:
Returning means you need to repack and re-ship the item. Sometimes they cover the shipping cost but not always
Sometimes the counterfeit item only becomes evident after the return window has expired, like buying a wireless adapter for game controllers that breaks in 2 months. (It turns out one of the earliest rampant counterfeit issues on Amazon was people selling knockoff USB adapters for XBox controllers, oddly enough). At that point you can't return, all you can do is leave a nasty review for the product you bought From Amazon.
Some counterfeits are basically indistinguishable from the real product unless you're an expert. If you buy some vitamins or Tylenol off amazon, do you really have the resources and expertise to identify whether they're fakes or tainted or a batch that failed to pass quality control? So now you have to convince Amazon to take this thing back.
In the end at this point Amazon knows very well how much counterfeiting is happening on their platform and they aren't taking enough effort to stop it. It can't all lie on the individual customer to spot and combat counterfeits, they aren't able to do it.
Anecdotal but I learned that some DJI drone props I bought were counterfeit about 7 months after buying them and after many drone crashes. I explained the issue to Amazon and after a couple of questions, they gave me a full refund. It was only 15$ and probably not even worth my time but it never hurts to ask.
People aren't really keen on taking few hours of their day to repackage and ship back something that is 20-50$.
I often buy things from amazon-like storefronts here in asia and sometimes they refund no questions asked but sometimes they require you to ship it back and 90% of the time it's not worth it. All of these "free returns" policies sound much better than they actually are.
One of more recent anecdotes:
I bought a new keyboard for my Thinkpad which said "genuine" and serial numbers in decription match ones with Lenovo's. The keyboard turned out to be fine but had no backlight. My point is that packing it up and sending it back to neihbouring country is just not worth it. I clicked refund and left a negative review and that's pretty much as far as I'm willing to go for 60$ that I've spent.
I think this needs to be tested in court. Newegg and Walmart do this as well. It feels like this goes against the intent of customer protection laws. For most people, they think they are buying this stuff from walmart. Walmart, Amazon, etc should be accountable for this in some way.
Recently the US Supreme Court ruled in Apple v. Pepper that app buyers of the iOS App Store do have standing to sue Apple in the antitrust suit, because they're buying the apps from Apple directly, and not from the apps' developers.
Regardless of the eventual outcome of the suit, this ruling may have implications for other online storefronts. Here, the Court saw online storefronts as the sellers of goods sold, regardless of whatever business arrangements may be in place between the suppliers and the storefront. Under this interpretation, it's likely that fewer antitrust suits could get thrown out on questions of standing against storefronts. With these prospects, it's likely that more suits will be brought.
My prediction is that to mitigate this, storefronts will try to introduce more visual separation between first-party store and the third-party sellers' stores, even if the items are still found from a unified search and catalogue. The purchasing of the third-party item will take place at the third-party storefront, but the payment will be processed by the captive aggregator and fulfilled and supported by them as well.
It is very hard to eliminate false-positives without introducing a raft of false-negatives as well. If you held Amazon liable for anything bad a 3rd party merchant ever does, they will react by clamping down on all unverified merchants, and a lot of small/medium businesses will find themselves caught in the crossfire. Especially those who don't fall under the umbrella of Amazon's good graces. Is that really what you want?
More generally speaking, do we believe there's any value in having open platforms with platform-owners who aren't trying to police every single actor using the platform? There have certainly been many politicians who wanted to regulate the internet as a whole, similar to how you've asked for Amazon to be regulated. Would society be better off if ISPs were held liable for any fraud/unlawful behavior that happens on their networks, and were expected to police all internet traffic they were routing?
> Would society be better off if ISPs were held liable for any fraud/unlawful behavior
Not a good analogy, ISPs are dumb pipes. Amazon boosts and profits from bad actors. None of them would have a chance to get the reach Amazon provides them. Of course Amazon should be held accountable. I don't buy the "open platform" angle when it comes to FB, Google, etc.
Especially when they've demonstrated countless times they aren't platforms. I find this when-it's-convenient form of claiming they're platforms particularly galling.
Sure, but we're talking about directional shifts. Do you want Amazon to move in the direction of being a laissez faire platform that is open to everyone? Or do you want it to move in the direction of being a tightly controlled ecosystem where all merchants are at the whims of Amazon's corporate overlords? Your suggestion would move Amazon towards the latter
> where all merchants are at the whims of Amazon's corporate overlords
Very dramatic. If you don't want to be subject to Amazon, run your own shop. It's easier than ever before. I really don't understand how counter-fitters should be under any kind of protection by Amazon. And why Amazon should not be held to a standard that does not make them accomplices to black sheep.
The internet and Amazon do not share an important characteristic: openness.
I don't need the internet's permission to publish and this makes the tradeoff with chaos acceptable.
Basically we trade order over freedom.
I'd go further: neutral platforms should be the norm.
If then someone wants to build a walled garden fine, but there must be a neutral alternative by default.
If you held Amazon liable for anything bad a 3rd party merchant ever does, they will react by clamping down on all unverified merchants, and a lot of small/medium businesses will find themselves caught in the crossfire.
Amazon could handle that problem by helping the small merchants more though. Bezos does claim to be "obsessed with the customer" after all, and those businesses are his customers.
Allowing people who buy things on Amazon to get fake products is failing everyone in the whole supply chain apart from the business that supplies the fakes and Amazon itself. If I were Bezos I'd be quite unhappy about that.
At the very least Amazon should not be allowed (and fined if they do) to replace genuine articles from one merchant by stuff from another, just because the second one promises to deliver the exact same thing.
Apparently you can get “brand protection” in some special cases, but it should be default.
> More generally speaking, do we believe there's any value in having open platforms with platform-owners who aren't trying to police every single actor using the platform?
Amazon's not just an "open platform" here. Through deliberate features of their logistics system and customer-facing storefront, the primary branding on anything bought via Amazon is _Amazon's_.
Take for example the FBA program with shared stocking. Amazon relies on a supplier's assertion that their goods are not counterfeit and are identical to others of the same SKU, but it then repeats that representation to the consumer on Amazon's own behalf.
The advantage of Amazon's model is that it provides an integrated storefront, but it is not an "open platform" as a result. eBay is closer to an open platform, and there the difference between individual sellers is a first-order feature, where even sellers of identical goods manage their own listings and product descriptions.
The simplest consumer-friendly solution would be:= to make consumers whole: if I receive a counterfeit item, Amazon should send me a genuine replacement immediately free of charge, and pay me $5 for my time if they want the counterfeit item back.
I think it would pay off for Amazon in the long run. Right now, I avoid Amazon for any significant purchases, because I do not trust them.
This is trickier, and it also happens to "real stores" as well. If someone in the middle of the supply chain does a switch from real goods to counterfeit, it can go unnoticed by everyone downstream.
However, when someone DOES notice, the situation must be remedied. Amazon should be liable to some degree for everything they sell. Consumers should have recourse. Maybe they already do? Can they return for a refund from Amazon if they dispute the authenticity of the product?
> Can they return for a refund from Amazon if they dispute the authenticity of the product?
Yes, very easily but that's not enough because Amazon still profits so massively from everyone else that it doesn't even raise a bell in their accounting.
That's a good one, the ones in this article are pretty bad / obvious counterfeits, but for things like idk, clothing it can be harder to spot them.
But that's where customs should come in; counterfeiting products is illegal, selling fake brand clothing is illegal, and if Amazon sells them they can (and should) be held accountable. It's that branch of law enforcement's job to protect both consumers and brands from counterfeits, you pay taxes for that reason.
It's a civil dispute between the parties involved, not a crime (in most cases) and if it's a crime it's probably most easily prosecuted under criminal negligence or something like that. It's basically lying and lying isn't illegal except in specific circumstances.
Counterfeiting is a crime in the US. The act of importing counterfeit goods into the US can get you arrested at the border, as an individual. However, Amazon seems to have been given a free pass.
I work in international freight, so I can only cofidently talk about the import side.
From my understanding/experience, dealing with counterfeit items is mostly the responsibility of the IP owner and mostly handled at borders, for the United States you mostly find this in 19 CFR 133 for intellectual property rights.
For trade name stuff, the trade name must have been in use for at least 6 months.
For trademark it has to be registered in Washington DC at the Patent Office, is good for 20 years, has to be registered with Customs and has a fee to register.
Copyright stuff is similar to trademark.
If Customs has suspicion of trade name/trade mark infringement they will detain the shipment, notify the importer of record and the IOR has 30 days to respond and get owner's approval for release of the shipment. The IP owner will also be notified with the date of import, port, name of manufacturer and the importer of record, the country of origin and then the owner has 30 days to respond before release, if the owner wants to stop the shipment they have to post a bond for the value of the shipment at which point Customs will provide a sample and the owner can decide to release the shipment to the importer of record , allow the importer of record to export it out of the country or to remove the objectionable mark before it can be released.
For counterfeit merchandise, Customs will seize and/or destroy it and they will notify the IP owner the names of the importer of record, manufacturer, country of origin and quantity.
For patents, has to be registered with the Patent Office and is good for 20 years. If there is infringement a import survey can be requested and and exclusion order can be obtained from the International Trade Commission.
For grey market articles (genuine articles but not permitted to be imported into the united states, think licensing agreement/authorized reseller type thing) it will get detained, it will be checked against a database, if the importer of record is on the allowed list it will be released and if not the shipment is seized.
The problem with this is, Customs doesn't manually inspect every single shipment so it is fairly easy to get the vast majority of counterfeit goods in. Once it is inside the country, it's basically entirely on the company that's product has been counterfeited to identify counterfeit merchandise, identify sellers and pursue legal action.
---
I've seen plenty of tales on reddit and elsewhere of individuals selling knock off Oakleys/Coach bags etc get letters from the owners/their law firms and some instances of suit.
If you're selling small amounts, one can fly under the radar, if you're insulated somewhat by Amazon/FBA then it can also slow down all but larger companies from coming after you.
If you do get caught, my understanding is they'll usually cease and desist you. If you persist, they can come after you under the Lanham Act for 3x profit or damages (whichever is greater).
And what if you can't be made whole? What if a counterfeit product causes serious injury or death to you or your family members? Amazon should be held liable for it!
They do. I ordered a corkscrew (https://www.amazon.com/Pulltaps-Double-Hinged-Waiters-Corksc...), got a fake one and complained. Amazon gave me a refund, a $5 credit for the hassle and didn't make me return the fake one. But it's incredible that the problem goes so far that people are selling fake corkscrews!
> macys wouldn't be given a free pass if it sold counterfeit nikes in their B&M store
The equivalent would be holding a shopping mall liable for the fraud and lost business one of their tenant caused by sourcing counterfeit goods. I don't see any brick and mortar shopping mall getting more than a tap on the wrist under this premise.
No, shopping mall is not the right analogy. Amazon is much closer to a consignment store in this regard -- doubly so for the "fulfilled by Amazon" stuff. You've walked into Amazon's store; the stuff on the shelves happens to be owned by someone else, but Amazon is displaying it, handling the transaction, providing customer service, and so on. And while a (large enough) consignment store can't police everything, I think for egregious enough problems they can't have their cake and eat it too.
This is the same crap that Uber tries: if you want the power to control the (work|sale) experience to such a degree, then you have to take responsibility when it goes wrong.
I think it's more akin to multiple suppliers not multiple tenants.
1) There's a single unified storefront
2) Supplier of a product is transparent to the customer shopping experience
3) The checkout, payment, and shipping experience is singular and unified
The unified and efficient experience is amazon's strength, and I still make 90% of my purchases there. But yes, they should police and be held accountable for bad suppliers. It is amazon's store they are being sold at.
reply