Amazon Partners With the US Government To Stop the Sale of Counterfeit Goods (theverge.com) 72
Amazon announced a joint operation with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) on Tuesday, focused on stopping counterfeit goods from entering the US. The Verge reports: The partnership will rely on intelligence gathered from Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit, logistics company DHL, and US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to proactively stop the sale of counterfeit products. "Operation Fulfilled Action" relies on Amazon's dominant positioning as both a distributor and marketplace for products. Because of the amount sold on Amazon's various storefronts, IPR Center and Amazon have shared information previously, even collaborating on a crackdown on fraud related to COVID-19. This new operation marks a more long-term partnership, however.
Prior to Amazon's involvement, IPR Center's focus on "securing the global supply-chain" might be unfamiliar to the average person, but you've actually seen a bit of the Center's work before -- the government warning that plays before every DVD and Blu-ray was created by the organization. As far as counterfeit products are concerned, Amazon says it already investigated and removed potentially fraudulent offenders. A partnership with these new agencies should allow the company to go further and "stop counterfeits at the border, regardless of where bad actors were intending to offer them" said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of customer trust and partner support at Amazon.
Prior to Amazon's involvement, IPR Center's focus on "securing the global supply-chain" might be unfamiliar to the average person, but you've actually seen a bit of the Center's work before -- the government warning that plays before every DVD and Blu-ray was created by the organization. As far as counterfeit products are concerned, Amazon says it already investigated and removed potentially fraudulent offenders. A partnership with these new agencies should allow the company to go further and "stop counterfeits at the border, regardless of where bad actors were intending to offer them" said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of customer trust and partner support at Amazon.
Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:4, Insightful)
Counterfeit goods are the preserve of Aliexpress.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:2)
I personal love a lot of knock offs. I have seen Nike ripoffs that look more interesting than Nikes. A recent favorite was the swoop had like a vampire fang hanging down. Many don't even say Nike anymore.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, a lot of Chinese "counterfeits" even come from the exact same factories and production lines as the originals, especially with fashion and accessory products. They are just unlicensed runs. I had a coworker who used to go to Shanghai regularly for a side job of his and he would always bring stuff back and said that a lot of factories literally had small storefronts where you could buy them. My wife ended up with a Kate Spade purse that didn't officially come out for like a year later.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:1)
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:2)
But a lot of these "unlicensed runs" skimp on materials, so you're not really getting the same product.
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But a lot of these "unlicensed runs" skimp on materials, so you're not really getting the same product.
There is a definite distinction between a counterfeit and an unlicensed run. If you're making the same thing, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to set up different materials, hold them in inventory, try to keep them separate from the authorized stuff, and hide them when inspectors come around.
I can completely believe that they would sell the QC rejects, have new employees train on the unlicensed stuff, etc which would result in manufacturing defects. But if you're making the real stuff anyway I don't
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I read an article a while back which disagrees with you about the materials.
"Very low serial numbers, like very low MAC ID addresses, are a hallmark of the “ghost shift”, i.e. the shift that happens very late at night when a rogue worker enters the factory and runs the production machine off the books. Significantly, ghost shifts are often run using marginal material that would normally be disposed of but were intercepted on the way to the grinder. As a result, the markings and characteristics o
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You are too optimistic.
Manufacturers do keep inventory separate and hidden from inspectors. Local inspectors lie. Foreign inspectors are intentionally deceived. Officially licensed manufacturers create product that is significantly different from the agreed-upon specifications and deliver them to the official client (who then sells to consumers without realizing their products are substandard). Counter-intuitively, manufacturers are not bad actors. Rather, they are ordinary people who learned how to act
Re:Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:5, Insightful)
About 80% of stuff on Amazon is knock-offs. It's practically impossible to buy things like genuine smartphone batteries or razor blades on there.
At least with AliExpress you know what you are getting, they are usually up-front about it. There are a few exceptions like used ICs but for most stuff they are clear it's a compatible part, not an original.
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Knockoff ain't counterfeit. The latter pretends to be genuine.
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Yes, this is one of two reasons why I actively avoid Amazon unless they're the cheapest option for a specific item. I'll even take the extra five minutes to research and buy direct from a manufacturer if their price is better.
That being said, Amazon has an option to only list items shipped and sold by Amazon.com. This almost completely eliminates the Chinese fakebrands. They bury it as deeply as they can and probably want to remove it, but it's there.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:3)
Even that doesn't matter since they bin similar items together at the warehouse. You could still end up with a cheap Chinese knockoff
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That gives me an idea. Ship fake boxes of items to Amazon at a unsalable high price, wait a month, then ask for all my inventory back.
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I've received knockoff cables from Amazon in the past when buying directly from them.
Which is why I don't buy from Amazon anymore- they don't really care. They still make the sale, and there's really no negative for them.
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About 80% of stuff on Amazon is knock-offs. It's practically impossible to buy things like genuine smartphone batteries or razor blades on there.
Or memory cards. I bought a 5-pack of SD cards on Amazon and opened two of them and found that they had the same serial number. They did take my return without argument, though. And yes, I did write a review using the word "COUNTERFEIT" just like that, in all caps.
I then bought a few cards from B&H, two Sandisk Ultra 100MB/sec 128GB UHS-1/Class 10 cards, and one Ultra 80MB/sec uSD card. The uSD card is "not intended for sale in the United States" but the SD cards appear to be fully legit product.
What th
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It's practically impossible to buy things like genuine smartphone batteries or razor blades on there.
Yeah, this is my major gripe about Amazon. You used to be able to find a lot of brand name stuff. Seems like that has been disappearing, in favor of no-name products. Still some brands there, but often the models are from previous years, or recently discontinued. And, don't get me started on the "unpronounceable six-character" company products. I try very hard to stay away from those. If they don't even want to make up a company name, it shouts "junk" or worse, "scam".
C'mon, Amazon, step up your game a coup
Samsung Select is the canary in the coalmine (Score:2)
Yet if you browse any Amazon listing for Samsung Select memory cards, you will find numerous third party sellers also offering them for sale. As long as Amazon does nothing about these third party sellers claiming to sell Amazon's own exclusive brand, you know Amazon is not taking counterfeit products seriously. (And yes I have received a fake Samsung Select memory card from Amazon even th
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:3)
PROTIP: The originals are made by the same people, for the lowest price too. They often only cost more. The only difference is that you cannot tell same quality counterfeits, where the only diffeerence is the profit margin, from actually shit products.
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Hey, I hear you. If everything is made in China, there is absolutely no reason to not buy straight from the China, right? Well, it is sometimes the case that resellers do extra quality control and finishing work that dramatically improve the quality and safety of a product. Is the chance of those things being done worth the extra money? Probably not in most cases, but I sure as heck won't buy anything that stays plugged in 24/7 from Aliexpress.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:2)
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While development costs are a real, it also true that they can gouge you on price by simply sticking a brand name on, I have bought plenty of brand name items that have fallen apart. Bike bags that cost $50 in the shop, and $5 from Ali Express it must have taken them years to come up with a pattern for the bag. $20 for a nose piece smaller than my thumb nail for my glasses, that lasted a year (Bollé).
If they want me to pay for R&D then they need to prove to me that they are charging a reasonable p
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked with a client who bought a USB flash drive on Amazon that had significantly less storage in it than it claimed. They bought it as, and it claimed to be, a 16GB flash drive. Actual capacity, 1GB. The result is real data loss.
I feel like we have this conversation every time counterfeits come up on Slashdot. There are always people saying counterfeits are just as good, extra runs on the production line, and are mostly designer handbags. It's not true. The market is flooded with fake Chinese garbage that gets binned with legitimate products at Amazon because they share an SKU. It's a problem. Why do you excuse counterfeiters? I have personally seen this substandard Chinese junk that is intentionally misrepresented on Amazon. A friend tried to buy high-quality cotton bedsheets and got Chinese polyester. It's everywhere, not just in fashion accessories and luxury goods. Try buying a laptop battery on Amazon.
The Chinese are ruining American commerce by inundating us with their shitty garbage, and many peoples' response is to shrug?
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AMAZON'S response is to shrug. I've wasted enough of my time trying to report exactly that kind of thing to know.
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Here's a solution: Random checks of SKUs known to carry significant counterfeits, Amazon gets hit with a massive fine for each one which is split with the original manufacturer as compensation for damage to his reputation. If it exceeds a certain threshold, the entire stock of that item is confiscated (And possibly destroyed/recycled) and Amazon has to compensate the original manufacturer at retail value.
Add on a bounty program and give them share and the problem will solve itself overnight.
Re: Yeah, to each company its own specialty (Score:3)
You state the issue in your comment and then blame China. The issue is Amazon business practices of binning and failing to adequately track sellers who provide sub standard quality. I can use virtually any online shopping app in China and get a better understanding of quality than Amazon. Only rarely have I been disappointed with household goods that get flipped for an alternative but that's an issue of being sold out instead of poor quality.
In fact Amazon's business model for last mile package delivery i
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The issue is both Amazon and China.
The first issue is China making counterfeits and gleefully selling them to the west. They DGAF and are happy to sell us cheap knockoff crap and pretend it's legitimate. The second issue is Amazon co-mingling the cheap shit from dodgy sources with the legitimate goods, creating this situation. They know this is happening, but would rather pretend it's not because the shoddy Chinese crap keeps them at the lowest prices, and therefore the largest market share.
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China makes whatever the merchant orders. A merchant who pays for quality gets quality, a merchant who requests all corners to be cut to get the lowest price gets exactly that. With Amazon's binning, there is no incentive to choose quality.
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This is effectively the Chinese idiom. Cheap price means cheap quality -- the adjective is overloaded. This doesn't mean all high priced goods are substantially better quality but it does mean if you want a decent product, you look for the average price and buy at that price. Likewise the corner cutting can be anything from being worn out more quickly, to higher fail rate, to health hazard. For instance microwaves in China can be extremely cheap but still have a decent lifetime without any fault, so the cor
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The issue is that they're making counterfeits of branded items. I don't care if there's a lower-quality knock-off of a brand name item, so long as it's clear that it's a knock-off. And if it's a knock-off it shouldn't be "binned" with the actual brand-name item.
This is a situation where both Amazon and the Chinese counterfeit manufacturers are feeding off each other, and are each intentionally causing this problem as a way to increase profits.
China counterfeits because the DGAF and it makes them money. Amaz
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The way to treat China as a huge corporation is hilarious. If Americans could easily create counterfeit products and sale them overseas, undercutting domestic producers it's sure as shit companies would do it. It doesn't mean America is a nation of counterfeiters. It just means virtually all companies are profit motivated which is why the idea of "business ethics" is the biggest joke of the last few centuries.
Let's say we consider some product certification like IEEE, well where is IEEE headquartered, in th
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Which brand and model were those? Which seller?
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Unskippable warning in DVD and BlueRay (Score:4, Insightful)
the government warning that plays before every DVD and Blu-ray was created by the organization
This particular bit has done more to push me towards downloading movies than anything else. The illegal copies don't force me to read that shit for 20 seconds each time I pop a disc in the player.
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Next, you'll express shock about the novel complaint that people are cutting the cord because of annoying ads. And finish with absolute clobbering of the completely baseless claim of many people finding dealing with car dealers to be a horrible experience because of scammy techniques they have to implement today.
Because you will buy that nitrogen in your wheels, and you'll like it. And you'll watch those cable ads. And you'll sit through legal threats at the start of every movie you purchased legitimately.
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Unskippable garbage (and skippable garbage that still requires you to skip a dozen times) in general is a pretty strong turnoff for commercial DVD/blu-ray content. No-one wants to sit through all that garbage. Do you really want to pop in an old disk and be forced to watch a bunch of "coming attractions" for other movies that came out a decade ago? At a certain point, it just gets abusive and people don't want to put up with it.
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Unskippable garbage (and skippable garbage that still requires you to skip a dozen times) in general is a pretty strong turnoff for commercial DVD/blu-ray content. No-one wants to sit through all that garbage. Do you really want to pop in an old disk and be forced to watch a bunch of "coming attractions" for other movies that came out a decade ago? At a certain point, it just gets abusive and people don't want to put up with it.
Yeah, I've been known to immediately rip DVDs that have significant unskippable content and burn a copy without the unskippable content. But it does indeed annoy me enough to make me want to not buy content from that company again.
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You misread what I said.
I said unskippable shit pushed me towards downloading movies (actually that's not strictly true, it pushed me towards copying them generally-speaking). Since I started watching pirated content, realized it was better and easier to procure than legit copies, and that honesty only brings misery thanks to the MPAA, I haven't paid for a single movie, as a matter of principle.
Yep, I'm a cheapstake. I pirate everything and never pay for anything. I haven't since... ever. I make no excuse f
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"I mean, c'mon! The damn illegal copies don't force me to read that shit for 20 seconds each time I pop a disc in the player."
Had to take some creative liberty to highlight the subtle humor here. Cracked me up.
Re: Unskippable warning in DVD and BlueRay (Score:2)
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My DVDs don't ever make it into any sort of player - straight into the USB drive, through Handbrake and onto the NAS. Even the kids know that a new DVD takes a couple of hours to "get onto the TV".
I've got a box of ripped DVDs in the cupboard. I'm starting to wonder if I should store them on ebay instead.
As you say, a ripped DVD is infinitely more enjoyable and watchable than an actual disk.
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What's the big deal about them? I need a few minutes anyway to take a shit before the movie starts. FBI warnings and movie previews fit the bill perfectly.
Re: Iâ(TM)m liking the new HDMI mega drive cl (Score:2)
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Link or GTFO
Ah, the old Joe Kennedy route to legitimacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Make billions off of intentionally promoting counterfeit goods, close the hole behind you to stop others.... Brilliant.
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Re: Ah, the old Joe Kennedy route to legitimacy (Score:2)
What about their own counterfeit goods? (Score:3)
Or is this what "partners" means?
Fraud (Score:2)
The Definition of Counterfeit (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on past business moves, I'm guessing this recent partnership is to help forge a solid definition of "counterfeit" under Amazon's terms.
You know, like conveniently counterfeiting any brand that would threaten to undercut the legitimate Amazon Basics product line...
Partnership or Pay. (Score:2)
eBay (Score:2)
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I want to be able to buy counterfeits, but I want them to be marked as such.
Notably, I want to be able to buy Foakley M2 XL frames. Luxotica can lick my ballsack.
That explains a lot! (Score:1)
I was wondering why I logged into Amazon this morning and there was nothing for sale.
And now (Score:1)
The only sellers of counterfeit goods will be the government and Amazon.
Took Them Long Enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Drug trade across Mexico is a near parallel: The tighter the border, the more product you throw at it to maintain some average that gets through. For example: An IP holder orders a limited production run of, say, T-shirts of only ten thousand because the IP involved is purposefully high profile-- a limited run-- a calculated inventory to maximize value. But the factory owners know this fact and are frustrated their supply side can't benefit from this strategy.
In 2016, I was asked to help an interpreter call up Amazon about shipped inventories of all kinds of goods that had sold well, but an IP complaint was lodged just as the storefront's received payments had reached a fair amount-- I was told one account approached over a million dollars. Amazon isn't a court, so, like YouTube, any complaint is honored and they attempt to put the conflicting parties in contact. In the meantime, that money is frozen.
What I finally put together was for years families of factory owners had opened individual storefronts on Amazon until their networks were discovered because the most valuable IP products were getting through with a frequency sufficient to raise some ire-- and lawyers were likely being warmed up.
By the time I had come along, a lot of "smart" money in China had come to realize any return on a network wasn't worth the risk. The less savvy money needed a hint to realize that frozen money won't be returned through any phone calls no matter how "good" someone's English is.
Looking back, what triggers all those memories is Fly Like an Eagle, by Steve Miller. Shoe the children. With no shoes on their feet...
Does anyone really believe this (Score:1)
Maybe we need "Amazon Certified" (Score:2)
It seems like a big element in all this are the identical items sold by several different resellers under different names.
I don't know if this phenomenon is just the same seller gaming the system as multiple brands or a bunch of "entrepreneurs" all buying the same thing from the same factory and then marketing it as their own product.
I wonder if there would be any way for Amazon to tell these sellers "this is the same product, multiple listings for an identical product clutter our search results and wind up
Bullshit (Score:2)
Its super easy to buy counterfeit items on Amazon. Its one of the reason I stopped using Amazon. Amazon cares more for its lying Marketplace vendors than it does for the customers that made Amazon what it is today. Just try to complain to Amazon about a counterfeit product, you might get a refund but that product will still be for sale on Amazon. Ask Amazon to the manufacturer of an item verify its authenticity, that will never happen.
Amazon is trying really hard to be AliExpress and doing a good job of i
It's like the "war on drugs", right? (Score:1)
ID (Score:1)
We need a global business ID system, similar to social security numbers. Consumers should be able to look it up online to see how long they've been in business and which country they filed in.
Damage is already done (Score:3)
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Its likely brand IP owners will use this to go even further in trying to stop people who are selling their product (even when its genuine legitimate product and not a knockoff or fake)
Brands across many categories (cosmetics, skincare, clothing, shoes, toys, watches, luxury goods, homewares, computer products, networking products, audio products, cameras, electronics of all sorts and even things like pet products are covered with a large number of brands going after people who are selling 100% genuine legit
Tomorrow's headline (Score:1)