My Quick Beef on the Practice of Selling Counterfeits

Pure and simple -- selling countefeit items is illegal. eBAY has a 1/2 page policy written about the sale of counterfeit items and says selling is against eBAY policy. However, sales of fakes (not just jerseys) are a rampant part of eBAY. eBAY profits greatly from this. I totally understand the near impossibility of them policing for counterfeits. As a third party, they deny responsibility for these sales. They are only indirectly involved with a liar selling on eBAY. HOWEVER, once they accept profits for those sales, they are now nothing short of DIRECTLY associated with profiting on the sale of counterfeit items. I'm guessing eBAY must have some kick ass lawyers, because surely more than one lawsuit has been brought up against them for these sales.

Several articles can be found about the sale of counterfeit items on eBAY. Though not limited to a single industry, here is a pretty interesting article I dug up online about the sale of Fake TIFANNY items. It seems like the implications would be huge, but the time it takes to enforce any settlement or judgment could be years (and that's assuming eBAY doesn't spend millions on lawyers to defend their innocence as a third party). I'm not the first person to rant about this stuff. It's all over eBAY forums, the internet, and elsewhere. So, why hasn't anything happened? I would really like to know.

Part of the problem is that the market exists because of the consumer. We are often willing to compromise our standards to save a bit of money. And to what end? To look cool without having to spend the money on the real thing. I don't have a problem with people wanting to save money. I do that all the time. And, I myself think NFL jerseys are ridiculously priced. But, if you don't want to buy a $250 jersey, just don't do it. Don't justify your purchase of illegal goods just because you don't like the price of the real thing. Supporters of this industry may say that I'm being a "purist" -- the irony is, those same buyers are just finding a way to appear a purist without being one, while I would just decide not to buy the dang jersey.

I've also run into people acting like the NFL is a monopoly, and that the fakes are o.k. to buy because the NFL "controls" the price of the jersey. Elements of monopolies may seem apparent here, but the NFL created it's own unique industry and trademarks and hired a licensee (Reebok) to make their products. There is NOTHING wrong with that, and they can price whatever they sell as they see fit. These are not life necessities. And the NFL is not controlling other organzations and creating unfair barriers to entry. Any person, group, or company is perfectly capable of TRYING to start up a football organization and try to match what the NFL has done. You want to start the JONES FOOTBALL LEAGUE? Go right on ahead. Make your own jersey designs, outsource the work to a sweat shop, and start trying to gain equity for your product. The thing about counterfeits is that the "get rich quick", unscrupulous, dishonest people in the world are trying to profit from intelligence they did not create. I don't think this is too hard to understand, yet thousands upon thousands of jerseys on eBAY are being sold, and the few that know what is going on don't seem to care. If fact, many will continue to support it. The seller, the buyer, and eBAY all feel it is to their advantage. eBAY makes money. The seller makes money. The buyer saves money. All at the cost of compromising themselves - all at the price of deceiving customers and taking advantage of their ignorance. Then, at the end of the day, the same sellers making profit off the buyers are just as quick to blame them for being stupid (buyer beware). What a total joke. It's just like the Devil -- he binds you up little by little, and in the moment you need some help, he's nowhere to be found.

What could eBAY or Reebok do to solve this problem with relative ease? It's a question I've pondered. Trying to eliminate these sellers by suspending them one at a time when reported by buyers and manufacturers is impossible. But currently, that's the only way it happens. After the bureaucracy of reporting people through eBAY's member watch system most sales end up completed anyway (listings are only a few days long and it takes at least that long to get response from eBAY). So, what about Reebok? They could end listings faster via the VeRO system. This system basically allows manufacturers to tell eBAY something is fake and can't be sold in a particular region. Adidas does this very well in Europe, but in the U.S., it seems there may be laws preventing sellers from getting snubbed, especially if they are selling from foreign countries into the U.S. But there are also many people selling fakes from within the U.S.

So, what's my idea? It's simple. Use what buyers see to stop it. Create informational listings. Reebok could probably get on eBAY as a seller, sell pamphlets about how to detect fake jerseys for .01 in an eBAY Store. All the information in the brochure could be included right in the listing, so you wouldn't really have to buy a thing, and they get all the info out they want for a few bucks a month. It may be that Reebok doesn't care. It may be that their financial goals are met and they don't care if counterfeits are sold. Maybe selling counterfeits encourages fans to decide to buy genuine Reebok after being let down by the fakes. I'm sure it's all much more complicated than it seems on the surface. But really, if they wanted to stop the sale of fakes on eBAY, it would be very easy, at least to stop buyers that really want Genuine products. All the buyers that know they're buying fakes, they'll keep buying fakes. One might think that everyone buying fakes knows, but there are MILLIONS of football fans, literally. At some point, they randomly want to buy a jersey. Not all of them get online and understand the differences between genuine and non-genuine products. And by the thousands, these millions of fans will get duped on eBAY.

Return to Main Page