With the summer of 2010’s atmospheric dial set to “braise,” many of us in the States who have been slow-cooked over the past couple of months have spent our days sprinting for a spot in front of jacked-up air conditioners or poolside within a few tiptoes of a refreshing splash. Whether cool or hot, dry or damp, comfort has been the priority of the summer.

To the ready pool goer with a snoot stained blue from zinc oxide, taking a quick dip or lounging in front of an AC unit to get out of the heat may seem obvious, but the reality is that a large portion of the global population is denied the luxury of choice.

So while we casually chat about car seats heated to the temperature of short order grills or spend far too much time divining the different shapes of sweat marks that we see while riding the subway, let’s not forget those without options: the thousands abused by the counterfeit trade.

Take time to remember the assembly line workers who are forced to punch out fakes in hothouses. Remember that some of these workers receive an amount of water measured in thimbles and when dehydration and heat stroke strike, compassion is generally the last thing to be found on the factory floor. When a worker falls from exhaustion, they aren’t attended to. They’re replaced.

The conditions can be unfathomable and frightening, but this is the cruel reality of how fake goods are made. These sweatshops lack the elegance of the ateliers, the design boutiques and the laboratories where the original goods that inspire these fakes are created. And there is none of the eager camaraderie that produces these authentic pieces art. There is only shared desolation and the fragile empathy that comes from the knowledge that others are enduring it with you. This is not how life should be lived, certainly not when those who enjoy the luxury of choice can do something about it.

Let’s not forget this is an epidemic that we can do something about.

Take some time this summer, this week, perhaps tomorrow to speak with a friend, a coworker, or a stranger about the fake trade. Tell them about the reality of this exploitative industry and let them know about just how real the danger is to everyone involved, including the end buyer. It’s not just a handbag, a set of shoes, a set of tires, a wristwatch, or a bottle of pills they’ve gotten on the cheap. It’s a nightmarish collection of broken lives and  injury. At the heart of the fake trade is the denial of basic human rights.

But it can be stopped. And you can help stop it. It begins and ends with education and awareness. Increase your own and that of others and we can help deliver the luxury of choice to others.

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Flip on the local news for a few minutes and you are sure to be bombarded by stories about the battered economy. And while evidence of this financial anathema may seem overwhelming, we are resilient creatures designed to take a few knocks, grow some calluses and move on. We adapt. But it is not just the happy elements of society that adapt, it is all parts: from the highest echelon of grandmothers and confectioners all the way down to the skeezier sort that prefers to hold tea socials at dog fights. The recession, it can be said, has caused some gang leaders to adjust as well, and they have become savvier business managers because of it.

The only thing is that they are using counterfeits to do so.

A recent series of investigations by the LAPD  uncovered that gang bangers have started treating their catalog of criminal activities like a stock portfolio. They are using the sale of counterfeit goods to offset the risk of more traditional illicit enterprises. By slinging bootleg CDs and DVDs, they are making dollars faster than they would with traditional crimes. Better still for them, they can do it without all the usual hazards.

Classic criminal enterprises like drug sales, prostitution, kidnapping, burglary, extortion, shakedowns, and the like require violence to make a profit, whether it is actual or threatened. The drug trade is the only industry on the planet where building a better product or improving a manufacturing process will not help you grow. Instead, growth requires that you violently dispossess competitors of their trade routes and assets. Because the demand for drugs is so high and the quality is of relatively little importance, you can succeed in the business by maintaining a good supply chain and having the dry powder and buckshot to keep the deed.

Gang leaders are concerned with casualties only as far as it affects their profits. If your crew is band-aided up watching Maury Povich instead of slinging rock, it is going to be tougher to make your mortgage payments. Unfortunately, the counterfeit trade seems to have bridged this gap, by keeping "employees" out of harm's way and selling product.

The LAPD report claimed that the money made by the gangs through the sale of fake goods has funded the purchase of weapons and the growth of other illegal businesses. Because counterfeits are relatively cheap to make and the distribution cost, or the amount it costs to successfully get the goods in the hands of consumer and the cash in the hands of the gang members, is relatively low, it has been a very effective way for the criminals to raise capital.

This is another example of how a seemingly ‘victimless’ crime is anything but. In the case of the fake trade, there are the victims that produce the fakes against their will and do so in at great risk to themselves and others. Then, there are the other victims harmed indirectly by the sale of sham goods, like those who are wounded by terrorist attacks or gang shootings.

The LAPD claims, as we do, that the best way to prevent this activity is to curb the demand for the fake goods. The police will keep fighting on their end, as all enforcement agencies will, but at the end of the day, it can feel like throwing haymakers in a steam bath. Where we need to focus our efforts as civilians is to stop the demand for fake goods. 

Once the world knows just how parasitic and abusive the fake trade is, it will only be a matter of time until the sham industry’s lifeblood runs out of it, like a cheap dye seeping from some shoddy material. So spread the word and encourage your friends to do the same. We can end this abuse in our lifetime. 

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In battle, success depends on the ability to draw distinct lines between our allies and our adversaries. Sounds like a simple enough task, no? But when the counterfeiting landscape is full of fissures and gaps, determining your friends and foes is not as easy as drawing bright lines on a dry-erase board. Getting your bearings in the counterfeiting world is like being handed roller skates and a blindfold in the middle of a minefield - now take a lap.

An unfortunate example of this kind of confusion recently happened with Coach Inc., the maker of leather goods and other fine satchelry. The company has sued the city of Chicago for allowing counterfeit versions of its products to be sold in one of the city’s markets.

For reasons we hope will be revealed during the legal proceedings, what began as a solid working partnership between the city and the luxury manufacturer in the fight against fakes has ended in a lawsuit.

There’s no doubt that for the time being it is going to be tough sledding in Chicago: Coach, claiming that the city neglected its demands to halt the illegal sales, is seeking $2 million in damages per violation, plus punitive damages.

According to the lawsuit filed in late May of this year, the company had been working with Chicago police to stop the sale of the fake goods at the market, but after a successful joint raid, netting two peddlers and over 350 fake bags, a return visit by Coach’s inspector to the same market space months later revealed vendors selling sham bags as before.

As indicated by the lawsuit, Coach sent an investigator to the New Maxwell Street Market in August of 2009 to determine whether or not seedy vendors were hawking counterfeit goods in the area. The investigator’s first visit to the market found several vendors openly selling fake Coach handbags without reprimand or punishment.

After Coach presented the evidence to the city’s police department, the groups worked together to organize a series of recorded buys at the market. Two weeks after the inspector’s first findings, the new group returned to the market and managed two buys from different vendors that resulted in the arrests and seizures.

Now, if the saga had ended here, this type of operation would be shared with other enforcement agencies as a blueprint for future actions. But somewhere between the last weeks of August when the Coach/Chicago Police taskforce were kicking down the stalls of counterfeiter sellers and two weeks ago when the City of Chicago received the lawsuit, there was a serious miscommunication.

We can only theorize what split the two groups to the point of legal fisticuffs. It may be fair to assume the police lost interest or that there may have been disagreements between the two parties over how future investigations were to take place, but regardless of how sensible these theories are, all of it is at best conjecture. The only thing that can be taken from this event is that it is a tough blow to the already limited resources of the agencies fighting counterfeiting.

While it is a setback, we can take something positive from the event: by learning what went wrong between Chicago and Coach, Inc., this kind of rift can be avoided in the future and we will be able to cultivate smoother working partnerships between corporations and law enforcement.

This was a needless mess, but the opportunity to accomplish some significant work in the fight against fakes is not lost. While this wounded relationship needs to be repaired at a time when they are better spent fighting the counterfeiters, there is definitely a bright side.

Let’s hope both sides can bear the discomfort of this call to arms and find a quick solution. If Coach and the city of Chicago get back to doing what they do best – creating luxury and protecting citizens, respectively – and we take a workable case study away from this that will help us avoid snags in the future, we may just churn this garbage into a lush compost.

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If a butterfly flaps its wings in some dank Manhattan alleywhere tourists trade crumpled bills for counterfeit handbags, will the breezecreated by the insect cause a tornado in Texas?

Now, you probably expect to hear this type of question late in the evening at some artists commune, but while it may seem a bit off the trodden path, the question actually has to do with a theory that is very relevant to our anticounterfeiting work known as the Butterfly Effect.

The Butterfly Effect is a way of explaining unpredictable behavior in otherwise predictable systems. As with all theories, it can seem quite complex, but at a more simple level it tries to make sense of how slight differences in a system’s original state can cause a plethora of different outcomes, as in “Would you say that I have a plethora of piñatas?”

For instance, when a raindrop lands on your forearm, the direction that it will fall depends on a number of factors. If a single hair is pointing in one direction, the drop will slalom in a certain way, but if that same hair is moved just a bit, the water will trickle in a completely different direction. There are many factors that determine the outcome, even in a smaller “system” like our droplet’s whose course is also affected by things like skin temperature, and the pulse of the vessels just beneath the dermis.

Unless you’re wearing a coat of body paint for an Avatar-theme potluck, raindrops shouldn’t be a concern. But, we should be worried about what goes into our larger personal “system.” Just like a particularly coarse arm hair, if you include a fake in your mix, it will have a significant effect on those around you.

If you willingly sport the cheap, oozy leather of a fake handbag, it is crucial to know that the consequences reach far beyond a poor aesthetic choice. When you spend money on a fraud, it encourages whoever is cooking the poison to keep the fire burning. When you buy fake, the message tothe criminal manufacturers and distributors is clear: make more and continue with the abuse.

If your “system” has a corrupt set of original factors, it will alter the way you act with others, and just like a droplet sitting on top of a coarse arm hair, a counterfeit in your life will change your outcomes.

As you recall the ground-breaking research of Dan Ariely and his colleagues that demonstrated how wearing fakes makes a person less likely to behave ethically, you understand how important it is to pick the right factors in your life and exclude the fakes.

So, consider two things: (i.) each item you include in your daily routine has an effect on the outcome of your day, and (ii.) your behavior creates a domino effect that influences the behavior and experience of countless others.

With so many of our interactions, events, goings-on, and general high jinks affected by unseen factors and shaped by those items we have in our lives, why risk those around you knowing that fakes poison a system the very moment they enter it.

The purchase of counterfeit goods perpetuates abuse. And it puts your friends and family in jeopardy as well. It would be easy to write this off as an insignificant, unlikely slice of sensationalism, but I’m not talking about an average person transforming into some thug because they bought a fake broach. This is about behavior that is slight, occurs in increments, and is insidious.  This isn’t blunt force behavioral trauma. The change is gradual and deceptive. So make your choices wisely. 

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It would be a far better world if we all were blessed with a surer sense of our own taste.

No buyer’s remorse to follow you around like a rabid ferret fixated on your ankle and no more of the court martial review board that convenes inside your head over an outfit choice.

Taste is one of those curious abstract ideas like love, where hearing the word causes a very specific reaction despite its uncertain meaning. In the case of taste, while we may not have the slightest idea why certain things toot our tubas, the moment we are asked what we like, most of us will start babbling and it will be days before we inhale.

At its most basic, taste is shorthand for our vast collection of likes and dislikes.

Ask why people have such different tastes and you’ll get the usual explanation of upbringing and associates, of synapses and neurotransmitters, and of means and access. But if Donald Trump has taught us a single lesson, having means does not guarantee taste and conversely, Coco Chanel has shown us that upbringing and access (daughter of a laundry woman and market stall holder who lived in rural France) have very little to do with it either.

Taste has an odd relationship with counterfeiting. To say that anyone who owns a fake has taste is ridiculous, but when you consider that the sham buyers make these poor decisions covet a piece of authentic luxury, the verdict becomes a bit more muddled.

Whether or not the purchase of a luxury item suggests taste is a debate for another time, but the fact that a sham buyer has an eye for elegant engineering and craftsmanship cannot be denied.

As I was thinking about this dilemma, I read a passage from Stanley Marcus’s book, Quest for the Best. Marcus was the president of Neiman Marcus, a fine writer, a master marketer and salesman, but above all he was driven to find the highest quality in every aspect of life. One of the requisites of being the “best” in Marcus’s view was that a manufacturer has the finest method of construction.

And this is where the wheels come off the sham-wagon.

Taste requires a deep appreciation of craftsmanship. The beauty of the end product is simply not enough. We need to consider the process that builds a piece: the drawing, the stitching, and the cultivation of the material. In this sense, the product is certainly not greater than the sum of its parts.

So when you buy a sham, you deny not only the authentic product itself, but the inspiration behind it.

It turns out the patrons of the sham arts are not only tasteless, but uninspiring to boot.

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A recent U.S. report on intellectual property rights reveals that China remains the global powerhouse…in producing fake goods.

The U.S. Trade Representative's annual “Special301” Report monitors the ability of our trading partners to protect intellectual property rights abroad.

There were several developments in the fight against fakes, but of all the information shared in the report, the most jarring was that China’s practices remain “unacceptable.”

The report ranks countries according to how well they fought the fake trade in the past year. It asks whether a country was able to toss a handful of tacks across the path of their country’s sham parade and give it a limp.

As the report indicates, some countries made the road a bit rougher for the fake traders with initiatives that tore at the soft undersides of their feet – if only they wore shoes with authentic soles - while other countries, it seems, weren’t terribly concerned.

The good news: Several Eastern European countries have made notable progress, including Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Each was taken off the “watch list” because of significant progress curbing the sale of fake goods.

The bad news: China remains at the top of the watch list.

China has been repeatedly encouraged to improve its enforcement standards, and while slight progress was made – this year only 79% of fake goods stopped at the U.S. border were made in China, compared to 81% in the previous year - even apparent improvements can be misleading.

The decrease in the number of seizures of fake Chinese products at U.S. borders doesn't necessarily mean the amount of fake goods made in China has gone down, though we'd be ecstatic if it was the case. Sadly, this number reflects only the efforts of our border security and the origin of the fakes they were able to stop – kudos for their fine efforts. 

At its worst, the decrease means that whoever is trafficking Chinese counterfeits has gotten better at hiding the sham goods from authorities. 

Either way, China’s failure to implement stricter penalties for counterfeiting is corrosive.

The question is difficult, but simple: does China have real interest in stopping counterfeiting inside its borders?

The amount of money produced by the fake trade is staggering: over $600 billion a year by conservative estimates. For the global leader in production, this means a huge amount of money that is circulated in the Chinese economy and, regrettably, fuels other businesses.

More cynical thinkers (or, in certain schools, realists) might believe China isn’t overly concerned with the problem because to really confront it would suck huge amounts of cash out of their economy. 

It is crucial we understand the amount of money tied to the fake trade, but remember that at the core of our fight is the defense of human rights. There is no price tag for unalienable liberty.

So while we use the watch list as a barometer for progress in the fight against fakes, the figures are irrelevant without awareness of the human lives at the heart of the issue.

Never lose sight of the suffering and injustice behind these numbers.

As the demand for fakes shrinks, so do the dollars. If we shrink this demand far enough, the only thing left standing will be a gleaming exemplar of unfettered humanity.  

And that will be a good day.

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An act of charity will often polish the questionable pedigree of a gift given. 

In other words, even a parasitic knockoff can be put to good use. 

Fakes that have been confiscated are occasionally given to the less fortunate. While this kind of repurposing is not new, it is always inspiring to witness.

Frankly, it can come as a bit of a shock to find ‘counterfeiting’ and ‘charity’ in the same sentence, but this type of generosity is able to put the otherwise bloodsucking items to good use. Copycat t-shirts can be forgiven when they are used to ease suffering.

In that sense, the latest example of this kind of generosity is a most welcome surprise.

The Brooklyn D.A. has announced that millions of dollars worth of confiscated counterfeit goods will be shipped to aid earthquake victims in Haiti.

The effort, named Operation Help Haiti, will deliver 125,000 tons of seized goods with an estimated street value of over $10 million to those affected by the quake.

A key component of the operation was the permission obtained from patent holders that included Nike and Timberland. The D.A. contacted each brand to ask if they would have any issue if these patent violations were used to provide humanitarian assistance. The companies, which included Antik, Diesel Industries, and Black Label among others, graciously gave permission.

To avoid any confusion, the fake brand identifiers will be removed from the items before the goods are delivered.

The project is a collaborative effort and wouldn’t be possible without the help of organizations like World Vision, who will be delivering the fake goods, and Phoenix Beverage, Inc., who will be warehousing the items while they are organized and packaged.

This is a fine example of the collaboration needed to successfully fight the fake trade. 

The knockoffs donated to the less fortunate not only help those who receive them, but rattle the very counterfeiting paradigm - while the production of these goods enslaves many people, the goods themselves, when confiscated and redistributed, can help to free many people from enslaving circumstance. 

And while charity alone may not flip the marketplace for fakes on its ear and give it the few stiff kicks to the tailbone it deserves, this type of generous act is critical to ending the exploitation and abuse.

At the heart of Operation Help Haiti and similar efforts to donate confiscated goods is compassion. Where counterfeiters' main concern is their profit, a compassionate individual turns outward to embrace those in need, rather than their own needs.

Compassion is the very opposite of counterfeiting.

However, in the spirit of full disclosure, it has to be said that counterfeiters shouldn't expect to receive any of this compassion when they’re finally brought to justice.

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Compared to the long list of reasons people use to justify counterfeit purchases, the waiting list for the iPad is tiny.

Certain buyers who aspire to the lifestyle that the brands symbolize will turn their coin purses inside out for fakes.

Others choose to buy the bogus baubles to get a little jolt from doing something illegal, which is as impressive as a low-rent adrenaline junkie wearing water wings in a wave pool.

There couldn't be a worse way to emulate an authentic lifestyle than to buy a counterfeit version of it.

Faux frocks and sham goods offer a connection to authentic luxury that’s as sturdy as a balsa wood bridge strung across a gorge in an action flick. It’s all splinters and splashdowns.

The number of ways people are able to justify this kind of behavior is frustrating in its endlessness and endlessly frustrating. But if we boil it down to a single characteristic, the reason people are willing to go to great lengths to buy a fake, to wait in dank rooms that double as rodent latrines and stroll around back alleys, is because they are lazy.

It's easier to fill that void of self-esteem with a fake than to earn an authentic piece of craftsmanship.

But the easy route is also a dangerous one. While we know counterfeitsing hurts many people who manufacture and sell the goods, a recent study has shown that buying fakes can damage the buyer as well.

And it's not just a question of Karma.

Back in December, the NY Times Magazine recapped the best concepts from the previous year in its annual “Year in Ideas” section and mentioned two of our friend Dan Ariely's papers.

One of his works, The Counterfeit Self, written with fellow psychologists Francesca Gino and Michael Norton (from the Universities of North Carolina and Harvard, respectively) tackled how wearing counterfeit items can alter behavior.

The research explained how wearing a fake can actually make a person act less ethically.

Put briefly, after subjects donned designer sunglasses that were selected from boxes labeled ‘counterfeit’ and ‘authentic,’ they were asked to perform tasks in situations where cheating would be easy.

It turns out that high percentages - greater than 70 percent - of the participants who knowingly wore the fake glasses cheated.

Speaking to the New York Times Magazine, Dr. Gino summed up the phenomenon quite well: “When one feels like a fake, he or she is likely to behave like a fake.”

If someone is aware of the abuse that counterfeiting causes and buy fakes anyway, it's fair to say that their ethical tank that is already dangerously close to E. As this new study suggests, if they're also wearing the impostor gear on a regulat basis, it’s definitely time to pull over and fill up, or else they’ll end up stranded in desert with nothing but a fake parasol for cover.

Then again, a little time baking in the sun might do them some good.

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A campaign observed from a distance is known only by its most dramatic events.

And while ups and downs certainly help shape the path of many a movement, for those on the ground the experience is much more balanced. Campaigns require patience. They are won with gradual groundswells, not a collection of crises.

That said, over the past few weeks the fight against fakes had a few of its own peaks and valleys.

The recent ruling by the U.S. Second Court of Appeals that cleared eBay of charges filed against it for copyright violation could seem like a setback for hardened anticounterfeiters.

In response to a 2004 suit filed by Tiffany’s claiming that thousands of fake pieces of jewelry bearing its logo were peddled on the site and made eBay liable for trademark infringement, the court upheld an earlier ruling and cleared the online retailer of the charges.

The presiding judge found that eBay’s policy of booting auctions for impostor goods – after a request is made, mind you – is a sufficient effort to fight fakes.

Further, as the lawsuit claimed that the advertisements and the hyperlinks that drive traffic to eBay could represent false advertising if the goods are fake, the ruling stated that a retailer doesn’t need to stop advertising altogether just because some of the products sold on its site may be frauds.

The court noted that it would very much violate the law if an ad claimed that all the products were authentic.

And so, the court suggested that future disclaimers would have to warn consumers that some of the products sold on a site might be frauds.

Though it might seem otherwise, we see our authentic pieces of glassware as half-full. At its core, the verdict actually encourages anticounterfeiting efforts.

Remember the ruling would have been far different if eBay hadn’t had policies in place to prevent the sale of bogus goods.

The lawsuit grabbed the retailing community by its lapels and gave it a good shake. It has helped to shape future sales practice by mandating, in so many words, the presence of a disclaimer.

Better still would be for eBay to develop a series of professional tutorials on how to spot fakes. We’d be eager to assist in the production.

The fight against fakes did get a boost this past week as several storefronts in Manhattan’s Chinatown that were raided for selling fake items back in February 2008 were fined $800,000. If they want to reopen, they’ll have to pay the fine.

The group was warned that any future rentals would have to be to legitimate businesses if they want to continue to do business.

The original raid closed 32 stores. If the property owners continue to host illegal vendors and fail to rent to legit businesses, they will face hefty fines or be shut down.

If we take a quick glance in the recent rear view, we’d see a dramatic S-curve, one up, one down. But the line drawn by the steadier, winning hand is cut through the middle of the course. While we must learn from these grand events, our movement requires balance.

There will be upswings and downswings, gentle down-sloping ramps and speed bumps, chutes and ladders. But it’s important to remember that our fight will be won by gradual groundswells, not the rogue waves that currently dominate the media.

Each conversation that you begin about the real cost of the fake trade is its own groundswell. Start enough discussions and the counterfeiters will be caught standing in front of a tsunami holding a fake chamois. 

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If history’s taught us anything, it’s that we’re most likely to hear that ‘patience is a virtue’ when we least want to - cooling our heels in a bathroom line that snakes around a stadium or when waiting for food while our stomachs bang on us like steel drums.

Patience is certainly not a bad thing. Emerson believed we ought to adopt the pace of nature, as its secret is patience. And several other nimble, perhaps more realistic minds claimed that while most people will praise this virtue, very few actually practice it.

In short, patience is a lovely concept, but it’s about as easy to practice it as keeping your hands in your pockets while strolling through Willy Wonka’s candy forest.

In the fight against fakes, when you’re grappling with ruthless profiteers who wouldn’t know virtue if they poured it on their cereal each morning, how could we possibly afford to be patient?

Well, even as we demand swift justice for counterfeiters, a recent case has shown us how this tricky virtue can win the day.  

A criminal syndicate that moved millions of dollars of fake goods through the port of Baltimore was recently put on I.C.E., as it were - a ring of 9 counterfeiters has been indicted for smuggling counterfeits into the country with the intent to sell.

A 19-month, slow-cooked investigation run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency hog-tied a counterfeiting operation that had been moving a serious amount of sham weight. Items seized in the haul included:

• 33 shipping containers filled with fake goods
• 120,000 pairs of faux Nikes
• 500,000 sham Coach bags
• 10,000 pairs of knockoff Gucci and Coach shoes
• 500 phony Cartier wristwatches

Think about those poor hucksters. What was supposed to be a windfall turned out to be a career-ending collision with the justice system. And they’d probably made plans to put in a pool.

Their lazy backstroking afternoons have turned into frenzied laps in the shark tank. The indictments call for a hefty penalty. If, and we’ve got our fingers crossed, they’re convicted, the counterfeiters could be slammed with the following punishments:

• the forfeit of all fake goods or their monetary value
• a fine of at least $1 million for each guilty count of smuggling
• a fine of at least $1 million for each guilty count of trafficking
• the forced surrender of any equipment used in the trafficking, including vehicles and containers

Combined with some sizable jail time, it’s just the type of prize package they deserve.

The hard work and yes, patience, of the I.C.E. and their British counterparts earned a big knock against counterfeiting.

That said, the waiting game is best left to law enforcement agencies. When it comes to spreading the word about the fake trade, we can’t delay.

Much like the luxuries we aim to protect, patience is best practiced by master craftspeople. Faking it can have disastrous results.

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