About time

Wow. I can't believe a post about rape garners no comments at all. Apparently heinous crimes don't get my few readers worked up enough to comment.

Maybe this will. I just read a news article about a Venetian town who is fining tourists caught buying counterfeit goods. An Austrian woman bought a fake Louis Vuitton for 7 euros (knowingly), and was then fined 1,000 euros. I'm sure there will be people who are outraged by this. People who think it's just revenue raising, and that there's no harm in counterfeit goods.

In reality, there is a lot of harm in counterfeit goods. And I'm not just talking about the massive companies losing out on revenue, or intellectual property. I'm talking about the behind-the-scenes harm this industry is creating. Did you know that counterfeiters and their crime syndicates deal in human trafficking, child labor, and gang warfare? Did you know that truly horrendous deeds are carried out on the children who work in those factories so you can pay a ridiculously small sum for your counterfeit LV bag? Dana Thomas (who writes for Harper's Bazaar) outlines in this article a raid she was present at where the owners of the factory had broken the children's legs, and then reset them in a position so the children couldn't walk, and thus had to stay at their machines working the whole time. I felt ill when I read that.

And then in this article (apologies for the Facebook link, I can't find a copy of the actual article), Dana goes on to detail even more harrowing details of child labour. Harper's also runs a website about the counterfeit industry, with tips on how to spot fakes.

Of course, there are some who believe Harper's is only promoting this issue to assist in the profit-taking of the big fashion corporations. They probably are. But even so, this is an issue worth acknowledging, and worth doing something about. Child labour is not ok. Exploiting any human being is not ok. And whilst I think targeting the end-consumer, rather than the crime syndicates themselves, might be a little bit unfair, it's clear that targeting the crime syndicates is a losing battle while there is still demand for the product making the manufacture worth the risk. If the practice of fining continues, and people know there is a consequence to buying fakes, and especially if they know the reasons why, the demand will drop and hopefully these crime syndicates will go out of business. And then we can start putting more pressure on the actual fashion houses who are possibly also utilising underpaid labour. Apple and Nike are two examples of big businesses who have had to become more transparent about their manufacturing processes. In the future, I think all fashion houses will need to be more transparent. This is most likely going to push the price up of luxury goods, but I would rather pay a premium for a handbag I know hasn't been made by some poor worker chained to their machine for 20 hours a day.

If you can't afford to buy a designer handbag, don't resort to buying fakes. There are plenty of derivative versions out there created by other companies in legitimate circumstances. Or, you could just save your pennies and buy the real thing, and then feel 10,000 times better every time you carry it around.