Sure, the gang on Wall Street do pretty well for themselves, unless you're at Bear Stearns or Lehman Bros. But there's another industry in New York that Gordon Gekko would love. And that is counterfeit goods.

Anyone who has been to the Big Apple knows what I'm talking about. Sure, they have the guys holding goods in front of you as you walk down the crowded streets, and where they can make space vendors set up tables. Virtually everything being sold is a knock-off of an original, in other words a counterfeit work. Lots of products are counterfeited, such as purses and jeans and toothpaste and auto parts. Members of the Copyright Alliance, given the ability to digitize their work, find themselves victims of both piracy AND counterfeiting. And one, counterfeit DVDs, are sold all over New York in retail establishments, including the stretch between Penn Station and Times Square that is heavily trafficked by tourists.

The PRO-IP Act that overwhelmingly passed the House recently aimed at both piracy and counterfeiting with better enforcement and coordination. I have great hope and much faith that the Senate will pursue a similar path.

In the meantime, copyright owners continue to fight for their rights in many ways, including education. Have you ridden in a New York taxi lately? You might have seen an anti-piracy video on those little TVs they have in the back of the cabs. Now, Andrew Noyes of CongressDaily reports on a poster campaign by MPAA designed for the subway system. (Like the green, BTW.)

Graphic credit MPAA

The practical appeal of the message — "The counterfeit version isn't as good as the original" — is surely effective. But it is augmented with a strong pro-copyright message for those who take the time to read the messages beneath. In particular, the MPAA focuses on lost jobs resulting from counterfeiting and piracy, in the hundreds of thousands in the US every year. (Let's hope people read these more carefully than the parents I've seen taking their toddlers to R-rated movies!)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.