Sorry this is so long, but this is a major problem....and I am sick of it! This is my rant.....
You guys, I am so bothered recently. I have never spent much time on You Tube, but have recently been watching a lot of bag videos. I love to see people's bag collections, reveals, and for some silly reason I especially love the "What's in my bag" videos. The issue I am getting to obviously is the multitude of videos on there with people bragging about counterfeit bags.
So, there is one woman in particular, I will not name her, but she is American, and has quite a few videos about her counterfeits Louis Vuittons Her helpful instructions if you also want to purchase a bag from where she got hers is "PM me and I will send you the website."
I was shocked and horrified at the sheer number of people requesting that she PM them the site. She has many videos on there, but on just one video site there were 130 plus requests from people wanting to also purchase, they also made some other comments too, which I will get to in a minute.
I am assuming that most of these people requesting the site are American, because I saw a few posts about how some people would love the site but they lived in the UK, and purchasing, not just selling, counterfeit goods is illegal there, and they were afraid of getting caught.
The amount of sheer ignorance in the response posts almost makes me physically ill. Their attitude seems to be that they are pulling one over on rich old Louis Vuitton....ha ha. While it is true that counterfeit goods do negatively affect companies, what none of them seem to grasp is the simple concept, that if selling these bags is illegal, then there is nobody to regulate workers in an illegal industry.
Have they ever once given thought to who is making these bags? I worry enough about who is making my *legal* products, because they are made in other countries with other worker standards that we all know are not as high as the US, but at least there is *some*worker regulation.....in an illegal production line overseas, do buyers really think there is a lot of care given to these poor people?
From what I understand, from reading books and articles on counterfeiting, it is only a part of a giant glob of organized crime and illegal activity, so they generally have plenty of access to workers. Sometimes it is by finding them in poor areas of foreign countries, and convincing them they will have a better life if they sign themselves into illegal but scary-to-them contracts that force them to work outside their home country for a certian number of years and are basically just given some housing, if that, and are never able to even send money home to their families, which is what made them sign the contract in the first place. They are often women, they may be beaten if they object, or sexually assulted. And they are the lucky ones.
The unlucky are obtained from the sex/child trafficking trade that these people dabble deeply in. Some undercover investigators have found teenagers and children chained to objects like old ciggarette machines while they make the products that bring in the profits. They often simply end up dead. They may get sick and die, may cause trouble for their captors, and be killed, it is not a situation that many survive to tell about. They are considered property, slaves, to be done with as their owner pleases.
Speaking of the profits, where do these people think their money goes? To pay the chained up children? Ummmm....no. It goes to pay for more human trafficking, drug trade, illegal arms trade, to terrorist organizations, including Al Queada and more.
So what happens if someone objects to these sickening You Tube videos? I suspected, but thought I would at least try. I put up one post simply begging these people to consider for a minute who might be making these products, and to ask themselves if they could, with a clear heart, purchase from an illegal and unregulated organization. I did not criticize them or her, I simply begged them to at least think about it.
My post was promptly removed and I was blocked. Of course. I guess a few people have tried to get that particular woman to quit buying counterfeit because she has a "rant" video where she is "sick of being criticized for buying fakes" and that if she bought real bags "I would be criticized for spending too much money on a bag, so I can't win". Yeah right. I am sure you have experienced that problem. I noticed the rant never mentioned the illegal industry she was supporting, she was mad because people were calling her cheap.
Arrrrgggh! This is so much bigger than "being cheap"! How can people be so short sighted? What can we do to educate the public guys? If it is illegal to purchase counterfeit in the UK, thank God, and it should be in the US as well. Hopefully that would decrease the overall amount of counterfeit bags, shoes etc. on ebay and other trading sites as well. We should punish the buyer just as much as the seller, especially when they *knowingly* buy from an illegal replica site. Some people from the UK were talking about how they had friends who had been fined for buying from street counterfeit vendors, and they were scared to purchase from the website this woman uses. Good! I feel like we need that in this country.
How can we educate the public without them shutting down? I tried with my post to put it in a gentle way. Did not criticize, just asked people to think for a minute. Are that many people that hopelessly stupid and uncaring? They can't be. Notice that nowhere in this post did I use the word "fake". I think that words have power and meaning. These bags are not just "fake"......they are illegal and illegal for a reason and they contibute to the misery and deaths of innocent people all over the world. Their definition is counterfeit. (although if reponders use the word fake for the sake of simplicity I understand)
This post is on the LV board because in the handbag world it is the most imitated. The sheer amount of display and desire for counterfeit Louis Vuitton on the internet is astounding. I have found on other different kinds of forums, when doing a general search, people talking about buying LV for whatever reason, and the answer to their query most every time is, "Just buy a fake".
It is also on here because this is where I mostly hang lately, and you guys are such a sharp bunch. I noted that many people who posted on this woman's video sites stated that they had "real" Coach bags because they could go to the outlet and get them for a hundred bucks or less (still, I do see a ton of counterfeit Coach) but there was no way they would ever pay for a real LV, they were more than willing to pay $200 for the counterfeit bags....that is about what this woman says they cost on the website she uses.
Any ideas on educating the public?
You guys, I am so bothered recently. I have never spent much time on You Tube, but have recently been watching a lot of bag videos. I love to see people's bag collections, reveals, and for some silly reason I especially love the "What's in my bag" videos. The issue I am getting to obviously is the multitude of videos on there with people bragging about counterfeit bags.
So, there is one woman in particular, I will not name her, but she is American, and has quite a few videos about her counterfeits Louis Vuittons Her helpful instructions if you also want to purchase a bag from where she got hers is "PM me and I will send you the website."
I was shocked and horrified at the sheer number of people requesting that she PM them the site. She has many videos on there, but on just one video site there were 130 plus requests from people wanting to also purchase, they also made some other comments too, which I will get to in a minute.
I am assuming that most of these people requesting the site are American, because I saw a few posts about how some people would love the site but they lived in the UK, and purchasing, not just selling, counterfeit goods is illegal there, and they were afraid of getting caught.
The amount of sheer ignorance in the response posts almost makes me physically ill. Their attitude seems to be that they are pulling one over on rich old Louis Vuitton....ha ha. While it is true that counterfeit goods do negatively affect companies, what none of them seem to grasp is the simple concept, that if selling these bags is illegal, then there is nobody to regulate workers in an illegal industry.
Have they ever once given thought to who is making these bags? I worry enough about who is making my *legal* products, because they are made in other countries with other worker standards that we all know are not as high as the US, but at least there is *some*worker regulation.....in an illegal production line overseas, do buyers really think there is a lot of care given to these poor people?
From what I understand, from reading books and articles on counterfeiting, it is only a part of a giant glob of organized crime and illegal activity, so they generally have plenty of access to workers. Sometimes it is by finding them in poor areas of foreign countries, and convincing them they will have a better life if they sign themselves into illegal but scary-to-them contracts that force them to work outside their home country for a certian number of years and are basically just given some housing, if that, and are never able to even send money home to their families, which is what made them sign the contract in the first place. They are often women, they may be beaten if they object, or sexually assulted. And they are the lucky ones.
The unlucky are obtained from the sex/child trafficking trade that these people dabble deeply in. Some undercover investigators have found teenagers and children chained to objects like old ciggarette machines while they make the products that bring in the profits. They often simply end up dead. They may get sick and die, may cause trouble for their captors, and be killed, it is not a situation that many survive to tell about. They are considered property, slaves, to be done with as their owner pleases.
Speaking of the profits, where do these people think their money goes? To pay the chained up children? Ummmm....no. It goes to pay for more human trafficking, drug trade, illegal arms trade, to terrorist organizations, including Al Queada and more.
So what happens if someone objects to these sickening You Tube videos? I suspected, but thought I would at least try. I put up one post simply begging these people to consider for a minute who might be making these products, and to ask themselves if they could, with a clear heart, purchase from an illegal and unregulated organization. I did not criticize them or her, I simply begged them to at least think about it.
My post was promptly removed and I was blocked. Of course. I guess a few people have tried to get that particular woman to quit buying counterfeit because she has a "rant" video where she is "sick of being criticized for buying fakes" and that if she bought real bags "I would be criticized for spending too much money on a bag, so I can't win". Yeah right. I am sure you have experienced that problem. I noticed the rant never mentioned the illegal industry she was supporting, she was mad because people were calling her cheap.
Arrrrgggh! This is so much bigger than "being cheap"! How can people be so short sighted? What can we do to educate the public guys? If it is illegal to purchase counterfeit in the UK, thank God, and it should be in the US as well. Hopefully that would decrease the overall amount of counterfeit bags, shoes etc. on ebay and other trading sites as well. We should punish the buyer just as much as the seller, especially when they *knowingly* buy from an illegal replica site. Some people from the UK were talking about how they had friends who had been fined for buying from street counterfeit vendors, and they were scared to purchase from the website this woman uses. Good! I feel like we need that in this country.
How can we educate the public without them shutting down? I tried with my post to put it in a gentle way. Did not criticize, just asked people to think for a minute. Are that many people that hopelessly stupid and uncaring? They can't be. Notice that nowhere in this post did I use the word "fake". I think that words have power and meaning. These bags are not just "fake"......they are illegal and illegal for a reason and they contibute to the misery and deaths of innocent people all over the world. Their definition is counterfeit. (although if reponders use the word fake for the sake of simplicity I understand)
This post is on the LV board because in the handbag world it is the most imitated. The sheer amount of display and desire for counterfeit Louis Vuitton on the internet is astounding. I have found on other different kinds of forums, when doing a general search, people talking about buying LV for whatever reason, and the answer to their query most every time is, "Just buy a fake".
It is also on here because this is where I mostly hang lately, and you guys are such a sharp bunch. I noted that many people who posted on this woman's video sites stated that they had "real" Coach bags because they could go to the outlet and get them for a hundred bucks or less (still, I do see a ton of counterfeit Coach) but there was no way they would ever pay for a real LV, they were more than willing to pay $200 for the counterfeit bags....that is about what this woman says they cost on the website she uses.
Any ideas on educating the public?
What an absolute crock! I love it when people say that their fake bag is essentially real because it's made by the same factory. I think not. Pathetic.
