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| A real and fake Compact Flash card, side-by-side. Can you tell which is which? (Hint: the fake is on the left.) |
Buy a camera, take a picture, print it out, help terrorists.
Say what? Well, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, a significant tributary of funding for terrorism leads back to a growing pool of counterfeit photo products: memory cards, batteries, ink cartridges, and even cameras. Although warnings are posted on eBay and online discussion boards, it's not always easy to tell a fake from the real thing.
Even when the people making money off these counterfeits are anything-for-a-buck manufacturers and vendors, not terrorists, the consequences for unsuspecting buyers can be costly. Phony batteries melt whole cameras, knock-off memory cards blank out in the middle of once-in-a-lifetime wilderness expeditions, and used ink cartridges, packaged to look new, gum up photo printers.
"People know when they're buying knockoff purses, shoes, and Rolexes," observes Don deKieffer, an attorney whose trademark-protection law firm investigates counterfeiters all over the world. "But when it comes to photo supplies, people want to be able to count on the quality of the product and don't want to take a chance on it being inferior."
Big-name manufacturers and law-enforcement officials are fighting back. Companies such as Brother, Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark have filed and won aggressive lawsuits and cease-and-desist demands. Memory card maker Kingston Technology has worked with eBay in shutting down about 100 vendors of fake products in the past 18 months. And Homeland Security (specifically the U.S. Customs & Border Protection agency) is lending its considerable firepower to photo manufacturing trade associations in criminal investigations.
The eager market for counterfeit consumer goods is reflected in recent seizures at U.S. borders. Seizures of all counterfeit goods rose 83 percent, and their value rose 67 percent, between 2005 and 2006, according to Customs. The contraband ran the gamut from phony Reeboks to knockoff NFL jerseys, and even included a $16 million load of bogus Zig-Zag rolling papers. The total includes a significant increase in seizures of camera batteries and a huge increase in memory cards, but, curiously, a decline in ink cartridges.
The eye-popper? A 900-percent increase in the value of seized cameras and accessories. The actual dollar amounts are paltry: just $35,665 in 2006, up from $3,917 in 2005. But multiply by 20, as Customs inspects only about 5 percent of the 13 million cargo containers entering the U.S. annually. "We get 5 million containers a year" through the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, says Customs spokesman Mike Fleming. "You can't deny the obvious-some of this stuff gets through."
The inevitable question: Could your next camera be counterfeit?
Keeping Quiet
Of course, there were famous fakes in the past, like the old chrome Nikon SP rangefinders painted black that are still passed off to collectors as the 10-times-more-valuable (and uncommon) authentic black Nikon SP, which comprised less than 10 percent of production, according to the Nikon Journal.
And there were all those Leica knockoffs made in China, starting in 1958 with the Shanghai 58 and later the Red Flag 20, ordered by Madame Mao in 1971. Indeed, whole books and websites are devoted to Leica fakes, knockoffs, and wannabes, including those of the famous gold-plated Leica Luxus, of which only about 95 were made in 1929–30. Favorite targets of Russian counterfeiters, even known forgeries of the Luxus are valuable, albeit far less so than the now-$40,000 original.
Not surprisingly, modern skullduggery is a subject the major imaging corporations don't even like to acknowledge, much less discuss. Ask the big boys about their far-reaching and many-leveled counter-counterfeiting campaigns, and they either draft a careful "statement" or have an outside public relations firm give you the brush-off.
For instance, Hewlett-Packard, which is almost as aggressive in protecting its trademarks (read: ink cartridges) as Disney is in protecting Mickey Mouse, declined to comment on its many lawsuits and private investigations against makers and sellers of fake HP products.
Although HP wouldn't speak with us about it, according to its website the company has a policy of never standing pat on a "static deterrent"-a single hologram on different products, for instance-because counterfeit package makers are so nimble in copying new package designs (even holograms).
And given the research touted in HP press releases, the company may be embedding covert codes in infrared ink, as well as using color-shifting inks, color bar codes, and hidden holograms to deter fakery.
Then there was the recent law-enforcement bust HP helped broker in Taiwan. According to the Taipei Times, agents of the Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau described in April how HP's local investigators led them to arrest two women selling fake HP laser-printer cartridges through wholesale shops all over the island nation. "Police also said that HP headquarters in the U.S. had paid attention to the crime," the newspaper reported.
SanDisk, one of several companies that has seen counterfeit memory cards sold on internet auction sites, sweated for a week over a statement to Pop Photo, finally saying, "Consumers are the ultimate victims of counterfeiting. Phony flash memory cards are often poorly designed and assembled, which may cause them to fail within a few months of purchase, to operate slowly, or to damage data files. SanDisk is taking action in multiple ways against counterfeiting."
As are all the major makers of memory, batteries, ink cartridges, and cameras, SanDisk says it's "working with" the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, the FBI, various industry organizations, and eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program. The company has also set up counterfeit reporting hotlines in several countries.
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