Stopping Counterfeiting

I have always been unhappy with counterfeiting and piracy for several reasons:

1) Much of my success has been due to the exploitation of intellectual property and therefore anything that illegally cuts into that revenue stream in wrong in my view
2) Counterfeiting of drugs can kill; even counterfeit cosmetics can harm.

Many people think that the two are different crimes; copying a dvd is not as harmful as counterfeiting drugs. That is so, but only to a point, because the general disdain for the real thing allows many people who might not otherwise be crooks to become crooks.

People of our social standing often think that we are protected from the depredations of false drugs because we have shopped in the same places for 26 years and that those shopkeepers will not deal in counterfeits.

So I thought, till a friend of mine discovered his heart medicine, bought at the 'family' chemist in Friend's Colony was doctored.

Go to Crawford market and you will find a ton of shops selling what appear to be very fake cosmetics. The people buying there are not you and me; they are shopkeepers who will then onsell to you and me.

Our legal system, police system and, frankly, even our manufacturers who are being ripped off appear not to care too much.

I did, however, conduct one experiment at a shop in Mumbai. I asked the owner why he was selling fake products; all the clients in his shop jumped him. If he was certain of being jumped 5 times a day (changing the behaviour of Indians takes that many boots per day, at least at the start) he would probably stop stocking fakes. And any shop verified to be selling only legal things would find its business booming. At least for those things that we as a society want to be original; dvd's will have to wait a long time for this protection.

What if there was a way to name and shame crooked shopkeepers and wholesalers?

There is, and it is outlined in the next blog.

I thought about trying to patent this idea, and start a company to exploit it. It is a very simple idea, but because of modern technology it will work. Instead, because it cost me only a few hours of jet lagged time to think it up it makes more sense to dump it on the next and essentially 'open source' it so lots of people can set services with different features.

And it will make every one of us a policeman with the power to change behaviour.