French Courts Still Very Confused About The Difference Between A Platform And A User

from the blaming-the-wrong-party dept

For all the complaints that some have about the various safe harbors found in US law to protect service providers from the actions of their users, it's important to note the sort of ridiculous results that occur without such safe harbors. And, for that, you have to look no further than France, which not only doesn't appear to have similar safe harbor laws in place, but whose courts seem to consistently take the position that service providers absolutely are responsible for the actions of their users. We've seen this in the ongoing rulings against Google, which has finally been appealed out of France to the wider European courts. And, then there are the absolutely ridiculous results, such as that time when a French court declared Yahoo and its CEO at the time war criminals, because a user sold some Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo's auction site.

The latest isn't quite as extreme, but is no less ridiculous. A French court has declared that eBay is a counterfeiter because counterfeit goods were sold on eBay. Note that the court didn't blame the actual seller, but the platform provider eBay. The lawyer for the company suing claims that eBay is much more than a platform because it has tools that help sellers sell better. That seems like a huge stretch, but apparently the court bought it. Making eBay liable for any auction held on the site in France is likely to seriously stifle the use of eBay in the country. It now not only will need to review auctions, but somehow do so without any way of actually knowing if a product is legit or counterfeit. How could eBay possibly know this? It can't -- which means it will probably have to do something like ban a tremendous number of auctions. How that can possibly be a good thing for anyone in France is beyond me.

Filed Under: counterfeiting, france, liability. platform, safe harbors, user
Companies: ebay

Anti-Counterfeiting Group Has Students Create Counterfeit Blog To Explain Why Counterfeiting Is Bad

from the it's-bad,-y'see dept

Slashdot points us to the story of how Hunter College agreed to create a "sponsored" class with money from the industry group the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) where the students were required to (irony alert) create a counterfeit blog by a counterfeit student to try to get across the message that "counterfeiting is bad." Well, actually, to clarify, the message that was supposed to get across was: counterfeiting brand name products is bad -- creating a counterfeit blog pretending to get that message across is so wonderful that the IACC even bragged about it (pdf) on its website.

The more details you read, the worse the story gets. The head of the department basically forced an untenured professor who had no knowledge of marketing or PR (he taught computer graphics) into leading the course, and it was made clear to him that he had no ability to question the "curriculum" that the IACC gave him. There appeared to be no questioning of the ethics of creating a fake student with a fake story about a lost brand name bag. To get attention for the blog, the students created posters and flyers they hung around campus promising a $500 reward for the return of the non-existent bag. Of course, the blog posts on the fake blog then told the story of how someone gave back the bag and got the reward... only to discover that the bag was counterfeit.

There are a ton of ethical questions raised by this, from pushing the students to lie to pressuring an unqualified professor to lead this class to taking curriculum notes from an industry association. Even worse, the lesson the students got out of the class (while being exactly what the IACC wanted) aren't true. The IACC proudly reports that students gave feedback like the following:

"In this class, I have learned that counterfeiting entails a whole lot more than I ever could have imagined."

"I've learned that counterfeiting is a lot more widespread than I had originally thought."

"I was definitely one of those people that didn't really think counterfeiting was a big deal."

Of course, there's just one problem: studies by both the GAO and the OECD have both shown that counterfeiting really isn't that big a problem and that the industry regularly exaggerates the problem. Of course, the students in the class probably didn't get to see either of those reports -- both of which would seem rather relevant to a class on counterfeiting. Of course, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Anti-counterfeiting lobbyists last year somehow convinced the Toronto Star to write an entire advertorial section masquerading as news reporting about how awful counterfeiting was. So, perhaps they figured if they can trick an entire editorial staff into parroting its message, why not a college class as well?

Filed Under: counterfeiting, hunter college, iacc, sponsored education

How Bogus Counterfeiting Stats Become Fact

from the watch-the-process-at-work dept

We've seen in the past how easily bogus stats from a biased industry can suddenly become "fact" as the press uses the stats without questioning the assumptions or even noting the inherent bias in the numbers. Michael Geist is examining exactly how that has happened in Canada in the debate over what to do concerning counterfeit goods. Apparently, many pushing for stronger anti-counterfeiting legislation in Canada point to the RCMP's supposed claim that counterfeiting is costing Canada $30 billion. The problem is that the number the RCMP is using wasn't based on a careful study or anything -- it was based on some random claims they found online, that were actually numbers thrown around by lobbyists paid to pump up the supposed threat to (yes, you guessed it) push for stronger protective laws. Yet, because the RCMP used those numbers without bothering to explain that they just plucked them off the internet with no effort to research the actual situation, many are now assuming that the numbers are accurate. In the meantime, two separate recent studies by neutral parties have shown that the claims over losses from counterfeiting have been grossly exaggerated. Unfortunately, no one seems to have paid that much attention to either study... not when the RCMP is showing the cost as $30 billion.

Filed Under: bogus stats, canada, counterfeiting