More than nine million counterfeit products were seized by the French customs in 2011, among which were a million and a half articles seized from carriers of express goods –in other words, articles from individual Internet orders. This latter figure attests to an expanding phenomenon which is as yet difficult to measure precisely, but could turn out to have serious consequences both for consumers and for certain sectors of the economy: namely, the growing distribution of counterfeit products –particularly, hazardous products– by way of the Internet.
Franck Guarnieri and Éric Przyswa present the main issues here, first recalling the particular context that the Internet represents for counterfeiters, together with the reality of the phenomenon and the inherent dangers. They also stress the difficulty of fighting counterfeit goods on the Internet at the international level, because debate and action are too targeted on the legal aspects (intellectual property in particular) or deal with cybercriminality without really confronting counterfeiting, and are based on a loose conglomeration of institutions that co-operate very little with one another. In this context, and given the prospects they foresee for the “counterfeiting/Internet” combination in the years to 2020, Guarnieri and Przyswa have formulated a number of recommendations for solving the problem. These consist, among other things, in recognizing the increasing overlap between the real and virtual worlds and the difficulty of regulating trade on the Internet. It is, they argue, through organizing “resilience” by way of good security strategies and a cooperative logic that the individuals, companies and institutions concerned will be able to confront the distribution of counterfeit products on the Internet, it being out of the question to eliminate them once and for all.
