[codyrobbins]

No, I don’t think that’s the reason why fashion brands are against knock-offs. They don’t necessarily expect that everyone who buys a counterfeit will buy the real thing. Instead, a market glutted with counterfeit products dilutes their brand and reflects poorly on the quality of their merchandise because consumers confuse the knock-off with the real thing. And that most certainly does lose them something.

A Chanel handbag is a luxury item that, in part, is desirable simply because of its expense and thus relative scarcity—not everyone can have one. Lifestyles brands are built in large part around a carefully crafted image of their consumer, and when every 19 year old Starbucks barista making $21K/year is walking around with a knock-off Chanel handbag it’s difficult to maintain the image they’re going for. Sales drop as the real consumers flee the brand, and then the company has no choice but to market to a lower demographic. Counterfeits undermine the company by commoditizing their goods.

Since fashion brands have significantly more limited legal protections for their products than other industries, I don’t see how you could expect them to be against an act that stands to enlarge the remedies available to them to protect their brands. It was shortsighted for the media companies to try to take a sledgehammer to the Internet—since what they sell are inherently digital products for which it was inevitable that distribution would move to the Internet eventually—but apparel is a physical product that isn’t in any danger of having that happen. For that reason apparel companies don’t care about the Internet (just like you probably don’t care very much about apparel), and I can’t say I could really blame them.

This isn’t even to mention the fact that fashion design is an art, and having opportunists steal your design, completely mangle it in an attempt to make it cheaper, and then sell it as an original is in all likelihood an incredibly infuriating thing simply from the perspective of artistic purity. Again, I find it hard to blame them for wanting to stop this, given that how well the Internet works is largely irrelevant to practically everyone in the entire industry.

[michaels0620]

There was an article (that I now cannot find) that claimed there was a positive effect of counterfeiting for high end fashion brands because it motivated buyers to more quickly move on to the latest version. Someone who is willing to spend $700 on a hand bag will get a newer version rather than hold onto the one they have when they see anyone and everyone sporting it.

[codyrobbins]

That’s an interesting point, and I’d like to read that article, but I think it’d be highly situationally dependent on the particular brand and you’d have to know their internal sales numbers to confirm it.

Even if it were true, though, it still doesn’t address the fact that the designers would be crazy not to want more power to stop their designs from being stolen for simply artistic rather than pragmatic or business reasons. It’s not fair to call them greedy or immoral—and it’s certainly uncalled for and wrong to call them unpatriotic traitors—for wanting this and for not particularly caring about our industry just as we probably don’t really care about theirs. In fact, it’s that kind of one-sided ad hominem bullshit that’s actually the problem.

That being said, SOPA is still an unacceptable solution.

[mekoka]

You made some very valid points in your replies and I was with you as long as you presented them as reasonable hypothetical motives for the fashion industry to support this bill.

However, when you say stuff such as In fact, it’s that kind of one-sided ad hominem bullshit that’s actually the problem, you presume that the point about them being greedy or immoral is invalid. That also sounds a bit naive and one-sided.

We've all observed how artistic rights, copyrights, patents are used by corporations to turn unscrupulous profits. Can you guarantee that executives leading corporations in the fashion industry are exempt of such practices? Would you vouch for their integrity if we decided to observe their various operations under the magnifier? Can you say with certainty that no questionable corners have been cut to turn up a buck or two?

[codyrobbins]

You presume that the point about them being greedy or immoral is invalid

Yeah, I am presuming it—because I just laid out how what they’re doing is not necessarily driven by greed or immorality but defensible motives from their point of view. You’re simply saying they’re bad people and that’s probably not true in the vast majority of cases. I’m not vouching for anyone’s integrity, but you are so down a rabbit hole of fundamental attribution bias I don’t have any interest in attempting to change your mind.