http://www.designobserver.com/archives/013995.html#more
The consistently interesting DESIGN OBSERVER
'Strolling recently down a heaving shopping street off the Djemma al Fna square in Marrakech, I did a double-take before a stall as I realized that what I thought had been an innocuous tube of Crest toothpaste was not quite what it seemed.
Peering in a bit, I saw that the tube, despite being decked out in the familiar color and logo trappings of admittedly the simplest tube of Crest (no extreme tartar control here, folks), actually read “Crust.”
(...)
'One wonders in the abstract the real harm of the knockoff trade, since the consumers buying them are not choosing them over the real thing — they are buying them because they are not able to buy the real thing. Yet those who find a kind of underdog justice in buying knockoffs, a sticking it to the corporate man bit of rebellion or even some kind of altruistic gesture toward the developing world, would do well to read journalist Tim Phillips’ new book, Knockoff: The Deadly Trade in Counterfeit Goods. Counterfeiting, Phillips says, accounts for nearly 10% of the global economy, worth almost $500 billion annually. On eBay, he says, a counterfeit good is removed from auction every 20 seconds.'
