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US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

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Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#211

Post by anigbrowl »

bobwaycott wrote: post #185
anigbrowl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where are you getting this 1% number from? Why are you assuming a 99% false positive rate? It's not hard to identify bogus retailers in this case because luxury brands usually have direct contractual relations with retail partners rather than selling though wholesale channels. So if you see cheap stuff.com selling 'Chanel' merchandise and they're not on the list of authorized distributors, then by definition they…

Faulty logic. I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise. There is no definition of anything at all here that means I am selling knockoffs.

I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise.

How? According to Chanel's corporate website, they only sell through their own boutiques and authorized retail partners. This is known as a selective distribution agreement, and here is a 2008 report on internet sales models (prepared for Chanel) which articulates the differences from normal wholesale-retail models: http://www.crai.com/ecp/assets/Selective_distribution_Caffar...

My whole point is that no, you can't just go into business as a Chanel retailer, and you'll find the same is true for Hermes, LV, and a variety of other luxury brands. A great many high-value manufacturers make use of selective or exclusive distribution agreements to maintain price discrimination and market positioning for their brand across a global market.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#212

Post by spoiledtechie »

JonnieCache wrote: post #33
danilocampos wrote: post #9

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free: 1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing. 3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 4) A secure, pe…

Sounds like you know exactly what is needed. Why not start the process of making this happen?

Where would one need to begin to have a secure peer to peer DNS system?

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#213

Post by Natsu »

anigbrowl wrote: post #210
Natsu wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And where are you getting this 1% number from? I would assume it's from this part of the article: "How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit." It was closer to 1.3% if that makes you feel any better.

That doesn't speak to the point I made about distributor relationships. There's a reasonable presumption here that anyone selling such merchandise actually offering counterfeit goods because Chanel does not sell into the wholesale market.

It's also possible to sell second-hand goods.

That said, as I wrote elsewhere, the contention is not that they were wrong, only that they did not, in fact, check.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#214

Post by bobwaycott »

anigbrowl wrote: post #211
bobwaycott wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faulty logic. I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise. There is no definition of anything at all here that means I am selling knockoffs.

I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise. How? According to Chanel's corporate website, they only sell through their own boutiques and authorized retail partners. This is known as a selective distribution agreement, and here is a 2008 report on internet sales models (prepared for Chanel) which articulates the differences from normal wholesale-retail models: http://ww…

Oh, I'm quite familiar with sales models, and they don't really matter much here. Authorized distribution is a glorified honor system.

I can buy Chanel, Hermes, LV, or other luxury products and resell them at any super-low, cheap-as-dirt price I wish. There is no arrangement in which you can determine "by definition" that the products I'm selling at a ridiculously low rate are knockoffs.

I could be a moron business person and lose my ass. I could have decided to violate my retail agreement and do what I wish. I could have received a box of the stuff from a friend & resell it for $20 a pop. I could have stolen a shipment of goods or procured them in some other non-authorized fashion and yet still be selling, by definition, the genuine article.

I was taking issue with the erroneous assertion one could tell, by definition, that a cheap luxury product was a knockoff. There is no way to reliably determine by price alone. A dirt-cheap luxury good can certainly heighten one's suspicions of its authenticity, but the price alone is no defining factor in judging a knockoff from the real thing.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#215

Post by anigbrowl »

bobwaycott wrote: post #214
anigbrowl wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise. How? According to Chanel's corporate website, they only sell through their own boutiques and authorized retail partners. This is known as a selective distribution agreement, and here is a 2008 report on internet sales models (prepared for Chanel) which articulates the differences from normal wholesale-retail models: http://ww…

Oh, I'm quite familiar with sales models, and they don't really matter much here. Authorized distribution is a glorified honor system. I can buy Chanel, Hermes, LV, or other luxury products and resell them at any super-low, cheap-as-dirt price I wish. There is no arrangement in which you can determine "by definition" that the products I'm selling at a ridiculously low rate are knockoffs. I could be a moron business p…

...which is why the manufacturer has had to put up a $20,000 bond for each website it alleges in selling counterfeit goods, lest some of the operators contest this determination and come to court with evidence that they are actually legitimate purveyors of used goods. I have a strong hunch that they won't have to pay out on those bonds.

I could be a moron business person and lose my ass. I could have decided to violate my retail agreement and do what I wish. I could have received a box of the stuff from a friend & resell it for $20 a pop.

Of course you could, but the probability that you actually are is sufficiently remote to be set aside. In the unlikely event that such a claim turns out to be true, you'll be compensated.

I could have stolen a shipment of goods or procured them in some other non-authorized fashion and yet still be selling, by definition, the genuine article.

Insofar as you are marketing and selling to Us customers from a US-registered website, that in itself would be sufficient justification to shut your website down. Convicting someone requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but putting a halt to self-evidently criminal activity does not.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#216

Post by anigbrowl »

gospelwut wrote: post #203
danilocampos wrote: post #9

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

As somebody who works as an expert (I hate that word by the way, so I apologize) in the legal field, I can say this sentiment is pretty accurate. People think the that evil cabal of lawyers et al conspire against the little man to crush, oppress, and otherwise harm them through litigious means. This is not the case per se. There are lawyers filled with the utmost dickery, but that is not all of them. The fact of the…

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

Tee-hee.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#217

Post by anigbrowl »

Natsu wrote: post #213
anigbrowl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't speak to the point I made about distributor relationships. There's a reasonable presumption here that anyone selling such merchandise actually offering counterfeit goods because Chanel does not sell into the wholesale market.

It's also possible to sell second-hand goods. That said, as I wrote elsewhere, the contention is not that they were wrong, only that they did not, in fact, check.

You're effectively asking that conviction precede an arrest, albeit in relation to a website rather than a person. That's not how things work; a strong showing of probable cause is sufficient to act, and the complainant is bonded against the possibility of misidentification. That's only $20,000 per claim of infringement, but when you think about it that adds up to a total of over $6 million that Chanel has paid over to the court as surety that it is acting in good faith. In other words, the company is literally putting its money where its mouth is, and will lose some or all of that money to the extent that its allegations are inaccurate.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#218

Post by andrewflnr »

talmand wrote: post #205
maratd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings. Imagine Google replacing google.com with a clear statement denouncing a particular government action and naming names? Imagine Google de-indexing the government instead? They have so many more options available quite simply because they have such massive exposure.

Imagine the U.S. government taking google.com from the DNS list and making it a felony to link to not only the domain but the IP addresses that belong to Google as well.

I don't think they can do that just for putting up a message yet. At least I hope to God they can't. For de-listing government sites, they would probably suffer consequences.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#219

Post by gnaritas »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #178
gnaritas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not governments that make stupid decisions, it's people; take the decision away from government, and someone else will make those stupid decisions, but stupid they will be.

> It's not governments that make stupid decisions, it's people; take the decision away from government, and someone else will make those stupid decisions, but stupid they will be. Except that only a government can make me care what they decide.

> Except that only a government can make me care what they decide.

Simply not true; it's just that only they can do it legally, but to even say legally, you need a government to enforce legality.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#220

Post by gnaritas »

vidarh wrote: post #197
ecdavis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet has become critical and "they" are beginning to realise the consequences, which is leading to increasingly invasive and ill-informed policy.

Yet they're still nowhere near putting the genie back in the bottle, and the internet is so embedded in the economy that they can't , they can only try to minimize the impact. It's time for the next leap - making the internet properly fault tolerant.

Exactly.
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