On a warm Sunday afternoon you will find students, pedestrians and tourists crowding M Street in Georgetown, just blocks from the White House and Capitol Hill. Some will be out shopping, some going to the bars and restaurants and some just to blend into the crowds.
If you decide to turn off of M Street, say on Wisconsin, and walk a couple of blocks north, you’ll find the crowds thinning out pretty quickly, except for a couple of sidewalk vendors.
But it’s not ice cream that’s attracting the crowds two blocks off of M; it’s the purses. Coach knockoffs, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and others.
These vendors are being swamped by what appear to be middle- and upper-middle-income shoppers, almost all them women and many with their teenage daughters. A few men are hanging around, probably counting up how much they’re going to have to spend if their wives buy all of those purses they are looking at.
The wives, by contrast, are probably counting up all the dollars they will save by buying these purses instead of the real thing.
But purses aren’t the only counterfeits being sold; a nearby jewelry vendor has Tiffany knockoffs. He even has some Tiffany gift boxes and bags when someone purchases something.
“Would you like a (knockoff?) gift box with that lovely (counterfeit) necklace, Mam?”
In some parts of the world, knockoff vendors keep one eye open for the police, and take off when they see one coming.
North of M Street, there appears to be no such worry. Indeed, these vendors have way too much merchandise, and way too many customers, to pull up stakes in a hurry. Local officials must not be a threat to them.
It’s interesting, the U.S. has some of the strongest intellectual property laws and enforcement in the world, and yet we let small amounts of counterfeiting, at least of fashion items, go on right under our own noses.
But you have to wonder if that practice sends a subtle message to the American public, and maybe even policymakers—this is Washington, after all—that intellectual property theft is OK, as long as it’s a good deal . . . off of M Street.