16 ms·

The Amazon Transparency Program Is a Counterfeiter's Worst Nightmare

44 points by deegles 7y ago

Jamwinner 7y ago
I hope they rush this. They are already a retailer I systematically avoid, dispite being a prime member, when authenticity matters. When I have time I ocassionally gamble, but have been less and less successful getting authentic items as time passes. Even if you dislike amazon (i am personally, torn), getting this right benefits everyone selling things online if it proves practical to implement.
- deelowe 7y ago
  How practical is it really? Having to print and track individually serialized barcodes for every product you sell, sounds like it can be anything from a nearly 0 cost step to a complete logistical nightmare depending on the manufacturing process.
  - danesparza 7y ago
    How badly are you being counterfeited and how much do you want to avoid lost sales?
    - throwaway_tech 7y ago
      Enough to sue Amazon for facilitating and profiting off the sale of products infringing on my IP, but not enough to pay Amazon to police their own platform. Policing Amazon's platform is Amazon's job and is a cost Amazon should bear. I don't have to pay Walmart for them to not sell products infringing on my IP, they do that on their own and when they fail, they are liable for my damages. Example, my Dad published an e-book he sells through Amazon, and I'll be damned if there aren't other Amazon sellers offering my Dad's book for sale...its ridiculous.
      - F00bart 7y ago
        I think most people are simply ignorant of the sheer volume of transactions of counterfeit goods on Amazon and similar platforms. The platforms benefit from each transaction regardless, so the platforms often evolve to encourage volume, nothing else.
  - fredley 7y ago
    In order to not be trivially defeatable, it sounds quite hard. You can't, for example, use sequential blocks of ids — far too easy for a counterfeiter to reverse-engineer valid ranges. Which means that you either generate them through some cryptographic signing process - non trivial and the risk of compromised keys, or just generate random guids centrally meaning there's a request/response somewhere in the production cycle to get ids, or batches of ids - also non trivial. The whole thing sounds like it's a really obvious and simple solution at a glance, but as you dig into it it seems hard, especially for smaller players, and only shifts the counterfeiters' workload (now you need to figure out how to steal barcodes, not impossible depending on how much money you invest).
    - arkitaip 7y ago
      Countless solutions have tried to solve the problem of counterfeit goods by using some kind of unique identifier but I don't know of any that has seen widespread usage. The difference is that Amazon is exceptional at tech and has the marketplace to implement and improve their solution over many years. Hopefully Amazon's solution becomes cheap and easy to use for even small brands (but realistically it only needs to be less expensive than the cost of counterfeits to be adopted). If Amazon's Transparency is REALLY GOOD, they could offer it as a service through AWS. There's an enormous demand for this sort of solution.
    - sudhirj 7y ago
      The article says each SKU gets its own codes (and my understanding is that Amazon maintains SKU metadata internally and all resellers sell against it). My guess would be a variation of skuUUID:itemUUID:sha1(skuUUID+itemUUID+skuSecret), encoded as a QR code. UUID could be a smaller int ID, hash could be a base64 encode if you need to save space.
- gketuma 7y ago
  This is the reason why I cancelled my Prime account. I could not trust the electronics I buy on Amazon. Too many fake items sourced directly from shenzhen. Now I go directly to the manufacturer's website and pay full price (which is usually about $10 more), and at least I know I'm getting the real thing.
  - skuthus 7y ago
    What are you buying that you have had issues with?
    - dylan604 7y ago
      I've had fake DSLR camera batteries, Headphones, USB cables, and the list goes on
  - bumbledraven 7y ago
    Yeah. I just bought an $800 pair of binoculars for my dad's birthday from bhphotovideo.com. Normally I would use amazon, but I didn't want to risk getting a counterfeit, and I trust bhphotovideo more.
x0x0 7y ago
I struggle to see why a brand would be willing to share sensitive sales data with Amazon as this program requires. How many units produced, and production times. Amazon already uses every scrap if data they get too compete, including via their expanding house brands
- asah 7y ago
  Sorry for the dumb question, why wouldn't amazon already have this? how does this share a brand's non-Amazon channel volumes? e.g. sales volume on their own website, retail, etc.
  - x0x0 7y ago
    transparency requires a per-unit sticker with a unique code. Brands do not generally share exact volumes per product or their production rates.
    - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
      Couldn't they be per-unit shipped/sold on Amazon? Does the brand need to use the same unique code system in, for example, their own brick & mortar location?
      - x0x0 7y ago
        Yes, because Amazon days you can't stop resellers from selling your x on Amazon (per my reading). Thus you must tag all units.
        gamblor956 7y ago
        No, Amazon can easily stop resellers from selling X on Amazon. It's a private platform. Manufacturers don't need to tag all units unless they sell the same SKU across multiple channels. If they create Amazon-specific SKUs then any non-Amazon SKU would be presumed counterfeit under the new system.
      - 7y ago
chance_state 7y ago
So not only does Amazon co-mingle inventory to cause this problem in the first place, but then they turn around and charge brands if they want to enter this anti-counterfeit program. Incredible.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  It's a standard protection racket; create and profit from crime, and then charge the victims for your protection against the crime you are profiting from so you profit either way.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    What’re the odds of using RICO here?
    - danesparza 7y ago
      As the 'R' in RICO stands for 'Racketeer' (which is explicitly a set of repeated criminal acts) and as Amazon hasn't been alleged to have committed any crimes ... I'd say slim to none.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        This subthread is entirely about the allegation that Amazon engaged in a repeated pattern of actively promoting wire fraud (a RICO predicate offense) as a commercial enterprise. They haven't previously been charged with a RICO predicate offense, but RICO doesn't require you to be separately charged with a predicate offense (either before or concurrently with RICO charges), only that the required relation to a predicate offense be in the allegation supporting the RICO charge. In fact, the central point in RICO is to allow charging people/orgs involved in schemes to promote predicate offenses for commercial benefit who might not otherwise be able to be charged as principals of those offenses.
        m-p-3 7y ago
dmwallin 7y ago
So create a system that encourages abuse, profit from that abuse at the expense of brands, and then charge those companies to use your proprietary tracking system if they want to eliminate it? This is straight out of a racketeering playbook, "It would be a shame if someone counterfeited your products and ruined your brand..." This is Amazon's problem and they should be responsible and accountable for this. This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis.
- DanTheManPR 7y ago
  >This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- papreclip 7y ago
  I don't think I fully understand your perspective. Aside from simply offering a marketplace on which people may sell various products, what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?
  - harimau777 7y ago
    I don't necessarily know their validity one way or the other, but the points that tend to be made are: - In today's world, Amazon isn't just a marketplace, it is THE marketplace. For many brands, not selling on Amazon isn't a realistic option. - Amazon's marketplace makes it very easy to counterfeit due to co-mingling, the difficulty of holding foreign sellers accountable, and the prevalence of fake reviews. - Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting.
    - tidepod12 7y ago
      >Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting. This article is entirely about Amazon doing something to combat counterfeiting...
      - 7y ago
asah 7y ago
Seems like any e-commerce aggregator (e.g. eBay, craigslist, etc) has the same counterfeiting problem - at least Amazon is offering a solution.
- kube-system 7y ago
  I don't have the same magnitude of issues on eBay as I have had on Amazon. Much of the problem is exacerbated their commingled inventory and consolidated product pages. On eBay it is two clicks to see the negative feedback for the seller who is shipping me the item, and I have the confidence that I am going to get the item from that seller. On Amazon, users post much of the negative feedback on the consolidated product page which doesn't give any indication about the seller, and might not even be for the right product. And in the end, fungible FBA inventory is a roll of the dice. This is a problem that never existed on eBay.
wiradikusuma 7y ago
Or, why don't a 3rd party provide this, and provide a website isthislegit.com/THERANDOMID (typing or API or QR) that returns red or green? Hey, startup idea!
- anteatersa 7y ago
  The code has to be logged at Amazon warehouse though so it can linked to your amazon account number. Manufacturer -> Distributor -> Customer. Otherwise I could buy one real product off Amazon, copy the code onto my fake product and sell on Amazon marketplace.
- hangonhn 7y ago
  The problem is that you don't know if it is counterfeit until you get the item and scan the code. That's only marginally better than the status quo -- most counterfeits on Amazon are rather easy to spot once you have it in person. With Amazon's program, they can do it when they accept the shipment and potentially destroy the entire stock of the seller's wares.
- phowat 7y ago
  Cuban cigars have this: http://verificacion.habanos.com/ http://verificacion.habanos.com/ The biggest issue is with people taking authentic packages, filling with fake cigars and selling it.
donarb 7y ago
This sounds like a good idea if major product producers could join together to create a standard for labeling all consumer goods. This could be used to identify food packages for recalls.
quantified 7y ago
How long until the first substantial successful subversion of this? (Success defined as >USD 100K of sales, or destruction of >10K of a competitor's goods) How long until it's made public?

44 points by deegles 7y ago

I hope they rush this. They are already a retailer I systematically avoid, dispite being a prime member, when authenticity matters. When I have time I ocassionally gamble, but have been less and less successful getting authentic items as time passes. Even if you dislike amazon (i am personally, torn), getting this right benefits everyone selling things online if it proves practical to implement.

deelowe 7y ago
How practical is it really? Having to print and track individually serialized barcodes for every product you sell, sounds like it can be anything from a nearly 0 cost step to a complete logistical nightmare depending on the manufacturing process.
- danesparza 7y ago
  How badly are you being counterfeited and how much do you want to avoid lost sales?
  - throwaway_tech 7y ago
    Enough to sue Amazon for facilitating and profiting off the sale of products infringing on my IP, but not enough to pay Amazon to police their own platform. Policing Amazon's platform is Amazon's job and is a cost Amazon should bear. I don't have to pay Walmart for them to not sell products infringing on my IP, they do that on their own and when they fail, they are liable for my damages. Example, my Dad published an e-book he sells through Amazon, and I'll be damned if there aren't other Amazon sellers offering my Dad's book for sale...its ridiculous.
    - F00bart 7y ago
      I think most people are simply ignorant of the sheer volume of transactions of counterfeit goods on Amazon and similar platforms. The platforms benefit from each transaction regardless, so the platforms often evolve to encourage volume, nothing else.
- fredley 7y ago
  In order to not be trivially defeatable, it sounds quite hard. You can't, for example, use sequential blocks of ids — far too easy for a counterfeiter to reverse-engineer valid ranges. Which means that you either generate them through some cryptographic signing process - non trivial and the risk of compromised keys, or just generate random guids centrally meaning there's a request/response somewhere in the production cycle to get ids, or batches of ids - also non trivial. The whole thing sounds like it's a really obvious and simple solution at a glance, but as you dig into it it seems hard, especially for smaller players, and only shifts the counterfeiters' workload (now you need to figure out how to steal barcodes, not impossible depending on how much money you invest).
  - arkitaip 7y ago
    Countless solutions have tried to solve the problem of counterfeit goods by using some kind of unique identifier but I don't know of any that has seen widespread usage. The difference is that Amazon is exceptional at tech and has the marketplace to implement and improve their solution over many years. Hopefully Amazon's solution becomes cheap and easy to use for even small brands (but realistically it only needs to be less expensive than the cost of counterfeits to be adopted). If Amazon's Transparency is REALLY GOOD, they could offer it as a service through AWS. There's an enormous demand for this sort of solution.
  - sudhirj 7y ago
    The article says each SKU gets its own codes (and my understanding is that Amazon maintains SKU metadata internally and all resellers sell against it). My guess would be a variation of skuUUID:itemUUID:sha1(skuUUID+itemUUID+skuSecret), encoded as a QR code. UUID could be a smaller int ID, hash could be a base64 encode if you need to save space.
gketuma 7y ago
This is the reason why I cancelled my Prime account. I could not trust the electronics I buy on Amazon. Too many fake items sourced directly from shenzhen. Now I go directly to the manufacturer's website and pay full price (which is usually about $10 more), and at least I know I'm getting the real thing.
- skuthus 7y ago
  What are you buying that you have had issues with?
  - dylan604 7y ago
    I've had fake DSLR camera batteries, Headphones, USB cables, and the list goes on
- bumbledraven 7y ago
  Yeah. I just bought an $800 pair of binoculars for my dad's birthday from bhphotovideo.com. Normally I would use amazon, but I didn't want to risk getting a counterfeit, and I trust bhphotovideo more.

x0x0 7y ago

I struggle to see why a brand would be willing to share sensitive sales data with Amazon as this program requires. How many units produced, and production times. Amazon already uses every scrap if data they get too compete, including via their expanding house brands

asah 7y ago
Sorry for the dumb question, why wouldn't amazon already have this? how does this share a brand's non-Amazon channel volumes? e.g. sales volume on their own website, retail, etc.
- x0x0 7y ago
  transparency requires a per-unit sticker with a unique code. Brands do not generally share exact volumes per product or their production rates.
  - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
    Couldn't they be per-unit shipped/sold on Amazon? Does the brand need to use the same unique code system in, for example, their own brick & mortar location?
    - x0x0 7y ago
      Yes, because Amazon days you can't stop resellers from selling your x on Amazon (per my reading). Thus you must tag all units.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        No, Amazon can easily stop resellers from selling X on Amazon. It's a private platform. Manufacturers don't need to tag all units unless they sell the same SKU across multiple channels. If they create Amazon-specific SKUs then any non-Amazon SKU would be presumed counterfeit under the new system.
    - 7y ago

chance_state 7y ago

So not only does Amazon co-mingle inventory to cause this problem in the first place, but then they turn around and charge brands if they want to enter this anti-counterfeit program. Incredible.

dragonwriter 7y ago
It's a standard protection racket; create and profit from crime, and then charge the victims for your protection against the crime you are profiting from so you profit either way.
- journalctl 7y ago
  What’re the odds of using RICO here?
  - danesparza 7y ago
    As the 'R' in RICO stands for 'Racketeer' (which is explicitly a set of repeated criminal acts) and as Amazon hasn't been alleged to have committed any crimes ... I'd say slim to none.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      This subthread is entirely about the allegation that Amazon engaged in a repeated pattern of actively promoting wire fraud (a RICO predicate offense) as a commercial enterprise. They haven't previously been charged with a RICO predicate offense, but RICO doesn't require you to be separately charged with a predicate offense (either before or concurrently with RICO charges), only that the required relation to a predicate offense be in the allegation supporting the RICO charge. In fact, the central point in RICO is to allow charging people/orgs involved in schemes to promote predicate offenses for commercial benefit who might not otherwise be able to be charged as principals of those offenses.
      - m-p-3 7y ago

dmwallin 7y ago

So create a system that encourages abuse, profit from that abuse at the expense of brands, and then charge those companies to use your proprietary tracking system if they want to eliminate it? This is straight out of a racketeering playbook, "It would be a shame if someone counterfeited your products and ruined your brand..." This is Amazon's problem and they should be responsible and accountable for this. This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis.

DanTheManPR 7y ago
>This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
papreclip 7y ago
I don't think I fully understand your perspective. Aside from simply offering a marketplace on which people may sell various products, what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?
- harimau777 7y ago
  I don't necessarily know their validity one way or the other, but the points that tend to be made are: - In today's world, Amazon isn't just a marketplace, it is THE marketplace. For many brands, not selling on Amazon isn't a realistic option. - Amazon's marketplace makes it very easy to counterfeit due to co-mingling, the difficulty of holding foreign sellers accountable, and the prevalence of fake reviews. - Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting.
  - tidepod12 7y ago
    >Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting. This article is entirely about Amazon doing something to combat counterfeiting...
    - 7y ago

asah 7y ago

Seems like any e-commerce aggregator (e.g. eBay, craigslist, etc) has the same counterfeiting problem - at least Amazon is offering a solution.

kube-system 7y ago
I don't have the same magnitude of issues on eBay as I have had on Amazon. Much of the problem is exacerbated their commingled inventory and consolidated product pages. On eBay it is two clicks to see the negative feedback for the seller who is shipping me the item, and I have the confidence that I am going to get the item from that seller. On Amazon, users post much of the negative feedback on the consolidated product page which doesn't give any indication about the seller, and might not even be for the right product. And in the end, fungible FBA inventory is a roll of the dice. This is a problem that never existed on eBay.

wiradikusuma 7y ago

Or, why don't a 3rd party provide this, and provide a website isthislegit.com/THERANDOMID (typing or API or QR) that returns red or green? Hey, startup idea!

anteatersa 7y ago
The code has to be logged at Amazon warehouse though so it can linked to your amazon account number. Manufacturer -> Distributor -> Customer. Otherwise I could buy one real product off Amazon, copy the code onto my fake product and sell on Amazon marketplace.
hangonhn 7y ago
The problem is that you don't know if it is counterfeit until you get the item and scan the code. That's only marginally better than the status quo -- most counterfeits on Amazon are rather easy to spot once you have it in person. With Amazon's program, they can do it when they accept the shipment and potentially destroy the entire stock of the seller's wares.
phowat 7y ago
Cuban cigars have this: http://verificacion.habanos.com/ http://verificacion.habanos.com/ The biggest issue is with people taking authentic packages, filling with fake cigars and selling it.

donarb 7y ago

This sounds like a good idea if major product producers could join together to create a standard for labeling all consumer goods. This could be used to identify food packages for recalls.

quantified 7y ago

How long until the first substantial successful subversion of this? (Success defined as >USD 100K of sales, or destruction of >10K of a competitor's goods) How long until it's made public?