Legal Systems for Sale: How Weak Enforcement Sustains the Global Counterfeit Economy -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

The supposed worldwide battle against counterfeiting is just an elaborately staged farce. Governments proclaim crackdowns; organizations confiscate bogus goods; companies issue statements about the protection of their brands. Yet the phony economy continues to swell an indomitable and pragmatic increase linked to those societies that say they oppose it but are actually quite deeply rooted in its operations.This is not a sign of poor enforcement; it is built into the system.Counterfeiting-used to be a sometimes random offshoot from other criminal enterprises. Nowadays it has grown into a trillion-dollar industry that spans virtually all areas where there is money to be made: luxury goods, electronics, car parts and, most terrifying if all pharmaceuticals. The stakes go beyond economic and become existential. When phony medicines enter supply chains, the result is not lost revenue; it is unnecessary death. When fake aircraft or automotive parts circulate, safety turns into a lottery. And yet enforcement remains theatric, divided and in many ways deliberately flabby.Why?Because counterfeiting manages to flourish where the law only seems to be present.At first glance, legal systems in many countries appear to be robust against counterfeiting. Intellectual property legislation is enacted, penalties are on the statute books and there are officially charged agencies for enforcement. But beneath this facade lies a system drought-ridden with corruption, political pacts and selective action. Raids are staged, but networks are left untouched. Small vendors get caught while the big illegal agents often able to shield themselves of from this through economic or political connections continue at their will within a showbusiness of enforcementgreat on paper but not in practice.This selective law enforcement is not a mere accident. Rather, it reflects a deeper political economy where counterfeiting is tolerated and at times quietly encouraged because some very powerful groups profit by it. For local economies, phony markets provide employment and low priced consumer goods. For hungry apparatchiks, they promise steady streams of off-budget revenue. For international supply chains they represent a shadow infrastructure that lowers costs and enhances freedom of action. In such a world, law-breaking is contained rather than vanquished.

As a result, we now have dual judicial order. On the one hand, there is the legal system, which in its laws, courts and supervisory bodies on the one hand Itself this system Besides projecting an image of control. On another level, there exists the reality of operating. It is a diffuse network on informal practices, negotiated compliance, and strategic blindness. Between these two levels open up an area where counterfeiting flourishes out of sight.

After years of effort and hard work, the international approach still The main trade accords give intellectual property some protection,but enforcement of this is mostly by the nation and even. Multilateral institutions establish principles, yet these are non-binding and easily forgotten. Corporate led campaigns center around brand defense and fail to reform the overall system whatsoever. In other words, the whole world’s response is geared to controlling reputational risks not stamping out the problem itself.

The very language we use to talk about counterfeiting has the effect of concealing its true nature. By making it a matter of intellectual property rights, the discourse reduces a complex system of exploitation to mere ownership in theory. This framing nicely bypasses any mention of human cost: the laborers who live under treacherous conditions, the consumers who get shoddy products, and communities that find themselves locked into informal economies without recourse to law at all.

To get serious about counterfeiting, you cannot just pretend that more laws will do the trick.But what we need is not more regulation; so much as the political determination to liberate people from law. Provided that enforcement remains discriminatory,provided that corruption skews priorities, and provided that global markets continue to absorb counterfeit goods as if it were all part and parcel of doing business nothing will change.

How should genuine responsibility with having people token system appearance like?In this kind of thing, decision making itself has to be honestly separated from political and economic interference. It depends on bodies independent of the government with both the power and the protection to investigate high level authorities, not just small commercial dealers.There are also companies with responsibility to fulfil with regard ensuring proper investigation which goes beyond their immediate suppliers and extends into the networks in which they live at large.Fourth, the world community needs to go beyond volunteering and start setting international standards that carry sanctions when they are not carried out. However, most importantly of all, we must face an uncomfortable fact: that counterfeiting is for something. It feeds modishly productive informal economies, it oils corrupt systems and satisfies world demand. To uproot it would require not only legislative change but an economic revolution, changing incentives from the present ones that abet obscurity and exploitation. If no, every battle globally against counterfeiting will stay much as it is today: a put on performance with laws written to be seen and not enforced, and justice offered in word but hardly ever done. In such accommodating rightness, A legal system may be weak but in that very cussed gives evince that turns into complicity. That complicit embrace of the underworld is not only will survive with the law, but precisely owes its life to such unwillingness.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya Indonesia