Counterfeiting leads a cycle of hyper consumerism with low prices, excess waste, and a fight for product “distinction” – this entrenches the capitalist system and values, only the plan is key to create a mindset shift necessary for the alternative.

The size and vigour of counterfeit commerce raises several interpretive questions concerning authenticity, trust and meaning. Walter Benjamin’s (2002) famous contribution to the sociology of culture on the consequences of mechanical reproduction, points to issues of originality, politics and status differentiation in the consumption of duplicates. When the volume and scale of the global counterfeit trade nowadays is factored in, together with the subject of consumer motivation, especially in the matter of consuming non-deceptive counterfeits, the issues multiply in range and complexity (3). Structurally speaking, the world of commodities exchanged under copyright and patent is mirrored by a counter-world consisting of illegal relations of production, distribution and exchange that are resistant to detection, policing and control. Counterfeit commerce certainly breaks the law. However, when viewed from the logic of the general consumption process under capitalism it is also the rational extension of consumer activity into ‘hyper consumerism’ (Hayward 2004: 86) i.e. a form of subjective desire to accumulate goods and services that privileges the drive to consume above respect for contract in order to acquire price advantage or distinction (Hayward 2004: 86; Moxon 2011).

What does it mean to propose that counterfeit commerce is the extension of general consumerism into ‘hyper consumerism’? The capitalist mode of production assigns great weight to the consumption of goods and services as a mark of distinction (Bourdieu 1984). Counter cultures of consumption and anti-consumerist movements, in general, merely confirm this predominance since what they are reacting to, and ultimately reinforcing, is the normative assumption that equates status with sought after consumption. Hyper-consumption assigns status to unauthorized consumption and applies a variety of pretexts to support this interpretation. Thus, save in one respect, hyper-consumerism is faithful to the general status accumulation process of the authorized price mechanism. The proviso in question refers to the illegal basis of the relationships of production, distribution and exchange in counterfeit commerce. By flagrantly flouting legal regulations it might be inferred that counterfeit commerce renders morality forfeit. In reality, producers and consumers regard counterfeit status as providing no moral impediment to exchange. A different kind of consumer judgement about morality and authenticity appears to be operational here. Counter hierarchies of status, flexible moral judgements about production and consumption and global shadow networks of distinction, identity and difference built around the production, distribution and exchange of counterfeits have become normalized. Rutter and Bryce (2008:1158) submit that the purchase and consumption of counterfeit goods is a routine component of everyday life. It extends over all ages, ethnicities and is gender neutral. In emphasizing the ordinary quality of exchange, Rutter and Bryce (2008) problematize the commonsense twinning of counterfeit consumption with crime. Indeed, it has been suggested that non-deceptive counterfeits fulfil two sorts of consumer demand that are not satisfied by authorized production. In the first place they supply the demand to acquire positive status differentiation through the accumulation of luxury goods and affordable prices. Consecutively, they fulfil the need of some consumers to comment upon the vanity and waste of the luxury goods industry (Arellano 1994; Hilton, Choi and Chen 2004). Normalization suggests that the trade correlates with moral elasticity. That is, consumers refuse to designate trademark violation as regular crime. The elasticity in question relates to a variety of concrete issues of consumer motivation bearing upon, inter alia, issues of price advantage, value for money, one upmanship and the economic and cultural pretensions of the authorized trade particularly, in luxury goods. Before taking up these issues in greater detail, it is necessary to remark briefly upon the main social interests adversely affected by the trade in fake goods.