E-Commerce companies would tank the fines and not enforce the plan

It's encouraging to see that the authors of the SHOP SAFE Act understand this core issue, but there are some obvious disadvantages to their proposed policy solution. Outsourcing IP enforcement to the private sector on such a large scale is a risky proposition, and could create a spate of new and unforeseen consequences. While there’s a case to be made that severe levels of counterfeiting pose a threat to the underlying business model of e-commerce companies, it must be noted that a certain amount of counterfeiting is actually good for their bottom line. Sales are sales, and platform owners receive a cut regardless of whether the products changing hands are authentic. It doesn’t take a particularly brilliant mind to understand why it may be unwise to deputize these corporations to solve the problem of counterfeiting when they have such a clear conflict of interest. If e-commerce companies were unable or unwilling to fully execute the Herculean task assigned to them by Congress, would the federal government really be able to force them to change course? One can envision a scenario where ambivalent e-commerce corporations pay lip service to the goals of the SHOP SAFE Act while doing little to enforce it in practice. These companies could resign themselves to paying a modest fine every so often knowing that they will easily make that money back, Congress could congratulate itself for “solving” the problem of online counterfeiting, and very little would change on the ground.