Just three miles from the headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. is the heart of Georgetown, home to many of the capital city's toniest boutiques. On the streets of Georgetown, you see the latest fashions from Kate Spade® handbags and Rolex® watches, to Washington Redskins® caps and Hermès® scarves, to new Nike® Jordan LX2(TM) NBA® sneakers with Velcro® straps. In fact, you could Rollerblade® right up to the display racks as many of the hottest styles are sold right on the sidewalk at prices that can't be beat. A Rolex® Oyster Perpetual(TM) Sea-Dweller 4000(TM) will set you back about thirty-five dollars. Inexplicably, a Hermès® scarf goes for about the same. And in case you're blinded by these bargains, for less than the price of an entrée at Café Milano you can pick up a pair of Ray-Ban® Undercurrent 4006(TM) sunglasses. Just don't use Windex® or a Kleenex® to clean the lenses as it will wreck the cheap coating. It's probably also a good idea to refrain from smoking and avoid open flames while wearing that "hand-rolled silk twill" scarf. And don't rely on that "Rolex" to be on time for that big job interview.

Counterfeits may seem to offer a cheap entrée into a higher standard of living, yet with every purchase of a knock-off handbag, the relative value of the real deal goes down. Patents and trademarks, so called intellectual property, are the lifeblood of most companies. Kate Spade, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and the non-eponymous designers, movie producers, athletes and recording artists deserve to be justly compensated for their creativity, intelligence, and hard work.

What sets most designer products apart are the strengths of the respective brands. Name brand luxury goods are expensive for a reason. Certainly this has much to do with the quality of the merchandise, craftsmanship and customer service. More subjectively, the prices stem from the cachet of owning the hottest fashions; that is, it's not just how these products look on you or your family, but what you perceive these products to say about you, your style, your income, and even your education and values.

Though the prices might seem great, the societal costs of these knockoffs are enormous and can be measured in terms of jobs, tax revenue, health and safety, and now more than ever, national security. U.S. and international law enforcement officials confirm that Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are actively engaged in the importation of counterfeit apparel, electronics and other merchandise and use the proceeds to fund operations and attacks. In testimony before the House International Relations Committee, Interpol Secretary-General Richard Noble stated that these terrorist groups, directly responsible for the murder of over 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001 and catastrophic attacks in Bali, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Africa and the ongoing attacks against Israelis. "We know that Al Qaeda supporters have been found with commercial-size volumes of counterfeit goods. And if you find one Al Qaeda operative with [counterfeit products] it is like finding one roach in your house. It should be enough to draw your attention to it," Noble testified. It is a sad irony that on New York's Canal Street, buyers of knockoff products might unwittingly be funding the very terrorists that crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center that stood just blocks away.

U.S. law enforcement spends hundreds of millions of tax dollars each year to pursue the international criminal syndicates responsible for designing, manufacturing and smuggling that watch (along with dangerous fake drugs) and thousands of other products across our borders. Counterfeit goods and smuggling is a tax free, unlicensed and unregulated industry that is estimated to cost the U.S. economy a staggering $200 billion dollars each year according to The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC). Think of it: Hundreds of thousands of jobs at every level gone; billions annually in local, state and federal tax revenue down the drain. Twenty-five or $30 at a time, this money flows out of the local community and upstream to overseas black and grey market groups whose activities undermine and corrupt foreign governments.

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