Fakes, imitations, replicas, counterfeits, copies... these things have been around for at least as long as thousands of years.
The Historia Augusta, a group of biographies of the Roman Emperors covering the period from 117 to 284, contains, for instance, the Vita Aureliani (Life of Aurelian) which is supposedly written by Flavius Vopiscus in 305 or 306 AD. On the basis of internal evidence and style, scholars have identified the entire work as bogus – a fraud written by a single author in the 4th century. Fraudulent inserts of fake Senate proceedings jostle side by side with letters supposedly written by imperial personages, and tossed into the whole mixture are references to letter-writers, historians, biographers and so on which find no mention in any other work.
Art forgeries - some painted during the original artists' lifetimes - have long been rampant (think of van Meegeren).
All sorts of histories have been written purportedly by eye-witnesses, in order to bolster and affirm the authenticity of a current ruler, giving that ruler an historical background which he doesn't possess. Those sorts of histories were as a rule "ordered" by the current ruler, the writer doing due service to his master. The Chronicle of Fredegar is a typical example.
Fake relics did a roaring trade during the Middle Ages. If all the splinters of the "true cross" sold to prilgrims and other faithfuls were gathered together, they would make ludicrously more than one simple cross. If all the bone fragments of St [insert random Saint's name] were put together, it would come to more than a mere Finger of St whatever; it would indeed be stupendously more than the entire body of St whatever.
Fine pottery by the most esteemed Late Latin potters, sold in limited quantities to the rich as exports, were imitated by inferior local potters complete with date stamps and fake signatures. That's continued to be a problem for later styles, periods and countries; try collecting Asian pottery of the 1700s and you will almost certainly fall for a fake or two. It's not the MODERN fakes that are the real danger in those instances - it's the contemporary fakes made in China during the time period concerned and exported to England, fooling the nobility who were collecting and buying at high prices.
In short - fakes and counterfeits are not endemic to eBay; they're endemic to human nature.
Some fakes are designed to create legitimacy to a story or perception. We see the same thing that happened with the Historia Augusta occurring today with "fake news", or - to boil it down to its simplest components - in any lie told by any person. The more elaborate a lie, the more it will tend to gather "moss" over time, making it a complex lie that seems too detailed and complicated to have been invented... but complexity is no assurance of truth.
Most fakes are made for profit.
From the moment someone made something of worth, which could be imitated and sold to others, it's likely that counterfeiting began. For whatever reason it is, human nature has within it the seeds both of deception and credulity. Some fool; some are fooled. Some make fakes; some buy fakes.
It's because of this almost symbiotic nature of the process that the production of counterfeits will never stop. The criminal aspect of this - taking advantage of someone else's creativity or design or the intrinsic worth of something (like money) - is one part. The other part, which continues to drive counterfeiting and forgery, is the desire for an incredible bargain, because the majority of fakes today are of middle- to high-end items selling for a lot less than retail price to people who think they're being no end clever and discerning in grabbing that bargain.
You can see this in the arguments used by the purveyors of these fakes.
- "We cut out the middleman to give you a much lower price."
- "We import directly from the Asian distributor to reduce unnecessary fees."
- "I've got these from a guy who got them from - well, best I don't tell you, but yeah, completely genuine."
- "These were smuggled in so no import duties or taxes and the government couldn't stop my contacts from getting these out."
- "I've got special connections and we can get the genuine article without going through the usual channels."
All of it is selling a story of special under-the-table channels to get something worth a lot of money for a lot less, with the opportunity to purchase being offered specially to you/me. The story appeals to one's sense of entitlement, cleverness, charm, special nature... but the truth is that the only quality which defines purchasers of fakes as a general rule is... gullibility.
Even the cleverest of us can be gullible at times. I suppose all of us have been fooled at times. Collectors of specialist items can be fooled by virtue of the very things that are supposedly proofs of genuineness, as some forgers mimic those proofs in their fake.
The most prolific counterfeiting is, of course, of name brand items. These tend to be purchased by people on lower or middle incomes, trying to save a buck. Savings on genuine items can be made, but we have to choose our purchase source carefully. There are websites which definitely sell counterfeits in perfumes and cosmetics; some large retail outlets have sold fake name brand cosmetics at discount prices without (apparently) being aware that the goods were purchased from a Chinese manufacturer faking the high-end cosmetics. (You might remember the scandal; wasn't it MAC cosmetics, if I remember correctly?) And lord, oh lord, the amount of LV and other designer items that are bought online, only for purchasers to discover too late that they've bought a pig in a poke, is staggering.
eBay do have a specific policy covering such items, but understandably eBay aren't specialists in every sort of fake that exists. Indeed, they're not specialists in any sort of fake. They declare that "Selling such items can infringe on someone's copyright or trademark, which is against the law and eBay policy", but they depend upon things such as the VeRO program and eBay members reporting fakes or counterfeits that they spot, rather than upon a diligent counterfeit-identification team.
I do consider that eBay does not do enough, and that reports are not acted upon as a matter of priority. However, in the eyes of the law, eBay is not encouraging or condoning fakes; the very fact that eBay has a policy is evidence supporting this.
What you can do - indeed, what any one of us can do - is stop being so darned greedy for a bargain, and be a little bit sceptical about the worth of an item that's supposedly genuine but is being sold for much less than the expected price. We can also (and I am speaking about human beings as a whole) stop trying to keep up with the Joneses by having the same (well, slightly different, and a lot cheaper) designer dresses and designer handbags and high-end tech goods as Mr and Mrs Jones. Chances of that happening? Zero.
