Handbagged: Finnish copyright minister totes fake Prada bag
Boing Boing reports:
The Finnish culture minister who enacted a copyright act that bans importing personal knockoff goods into
Finland, she’s attended an intergovernmental meeting in Slovenia carrying a counterfeit Prada bag. When confronted
about this, she complained that the bag had cost too much (“If the
bag really is a copy, I paid way too much for it”).
The interesting thing is that said law punishes the importer of illegally branded goods, not the producer. The minister bought the offending bag abroad (in Italy, IIRC) – this makes her liable:
Karpela comments: “Oh my.. The purse was sold as genuine to me in Italy. If it is not real I was ripped off.” She
continues: “It is impossible for avarage tourist to know what is real and what is not. The responsibility lies
with the distributor.” No! Tanja according to the new copyright
law (56a §) you pushed through the system, it lies with the person who imports such article into Finland. You are
the one that is responsible. Double time!
I don’t need to comment on this, do I?
(via BoingBoing and CopyFraud)