SuckSqueezeBangBlow wrote:Cant US customs just stop allowing private importation of knives?
It seems like areas of the U.S. are tightening up knife laws, doesn't it seem kind of backwards to be allowing cheap knives to be bought from overseas on an individual basis at the same time?
I'm certain in Australia they would be stopped at customs from coming in.
You'd need a million highly trained customs inspectors inspecting every container of merchandise coming in to the US every day to stop the counterfeit goods market. As it stands with the available manpower less than 1% of the merchandise coming into the US gets inspected for trademark and patent infringement. It's an impossible task and as long as there's a black market for these goods then they will continue showing up regardless of the laws set up.
Unless or until congress passes a law to criminalize ownership of counterfeit goods this will continue. As it stands right now a person can enter the US and declare they have a certain number of counterfeit goods and be allowed to keep them without seizure, penalty, or fine.
If you've seen a US seaport or land border port of entry the scope and magnitude of the cargo coming into the US is obviously overwhelming. If not, it's easy to say more regulations and oversight will help. The government would have to take draconian measures to stop it and I don't think many business people or the US population in general would like it.
Right now as it stands if your stuff gets selected for inspection you are responsible for paying all fees associated with the inspection even if the government finds nothing wrong with the shipment. That's a big cost. Imagine the price of your latest Taichung knife shooting up 50 to 100% to cover the cost of inspection to ensure that no clones make it to the market. And imagine you as a business owner having to not only front the cost for transportation, space acquisition, and inspection fees, but having to wait an additional 6 months to get your product because of how long it takes to be inspected.
There's no way to conceivably stop it without locking up the US marketplace across all sectors because there are trademark, patent, and copyright infringements in all areas so all areas would need to be inspected. That's a ridiculous notion to anyone familiar with the process.
Even then, the companies have to pay a fee to be added to a database of protected companies. If they don't pay that fee, the customs inspectors cannot know if the product they're looking at has violated some trademark or another. while it's nice to believe customs can know everything about every product, they can't. If knife afis here have a hard time seeing a difference, can a guy who's never held a spyderco knife before see a difference? What about a coach purse? Or a certain microchip?
It's truly staggering.
They who dance are thought mad by those who do not hear the music.