ALERT! ALERT! If you accidentally buy unofficial NBA gear, you’re lining the pockets of Osama bin Laden:
“We’ve found these people who produce counterfeit merchandise for the World Series are the same people who produce it for the NBA playoffs,” said Ayala Deutsch, chief intellectual property counsel for the National Basketball Association. “This is their life.”
While exact figures are not available, Ms. Deutsch said losses to the NBA from the sale of counterfeit merchandise “annually, would be in seven figures.” The figure is only a small corner of what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated is a $12 billion a year market in fake apparel and sports goods.
It is a corner the NBA is very much interested in. But Ms. Deutsch argues that potential buyers of bogus merchandise should be concerned as well.
“The revenue stream has been traced to other activities worldwide, including terrorism,” she said.
What a devious plan. Sports-obsessed Americans will be the cause of their own demise.
[Actually, that may be true, but it won't be because they bought a Suns cap from some dude on the street.]
third world countries make cheap knockoff baseball gear, third world countries also are major sourcs for terrorism because some people (not the west of course, who’s saintly and good in all things) keep using third world countries as cheap sources of slave labor.
They made the connection, almost, but missed the actual point – you shouldn’t buy cheap knock offs because they’re made by slave workers in third world countries, which leads to terrorism eventually, which recruits the people who are paid a dime a day in the sweat shops.