From the car boot to booting it up? eBay, online counterfeit crime and the transformation of the criminal marketplace
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895811428173 |
| Author | James Treadwell |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
12(2) 175 –191
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895811428173
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From the car boot to booting
it up? eBay, online counterfeit
crime and the transformation
of the criminal marketplace
James Treadwell
University of Leicester, UK
Abstract
This article is based on research with men who have embraced the new technological opportunities
offered by the internet to sell counterfeit products and engage in forms of intellectual property
crime, specifically trading counterfeit items through internet websites. It examines case studies
and qualitative material generated through interviews with professional criminal entrepreneurs
who have made use of the web-site ‘eBay’ in order to distribute goods while minimizing the risk
of detection and prosecution. This empirical material, it suggests, provides some initial evidence
of how more traditional forms of working class male enterprise crime are now being mutated
and superseded, and are shifting in light of the opportunities provided by new technology, moving
from traditional local marketplaces to new online settings.
Keywords
counterfeits, criminal markets, eBay, internet, professional crime
Introduction
This article uses empirical material gathered from interviews with professional intel-
lectual property offenders involved in the distribution of counterfeit products. It uses
this empirical material to make some more general observations about how these more
routine and mundane forms of organized crime are changing in light of new technologi-
cal advances impact on criminal cultures and associated enterprises. Specifically, it
considers the way in which intellectual property crime, and the distribution of counter-
feit products is being transformed by new technological opportunities afforded by the
Corresponding author:
James Treadwell, University of Leicester, Department of Criminology, The Friars, 154 Upper New Walk,
Leicester, LE1 7QA, UK
Email: jt146@le.ac.uk
Article
176 Criminology & Criminal Justice 12(2)
internet. This form of computer assisted cybercrime has been little documented in
discussions, but the shifts now being witnessed in this form of illicit trading may
highlight wider changes in the criminal marketplace and criminal enterprise.
One of the most perplexing aspects of contemporary empirical criminology is that it
seems to have been so slow to engage with crime committed ‘online’ (Jewkes, 2003,
2007; Yar, 2006). While the criminological community are now countering that slowly,
with studies charting a range of online criminality incorporating topics as diverse as
cyber-stalking (Wykes, 2007) and web-based ‘football hooliganism’ (Fafinsky, 2007)
through to the trade in counterfeit automotive components (Yar, 2005), more routine and
mundane forms of cybercrime arguably have received far less attention.
Criminologists, it seems, are still struggling to incorporate the online world into
traditional ways of thinking and theorizing (Jewkes and Yar, 2009). Perhaps in part this
occurs because the term ‘cybercrime’ is one which conjures images of sophisticates,
pirates and property thieves (of the intellectual type) who hide away behind their screens
and firewalls protected from research scrutiny. The dominant representation of cyber-
crime arguably portrays it as a highly sophisticated activity that the technologically
unsophisticated and uninitiated find difficult to grasp (for an overview see Yar, 2006). In
many cases cybercrime (or at least the representation of it), has become synonymous
with the idea that the typical perpetrators are a ‘new breed of criminals whose ill gotten
toolkit consists of Central Processing Units, modulator demodulators, war diallers,
viruses, and warez’ (Corriea and Bowling, 1999: 225).
Using the internet it might be possible to, ‘buy a bride, cruise gay bars, go on a global
shopping spree with someone else’s credit card, break into a bank’s security system, plan
a demonstration in another country and hack into the pentagon all on the same day’
(Jewkes and Sharp, 2003: 2). Yet contrary to popular representation and belief, much
cybercrime might actuality be much more mundane and routine than it is sophisticated,
innovative and new. As Wall (2001) has observed, when so-called cases of cybercrime
come to court, they often have the familiar ring of the traditional to them. Similarly
Grabosky (2001) has argued that cybercrime (with some notable exceptions such as
hacking and the planting of viruses) should often be understood as a continuance and
metamorphosis of existing criminal practices, a case of old wine, new bottles as it were.
This article is framed by the idea that viewing intellectual property crime and the
selling of counterfeits as a form of cybercrime (albeit a less sophisticated form of profes-
sional offending) might open up a new and interesting area for study, that can also shed
light upon more general changes in the nature of professional criminal conduct generally.
The article is concerned with individuals involved in low tech, routine forms of intel-
lectual property driven cybercrime that are part of ‘everyday life’ (Felson, 2002; Presdee,
2005). The research on which the article is based stems from the recognition that there
was something happening in the criminal landscape that was not being written about.
Other ethnographic projects on professional criminal practices had led the author to
believe that computers were now being employed by some career criminals to commit
quite old-fashioned and familiar offences, and that the criminological community could
no longer seek to understand offences such as fraud, or for that matter criminal identities,
without grasping the place and role of the ‘third space’. The central observation of this
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