when you put the information out there, you shouldn't have been complemented by the fact that people are complementing your show. the more copies that are made, the more popular you are. movie studios make money from selling tickets and now they can make money from selling dvds, rentals and other things area. >> if you could find that you are a repeat offender, you will get banned for life. john: it sounds like you get punished the people complaining your stealing stuff. >> yes, and it's even getting worse. one of the dangers is that it is used by the state and this was

defeated while ago, trying to stop this by imposing all kinds of surveillance. and this is a private out of the court system. >> is a danger. john: you are a patent lawyer, you're basically trying to argue yourself out of a job. >> yes, just like an oncologist is trying to cure cancer, put himself out of a job, just like someone who works for the aclu, despite someone is hoping to end the drug war and maybe he has to find honest work done. john: good for you. thank you. for those of you that would like to legally watch shows of mind

and maybe you missed, fox business does put them on the web two weeks after we air. you can get them by going to johnstossel.com. coming up, why it would cost me big if i sing happy birthday on this show. and next we go undercover to try i thought i married an italian. did the ancestrydna to find out i'm only 16% italian. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors was eastern european. this is my ancestor who i didn't know about. [so i use quickbooks and run mye entire business from the cloud. i keep an eye on sales and expenses from anywhere. even down here in the dark i can still see we're having a great month. and celebrate accordingly. i run on quickbooks.that's how i own it.

♪ ♪ for your retirement, you want to celebrate the little things, because they're big to you. and that is why you invest. the best returns aren't just measured in dollars. td ameritrade®.

. john: of all the industries i've covered as a consumer reporter, i think one of the biggest ripoffs is fashion. this dress sells for $1200. these shoes, $1400. this purse is priced at $2500. are you kidding me? who pays that amount of money for a purse? i could walk outside my apartment and buy a bag that looks like that for 20 bucks. and actually, this one is a

high-end knockoff, it costs us $200. we got it when we went shopping with hidden cameras. >> louis vuitton boots. >> reporter: producer ricky ratliffe bought that bag in chinatown where people sell all kinds of counterfeit merchandise. >> is it real? >> yes. >> reporter: he claimed he was selling authentic stuff. >> give you all the bags. which one you want. >> reporter: some people admitted products weren't the real thing. one hustler said if we want the real quality brand-name stuff, we need to follow him and meet with this woman in mcdonald's. >> what are you looking for? >> louis vuitton. >> reporter: on my phone she showed my producer supposed $1,000 louis vuitton bag. >> reporter: she said she would sell for $200. >> how do i pay? >> cash. >> reporter: and 15 minutes

later, back on the street, the bag appeared. >> thank you. john: and that's how i got this. the counterfeit fashion industry is big business. chris sprigman knows about that. he wrote the knockoff economy, how imitation sparks innovation. that makes it sound like this illegal activity is a good thing. >> well, there's some good that comes out of it. the presence of knockoffs democratizes fashion, it allows people in the u.s. to look good, to look stylish. people who can't afford to pay a thousand dollars for the real louis vuitton bag. that's a thousand dollars, so knockoffs do democratize the availability of the items. now it would be bad if it hurt the brand of companies, if it deprived them of customers they otherwise have. i can tell you that virtually

nobody who buys a fake bag on canal street. that's a pretty well-done fake. nobody is going buy the $25,000 fake louis vuitton bag. john: they know this is going to happen, they're not getting money from the knockoff bag. >> they're not getting money from the knockoff bag and not getting harmed either. the people in the market who have all that cash to burnings they're going to go out, because they want the stat thoughts real louis vuitton confers. and they want the shopping experience of the wonderful louis vuitton flagship store and how it pampers them. this is what they want and get. the knockoff has no discernible effect on the knockoff of those folks, those are the knockoffs that louis vuitton cares about. john: forever 21, urban outfitters do not allow for the creativity of the original

creator to be acknowledgeed? >> if you look into the world and see how the fashion industry works, since the end of world war ii, the fashion industry has uninterruptedly boomed. all of the time knockoffs have been legal. copying in the united states helps the fashion industry. it helps for example to signal to people that a trend has occurred when a fashion is widely copied, there's a trend, we buy into the trend. john: more information. >> more information for people. they buy into the trend when. there is too much copying, it signals the trend is starting to be over. the fashion forward jump onto the new trend that copying is starting to set. the fashion cycle helps fuels it. it's good for consumers and good for us all. john: even the fashion backyard like me? >> the fashion backyard benefit as well. price of clothing hasn't gone up in a quarter century except for the price of clothing at

the top. the louis vuitton, the prada, they are getting more for less. john: u.s. customs service, always eager to make themselves more important. they say the black offer for hand bag shoes, and crime rings, it's a big threat to people. more than a billion dollars in counterfeits are seized by customs and border protection annually as federal agents crack down on the crime of the century. >> you can buy anything that is legitimate. you think you have a small savings, getting the real product at a discounted price only to find it's a counterfeit. john: the crime. century, they call it. >> i'm not sure it's the crime of the century. i think it's true in the world that organized crime has finger in every pie which they can make money, it be legal or illegal. if we want to get after organized crime, get after organized crime, the counterfeiting issue is more or less a red herring.

john: the international chamber of commerce claims 2 1/2 million jobs are lost because of fake products. >> the international chamber of commerce figures counterfeiting products are worth zero. that they keep repeating them as if they're a fact. the government and fbi and other agencies of the government have picked them up as if they're fact. that doesn't make them true. there's a lot of small business people making money, and they wouldn't be otherwise. so i think in terms of its total economic effect, it's a wash. john: you do agree if it comes to things like pharmaceutical drugs or airplane parts, this is a real threat? >> god yes, i don't want airplanes crashing because of fake parts, don't want people dying because of fake drugs. nobody died because of a fake hand bag, a lot of the government's efforts are directed not at airplane parts and pharmaceuticals but hand bags. john: finally, chris says another surprising way to

expand your brain and think about the knockoff economy is to think about charles dickens. did you read the christmas carol, or great expectations or tale of two cities? these books have sold millions of copies and yet at the time book sellers in america were not required to pay dickens a dime. >> when the united states itself was a developing economy, it refused to sign treaties and had no protection for foreign creators. charles dickens complained about america's bustling piracy book market. john: and yet you say he still made out. >> dickens made out when. dickens visited the united states on a lecture tour, he played to the standing room only crowds. people paid a lot of money to see him. the equivalent of millions in today's currency. john: they wanted to buy cheap books, read cheap books. >> they fell in love with him. at his desk, a significant

portion of his estate came for that trip. it became literate in part because books were cheap. books being cheap helped us develop to be the world power that we are today. that came from the absence of copyright. john: thank you, chris sprigman. coming up, who owns a joke? how do comedians deal with joke stealers? and how do i deal with people who steal my brand? welcome to 20/20, i'm john stossel. >> i'm john stossel.

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. john: have you heard this joke? why is six afraid of seven? because seven eight nine. get it? seven ate nine. does that make me a joke stealer? i think so, what does that mean for professional comedians, what do they do if someone steals their jokes. comedian doug stanhope says comedians work this out. i asked him about this because he's a libertarian. here's a sample of his work. >> they say if you give a man a

fish, he'll eat for a day. if you teach a man to fish, then he's got to get a fishing license, and you couldn't even cook the fish because you needed a permit for an open flame, and then the health department is going to start asking you a lot of questions about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts. john: as i said, a libertarian comedian. doug joins us now. you don't need government to protect your jokes? >> so, yeah, no, no, comedy's a really good self-policing artform. if you go to an open mic and want to get into the business, if you're stealing someone's jokes you are going to be outed and publicly shamed and run out of town. john: and yet robin williams was known as a joke stealer. >> huge, yeah, milton berle and robin williams probably the two legendary. john: they weren't run out of town. >> there's the anomaly that

slipped doubt cracks, legendary stories from the comedy store in l.a. about robin williams coming into the show room and someone would put him up against the wall by the throat and manager would write a check for stealing jokes. but yeah, there's very few that get through, and they're labeled. people wouldn't go on stage when robin williams was in the room, after he got branded with that start will letter of joke thief. john: in 2006, comedian dane cooke was accused of stealing jokes from comedian louis c.k. and he invited him on the show to joke about it. >> 2006 was the greatest year of my entire life. i had a double platinum comedy album. first one it exist. i enjoyed it maybe, louie for two months, two months before it started to suck. everything i read about me is how i stole jokes from you,

which i didn't. >> i kind of think you did. john: so louis c.k. has him on his own show? >> yeah, now louis c.k. is a gentleman, and always been above the fray in these things. a lot of people did gang up on dane cooke on that one, and louis handled it like a sportsman. he didn't antagonize it. didn't fan the flames. when he had dane cooke on the show, that was brilliant on both sides. >> comedians lose work because they're accused of stealing jokes. joe rogan interrupted a routine by mensia and accused mensia of stealing jokes from many other comedians. >> someone steals that from his arm [ bleep ]. >> i didn't say you steal it,

but i don't! >> he found it tougher to get work after that? >> that pretty much destroyed him. he was on the top of his game, at a comedy central show, he was selling out theaters all over the country, and almost immediately after that went viral, it destroyed his career. it brought him down to my level. that's how bad, if i'm doing the wednesday, he's doing the thursday at the same rotten club. john: thank you, doug stanhope. we'll raise you up to higher levels! coming up, have you brushed your teeth with crust toothpaste? do you use arm and hatchet bake soda? do you buy coffee at sunbucks coffee shop? i'll explain when we come back.

. kennedy: happy birthday to you, happy -- i can't sing the rest of the song, if i did, it would cost fox, the rights are owned by warner music. they bought the rights in 1998, and now people pay them about $2 million a year to use the song in movies and tv shows. intellectual property laws have teeth. one guy thinks he can get around the law by changing small things. he made a youtube clip watched

half a million times. ♪ happy birthday to you. john: cute, but lawyers tell me that probably does not make this video legal. one thing that does make copying legal is parody. if you take someone's work and change it to make a joke about it, that's not a copyright violation, and that's good for intellectual freedom. not such a good thing for people like me, because people make videos like these. >> welcome to "20/20," i'm john stossel. >> i'm john stossel. >> gimme a break. >> you want a break? you're going to get a break, i'm going to give you a break right now. [ bleep ]. john: stupid and there's nothing i can do about that. and there's practically nothing any of us can do about property violations, in china, people steal and rangel recognizable american brands, they think it

will give their products credibility. various stores sell you sunbucks coffee. kids laundry soap, unbelievable, this is not butter. arm and hatchet baking soda. and if you're hungry for fast food, you can get king burger, or this take off kentucky fried chicken. instead of the colonel, president obama fries the bird. and after you've done all that eating, brush your teeth with crust toothpaste. that's what happens in china. in america, thomas jefferson once opposed copyright laws, ideas are like candlelight, he wrote. he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine. he receives light without darkening me. it's a good point. jefferson later backed off that a bit, he said he just opposed

the english standard which is ownership forever and did support limited ownership, maybe 14 years. i don't know where the line should be, but when ideas are free, creativity blossoms. i like how journalist matt ridley put it, ideas have sex with each other and give birth to new often better ideas. that helps us all. some libertarians on my show tonight said it would be better if america had no copyright or trademark protection and made some good points, but i have to wonder, would i have written these books if publishers hadn't offered me money? i doubt it. they gave me money because they knew that no one was allowed to just copy the book. i also assume i get paid by fox only because you cable subscribers and advertisers pay for this program. maybe i do this for nothing. i like doing it. maybe. but i wouldn't work as hard and

balk for paying for the cameras and expensive things that go into making tv. i'm glad we have some intellectual property laws. that's ourouncer: the following program is a paid advertisement for the food lovers fat loss system, brought to you by provida life sciences -- practical solutions for better living. >> i've lost 55 pounds on the food lovers program. i've had it off for nine years, and i've done it by eating every single thing i love. >> let's face it, i can't cook. so i eat out seven days a week, and i still lost 40 pounds using the food lovers fat loss system. >> i've lost 35 pounds, and 5 inches in each thigh. >> i lost 25 pounds in 12 weeks, eating ice cream every single night. >> i'm a food lover, and i've lost 60 pounds, and i have kept it off for a year. i know now that i will be happy and healthy for the rest of my life. >> for years you've been taught how to diet to lose weight.