Selling counterfeit goods in China could put you in prison for a week — if one billionaire gets his way

Amazon is plagued by counterfeit sellers – and so is its biggest rival.

Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba, is finally doing something about it. Ma called on the Chinese government on Tuesday to crack down on counterfeiters.

“If, for example, we imposed a seven-day prison sentence for every fake product sold, the world would look very different both in terms of intellectual property enforcement and food and drug safety, as well as our ability to foster innovation,” Ma wrote in an open letter on the social network Weibo, according to the Financial Times.

Ma addressed his letter to the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In the past, Ma has defended counterfeiters and said they're sometimes better than the real thing, FT reported.

But more recently, Ma has joined Amazon in trying to do something about the rash of counterfeit products on his e-commerce platform. In early January, Alibaba filed its first lawsuit against counterfeit sellers — in this case someone selling fake Swarovski watches.

Later that month, Alibaba launched the Alibaba Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance, an effort to use machine learning to remove counterfeit goods from the e-commerce platform Taobao.

But seven-day prison sentences for selling counterfeit goods are more serious than the threat of Alibaba's machine learning. Ma in his open letter blamed the lack of harsh penalties for the proliferation of counterfeit goods.

Maybe Ma suggested these ideas to the American government too?