What's the catch?
Shouldn't this be illegal?
Apparently, this guy is selling a bunch of comic books on CD. Doesn't that break copyright laws? Isn't it just like me selling a videotaped copy of Dreamwell's production of Glengarry Glen Ross, for example?
Anyone know how they can get away with this?
Thanks to Brian for telling me about this.
posted by Matt @ 3:09 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Wow. that does seem more than a little against the law.
Because eBay has *no* oversight -- absolutely none -- when it comes to policing such activities and relies on the publishers themselves to be aware of and notify them of people selling their wares for illegal profit. Each publisher is apparently supposed to spend hundreds of hours trawling through the thousands of posts on eBay looking for these illegal auctions.
When you do find something like this -- or a kind reader points it out to you (I would strongly encourage you to send notification to whoever the publisher of those comics is if you know it), you can supposedly send them notification through the choices buried on the "contact us" menu:
1) report a listing policy violation or prohibited (banned) item
2) items that may violate a copyright or are counterfeit
3) eBay item infringes on your intellectual property rights
Unfortunately, kind readers who know things are in violation of copyright can't tell the powers that be at eBay that: it has to be the actual copyright owner. Who, in turn, if they are not registered on or have not bought things from the seller, cannot comment on their nefarious ways and tell the world that they do not *deserve* to have a good feedback rating.
Somewhere, there is a fax option of a form that the copyright owner downloads and then sends off to eBay called "notice of claimed infringement", but they do not make it easy to find.
Once you have sent this complaint off into the ether, eBay will probably take the offending item off the auction. Or it may not. The copyright holder just has to keep checking the post again and again and then receive an email from eBay that is a survey asking how well a customer service complaint was handled.
Or, the copyright holder can register on eBay and email the offending poster, pointing out that their selling of copyrighted items is illegal, and informing them that the copyright holder's lawyers are just cracking their knuckles to get them to cease and desist.
--Jo (as if you couldn't guess)
I haven't taken a copyright class, but yes, that seems quite unlawful.
I have a friend who is banned for life from ebay for selling bootleg copies of "The State." (Yes, she's still my friend.) I'm not sure if someone turned her in or how ebay found out, but she has tried to sign up again years later, and she has found that they weren't kidding about the "banned for life" business.
Jessica
Illegal or not, I'm very tempted to buy some. :/
--Dieter
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