I am going through a bout of insomnia, or at least a mismatch between my diurnal cycle and daylight hours. So at 3:00 AM here, I’m awake, and bored.
So I did one of the things I often do to kill time, I go online to check out eBay. Sometimes I can find things there that I’ve wanted, or feel I have a moral obligation* to pick up, at a price low enough that I can afford. As my user name may imply to those who can parse it: I’m something of a fan of Japanese animation, so often what I end up looking for are DVDs of anime.
Now, if you’re not a regular eBayer looking for anime you may well not be aware of just how much bootlegged stuff is for sale on eBay. As time goes by the frauds are getting a little more cleverly camouflaged. But an aware consumer can do a search on eBay for DVDs of most any popular series, and unless they’re using an English only name for the series (And even that’s not a guarantee - Battle of the Planets is recognized as a “legitimate” alternate name for Science Ninja Team Gotchaman.) anywhere from 10-60% of the listings will be Chinese counterfeits.
Personally, I’ve felt that the whole Region coding for DVDs was no more than a way to screw over the fringe customers of various groups, anyways. I will not mention exact numbers for my import LD collection - it might give the impression that I’m some kind of complete Otaku. 
And many of those LDs are yet to be duplicated with any kind of legal release for the US. But, whether I happen to think that region coding is just another reason to feel that DVDs are ‘teh suck’ compared to LDs (And that’s another pointless crusade that I don’t plan to get into, tonight. 
) I have to admit that it does seem to be within the rights of the property holders.
For me, the main effect that DVD region coding has had is to keep me from trying to save up for the Studio Ghibli special editions of some of their movies, no matter how tempting and appealing the packaging might be. And to allow me one more way to avoid purchasing any more bootlegged DVDs by accident via eBay.
If a DVD is listed as being uncoded for region it’s most likely a bootleg.
Similarly, 99% of all anime released in the US will have an English dub track, and the Japanese language. There may be French or Spanish dubs as well, and multiple Romance language subtitles. But if a DVD is listed as being only dubbed with Japanese, and having online subtitles in English and Chinese - it’s most likely a bootleg.
And, of course, if the DVD contains episodes for a series that are not yet released to North America, it’s probably a bootleg.
So, tonight, while I was browsing I came across a listing for a series that had been at the bottom of my “It’s a great series but they’ll never, ever release it here” I had to look into it. And lo, and behold: They really are releasing it to the US. So I did a happy dance, and started looking at my budget to see where I could cut a few corners.
Then I saw that one of the listings that I was looking at was… shall we say different than the others? A block of episodes that was matched by no other seller, and at a price that was more ahem reasonable than other listings. So I went to check out the details of this item.
It was being presented as a Region 1 DVD, but the audio track was Japanese only, and the subtitles were English and Chinese. Combine that with a quick look at the website for the NA rights holder, and the last three episodes in the block had not yet been released to the public… It’s a bootleg.
But the lister was a reasonably popular lister: about 100 feedback rating, and all of it positive. Out of a sense of cussedness, I went through the seller’s other auctions. Half of them were similarly fishy looking.
So even though I know that in the long run it won’t do a damned thing - the bootlegger will be back, and it’s obvious that the customers who’ve been buying the stuff don’t know about bootlegs, or more likely, don’t care as long as they get their stuff cheap - I sent eBay a notification about the listings.
I know I could spend the rest of the night online policing eBay’s anime offerings and never come to the end of it. But this particular listing annoyed me enough to get me to do something about it.
*I have a somewhat flexible view of the morality associated with fansubs, especially compared to the legality of same. I don’t expect the RIAA, or MPAA to agree with me, but my feelings are, if a legal translated copy isn’t available in my market it’s not immoral to acquire a fansub - but that acquisition also represents a promise on my part to replace it with the legal version, when it became available. (Back in the day I could also satisfy my sense of morality with an import LD of the same title.)
Anyways, now that I’ve rambled on for several hundred words, I’d like to ask - do other Dopers find themselves fighting battles that they know are pointless? And, if so, what are they?