# Why does rampart bootlegging of movies continue on ebay? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 5, 2002, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416 "2002-08-05T11:06:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8baadc/32.png) [@Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kang_and_Kodos)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/1 "2002-08-05T11:06:00Z")
There’s a score of people who sell the same flick over and over again. One guy simply says, “My movies have no labels or box art.” Uh, these are copyrighted studio films. Now granted, I’ve bought a couple of rare movies I was pretty sure would be bootlegs. But damn, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to sell one. Doesn’t it just take one dissatisfied customer to turn you in to the FBI? We’ve seen the warnings. 5 years in prison, $250,000 fine. What would the likely punishment of one of these sellers be? And why does there appear to be no crackdown whatsoever? ---
**Author:** ![Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8baadc/32.png) [@Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kang_and_Kodos)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/2 "2002-08-05T11:07:16Z")
Dammit, make than “rampant.” ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/3 "2002-08-05T15:50:27Z")
Ebay gets something like 100,000 new auctions per day. They said they can’t possibly monitor all of them (I Think thats baloney, they can certainly afford to), so they wait until someone writes safeharbor to shut an auction down. If no one writes & they don’t catch it themselves, then the people can keep selling. [tigerdirect.com](http://tigerdirect.com) has a cool machine that can print cover art right on the disk itself, I suppose some of them use one of these to give an impression they are selling real dvds. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/4 "2002-08-06T03:00:32Z")
As **handy** said. They only act when someone bitches. Start now. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/5 "2002-08-06T06:02:41Z")
And even when someone bitches, they might not necessarily respond. I know. I’ve complained about clearly bootleg CD’s before. Mind you, I don’t know why they didn’t take action, so I won’t assume that they were deliberately ignoring the complaint. Still, I don’t think they’re making any real effort to police these things. ---
**Author:** ![Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ebca7d/32.png) [@Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Violet)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/6 "2002-08-06T10:48:52Z")
Interesting. Napster gets the boot (at least the old one did), but ebay thrives. So the studios don’t seem to care. They _must_ know! I think the FBI is pretty busy with other stuff these days… ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/7 "2002-08-06T11:05:09Z")
Napster’s an easy target. Lawyer fees add up, so it’s easier to take out one company than dozens of individuals. Same reason P2P file sharing is (more or less) alive and well. As for eBay, I got a letter from SafeHarbor once (FTR, never mention mod chips in your auction even if you’re selling legit, imported Playstation games) and I believe that they said something to the effect of “action will be taken if **the holder of the copyright** complains.” Assuming I’m remembering that correctly (admittedly an iffy proposition), I guess it means that the studios would have to hire a couple guys full time to have eBay auctions shut down. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/8 "2002-08-06T14:47:14Z")
I had an auction shut down because I used a copyrighted picture off the web-page of a company. The person who shut the auction down was a lawyer representing the company. My bet is he gets paid to surf ebay looking for instances of that companies products for sale, and shuts down the auction if any copyrighted material is being used. I don’t see the harm in using a picture off the web, instead of taking the time to take a picture of the same item myself. I just guess that the movie industry isn’t monitoring ebay for this in the same manner. I would tend to agree, that they have decided it’s not worth it to go after all the little fish. On another note: Why are people that aren’t employed by majore motion picture studios bothered by this practice? ---
**Author:** ![WSLer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@WSLer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WSLer)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2002, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-rampart-bootlegging-of-movies-continue-on-ebay/122416/9 "2002-08-07T01:15:12Z")
Because people are scum who only think for themselves and only want the easy way out.