Pirated goods on Ebay (opinion wanted)

[needsmorerobots]

Has anyone reported pirated merchandise to Ebay? Did Ebay do anything about it?

I recently reported a movie seller to Ebay and nothing was done. The person wasn't even being secretive about it and yet no action was taken

Am I wasting my time? Is the only way Ebay will take action is if I report the person selling the pirated goods to the rights owners?

Opinions?

[femmefan1946]

It looks like eBay will not act on a report from a single seller.

Which makes sense (and I am a seller) because the reporter might be a competitor, a mischief maker, or just wrong.

Multiple reports from multiple members, particularly when a cheated buyer is not made whole*, do get sellers punished.

As does VeRO contraventions.

The fastest action could be to Report not to eBay but to the manufacturer/movie studio/authorized distributor, which has more skin in the game than eBay.

*Made whole in that the buyer gets his money back. From an punitive point of view, the scammer is out some costs, but if he refunds promptly there is no further action from eBay.

[needsmorerobots]

I guess reporting to the rights holders is what I'll have to do.

For this seller, I neither bid nor bought his product. The fact he is selling products that are either not commercially available or in packaging totally different from releases elsewhere is a bit of a dead giveaway. That and displaying screenshots from said product(s) only to have a TV station watermark in the corner of screen is also a tell.

My only gain is I sell legit releases and I want to protect my sales from those who would financially gain by burning a bunch of video files to a disc. Originally I noticed Etsy had a problem with pirated goods, that's why I came to Ebay instead of starting on their site.

The pirated goods (in my opinion) I've encountered are from sellers based in Singapore and Malaysia.

[femmefan1946]

Not surprised about the Malaya connection. In one of Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland St books an academic decides to do research on modern piracy in that part of the world. After some months of becoming a trusted part of the local community, she is taken on board by the pirates, who proudly show her their piracy-- they are making counterfeit DVDs.

Part of the problem is the sheer volume of stuff sold here. EBay doesn't seem to have washed their hands of this, there is the VeRO program (which they were forced into) and we do see constant complaints from the sellers of "replicas" who have been shut down .

Etsy got so mad at a whistleblower who was running a site called 'regretsy' that they sued her and forced her to shut down. The site may still be archived somewhere.

[mcrlmn]

My experience reporting copyright Infringement to eBay has been a waste of time.
I reported a listing to Amazon.ca, for Heartland Season 13 that was very obviously pirated and for sale on their site long before the actual release date of the legitimate set was even available.
They pulled the listing within a day.

Report the link/URL of the copyright Infringement/bootlegged/pirated goods to the rightsholders.
They'll make sure the listing is pulled, and can acquire any further info they require from eBay.

[needsmorerobots]

Reported the seller for piracy to Disney. We'll see how fast Disney responds.

It appears listings I saw for another suspected pirated goods seller out of Malaysia has been pulled. I guess there is a bit of sunshine in all this gloom.