Asking a retailer to make good on a price mistake is entirely not the same thing.
Retailer: "I will sell this for 5 bucks."
Buyer: "I will buy it for 5 bucks."
Retailer: "Whoops, I meant 25 bucks." How hard you push him to get it for the 5 buck price is up to you, but there's nothing inherently unethical about asking someone to stand by what he said, whether it was a mistake or not. I'm old fashioned, I believe words mean things.

"I'm too busy, i can't talk right now." Generally when I say this, it's the absolute truth.
Calling out sick when you're not, is certainly unethical. If you have sick time, and if your absence isn't going to bring the company or department down, I think it's 'less wrong' than the outright lie-to-defraud/steal that the 'friend' committed.

Illegal? I don't know, IANAL. To me it's 'wrong' and that's enough. What if you lent me a rare dvd, and I said I 'lost' it, then stuck it up on Ebay for 200 bucks? Is that wrong? I believe so.

Maybe I've been thinking about this the wrong way...my final thought is this. Is what he's doing wrong? Yes. Was he acting unethically? He didn't think so. When he was doing this I don't think he considered anybody to be getting hurt. I don't think anybody IS getting hurt. He was simply reselling an item for a profit. Of course this still doesn't make it right.

Maybe we need a librarian's thoughts on this, but I don't think the library cares the DVD is gone whether it was $20 or $200. I'll bet the library received the DVD as a donation and therefore it's looked at as extra money to reinvest in more books. I don't think anybody who visits the library cares it's gone.

So you've won me over with your verbal assaults. Perhaps the "friend" could send half of the profits to each of the libraries he's visited. Not likely, huh?

I love how everyone puts "friend" in quotation marks. I promise to you that this is not me who is doing it. The reason I was conflicted was because like many people said, it is wrong to lie and sell a DVD for a profit from a community library. But, the library has a fee if an item is lost or damaged and as long as that is paid in full, each side is "happy"/neutral? (lack of better word) I would never turn him in because I'd rather not start controversy, but I do NOT commend him for his efforts. After reading many posts I do find his actions to be greedy and somewhat appalling. A good analogy is someone on welfare selling their food stamps back to store owners (or however that stupid scam is) who then in turn get money back from the government. I do find that more shocking, though.

This is why I ask DVD Talk members because I can get many educated opinions.

Whoever would do such a thing is nothing but a dis-honest asshole and a pathetic idiot. A real winner in some circles...I'm sure.

Some things are wrong even if no one gets 'hurt.'
And it doesn't matter how much the library paid for it, if anything. If I won a rare DVD in a contest, lent it to you, and you 'lost' it, that doesn't mean I wasn't 'hurt.'

The library had an asset.
Due to his lying and purposeful, well, stealing, they no longer have it. Even if they got it for free, they may have to repay to replace it, or to bring their dvd count back up to where it was. And of course that means if some generous benefactor donates something, one of his donations is merely to replace something the library had. Or more of our tax dollars are spent to bring the library back up to par level.
Sure sounds like someone got hurt.

"Was he acting unethically? He didn't think so. When he was doing this I don't think he considered anybody to be getting hurt."
Neither did Charles Manson.

Let's say I won a fancy Jaguar car in a contest. Nothing out of pocket [not even taxes]. I lend it to you. You wreck it by accident. Obviously I'm pissed, but that's what insurance is for. Which of course raises my rates, and everybody else's. What if you wrecked that car on purpose, by running it into a telephone pole? No one is physically hurt. Is that the same situation? No. You totally change the dynamic of the situation by having intent. Yes, the library has a cost recovery program for items that are actually lost or damaged. This is doing nothing but abusing that policy, by lying, with intent to steal and personally profit.

The main focus here though is that it should be the public the library is serving not the library itself. Regardless how the librarian feels or acts towards to a "lost" item, it is how this person's action that's taking advantage of the general public. The library is funded by tax payer's money which owns the DVD for a purpose, to let the people who want to get access to the item have the ability to do so, even if it is only 1% of the community.

Let say someone borrows one of your own OOP/Valuable DVD(or whatever it is) and tells you that he lost it. He pays you back at the cost you paid (before you realized the market value of it of course), and only for you to realize that he sold it for a profit at a much higher price. How would you feel about it? Is it then any different simply because it is a library? How about someone borrows one of your valuable items from your family, who didn't know the actual value, other than you? Doesn't that make you the 1% of the community in related to the library issue?

But since you know the item in fact is not really "lost" or "damaged", you know that the policy shouldn't really apply in this situation.

i equate this to stealing art from a museum!

just curious...which DVD's did he take and sell?

I once did something I'm not too proud of. My Seven Samurai dvd just stopped working - it wasn't scratched or anything, but it wouldn't play in any dvd player. It was a few years after I had bought it so I didn't even remember where I bought it from. So I rented it and switched my copy with the rental. When I returned it, I told them that it wouldn't work. I justified it by the fact that it really was a defective dvd and Blockbuster can get it replaced easier than I could. (an unintended bonus was that the copy I lifted was the oop version with the before-and-after comparisons).

Yeah that's pretty low for your friend to do, very shelfish to deprive other people who are less fortunate to buy DVDs.

I remember a lot of people on here doing that when the original Devil's Advocate went OOP, rent and swap.

If, after three pages of input, you still need a librarian's thoughts on this issue, then that's just sad. This is clearly unethical, and possibly illegal as well. You shouldn't need a librarian to confirm the obvious.

Not that I agree with this type of activity, but it seems to me that the librairies should charge fair market value for lost items and OOP items that get "lost" would be a much larger fine charged to the "loser". This would totallly remove the motive for these types of scams and would also make it
more likely that repeated losses even by accident would be less likely as patrons who lose items accidentily once, pay a huge fee, would be much less likely to be so careless a second time.
JCO

Of course someone is getting hurt - WE are. You, me - the general public. I no longer have the ability to go down and pick up Salo/Flash Gordon/MST3K The Movie/Whatever because some asshat wanted to make some quick coin. My taxes paid for that disc, so why should he be able to make a couple of bucks on MY back.

I dont even know why we're discussing this still. This is such a cut and dry matter, its not even funny.

I posted back on page one and I AM a librarian here in Maine. As I said in my first post, Maine has a specific statute on the books that covers library materials and this situation IS clearly theft, according to Maine law. The charge of theft is contingent, however, in the discovery of the fact that the 'friend' had lied about the item being 'lost'...there's the rub. Theft by deception, like any theft, can only have consequences once it’s been discovered.

gbub's assertion that "I don't think the library cares the DVD is gone whether it was $20 or $200. I'll bet the library received the DVD as a donation and therefore it's looked at as extra money to reinvest in more books." is so far off base, it's hard to fathom. First off, as has been stated elsewhere in the thread, libraries are tax supported institutions and every librarian I know cares deeply about any loss the library sustains, whether it's a valuable item or a crappy little paperback. We are keenly aware that we have been entrusted with obtaining and caring for materials purchased with the public's dime, and we take our collections very seriously. As far as donations go - if your library's collection was built from donated materials, the shelves would be full of paperback romance novels and Veggie Tales DVDs. With the limited funds we have to work with, we choose our collections very carefully, trying to provide the best materials to suit the needs of our communities - it's not just crap to fill the shelves.

I agree in the theory of stiff fines/replacement costs (I'm all for fair market value plus a $50 "don't be such an ass" penalty) but that's not always easy to do either. You buy a DVD for $20 for your collection and the purchase price is recorded in your database. I, personally, as a geek that reads DVDTalk, am somewhat aware of what is rare or 'collectible' - but most librarians don't have the personal interest that I do in knowing this stuff, and, with hundreds of thousands of items in their collections, are far too busy on a daily basis to be hunting down the current 'value' of their items on eBay. I guess it's easier to just hope that our patrons aren't dishonest and, for the most part, that works.

For a brief blurb about the case in the state that resulted in the law covering library materials, check out
American Libraries, January 4, 1999 (scroll down a bit)

Exactly what DVD's could a library possibly possess that are rare, and highly sought after? Also, rare enough that the person can't find them anywhere but ebay.....?

Yeah, he's stealing from everybody in the community (since the library belongs to them). Therefore, they should lynch the bastard.

I know you've said this is your final thought, so don't feel bound to respond, but I don't get this. You're saying the action is "wrong," but you're not sure if it's unethical? What else could "wrong" mean? Wrong in what way? Since you've also said (dubiously) that you don't think it's legally wrong, ethically wrong is the only thing that makes sense.

DJ

Are you unaware of the concept of rare OOP DVDs? Do you think that a library cannot possibly stock a title like Salo or The Killer? I don't understand your confusion.

DJ

You'd be surprised. My college library here has a darn good portion of the Criterion Collection, and my small library at home (town of 2000) even has a bunch of OOP titles.

The library had Fight Club: 2 - Disc set when it was rare (for a couple months or so)..Now it's not of course.