I recall once upon a time when they cracked down on bootleg material very quickly and swiftly, completely removing the auctions from their site. I recall trying to watch some and suddenly the auction number was no where to be found in their data base. And when Star Wars bootlegs started to be sold on there, they shut those down as quickly as they shut down auctions of people trying to auction off their virginity (I am not making that up...several people tried that but the auctions were quickly shut down.) Now you can find scads of VCDs and CDRs and such on E Bay and they hardly, if ever get shut down. What's the deal? Did they change their policies?

They haven't changed their policies at all. They have just been lax about enforcing them. Probably just due to lack of manpower, most likely. If you pointed out the offending auctions to [email protected], I'm sure they'd probably remove them.

Actually, I bet instead of committing their own manpower to policing the auctions they are putting the responsibility on the respective copyright holders to point out offending auctions, and then they'll remove them.

I see scores and scores of family guy and futurama vcds

What does ebay care? They get their final value fees anyway. It's actually in their financial interest to let it continue, and they only take off the offending auctions if the actual copyright holder asks them too.

I've pointed out sellers in the past who were dealing in bootleg material, but those were ones that usually really pissed me off for some reason, such as one who refused to exchange a defective CD. So instead of a negative response, I just reported his auctions. It had more of an effect than a neg would have anyway.

So I take it E Bay has no legal responsiblity when it comes to being the site that offers these items? I am not really complaining about them on there (tho I am sick and tired of seeing all the VCDs when I am trying to find legitimate DVDs. It really turns me off trying to find DVDs on their site) as I have found some great things for myself (such as an ultra rare Robert Smigle collection of SNL cartoons taken directly from his reels) but I was just curious.