The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), the movie industry’s powerful lobbying arm, has filed 14 lawsuits against eBay sellers who it says have been selling counterfeit DVDs, seeking criminal penalties that could include jail time and fines up to $250,000.
“People who abuse online auction sites like eBay to sell counterfeit DVDs are not only cheating their buyers, they are committing a serious crime and will be held accountable,” said MPAA’s John G. Malcolm, who is described as the organization’s Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations.
$250,000 fine for selling on eBay
April 10, 2006 by Ty | 1 Comment
In eBay News
arturo on June 25th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Ebay protects sellers that sell pirated Spanish DVDs
About 2 months ago, I was looking for an old spanish cartoon show on eBay, Candy Candy, I later found out that a seller named ” shambalakumara ” has all of these episodes on DVD. I was very excited at first and so I bid on the DVD’s. Finally, at the end, I won the auction for $280.00 US dollars, including the shipping from Venezuela. It took me 4 days to get my DVD’s, but I was very dissapointed when I received them as all of these DVD’s were cheap DVD-R’s , low quality graphics, and bad copies as some of them didn’t even work. I emailed this seller, named Eva Finol, and told her that I want original DVD’s, not copies, but she didn’t want give me a refund. I contacted ebay and explained the problem, they told me that they will help me. But later they told me that I could not get a refund because I don’t use the payment company PAYPAL, but they will suspend the seller for selling pirated videos, so they suspended this seller… — for like 2 weeks, as the same seller came back to sell more pirated DVD’s en ebay. I complained again and an ebay representer named “Maria” told me that this seller is a “Respected power seller,” which means this seller makes a lot of money for ebay so they are not going to stop this. This seller continues selling thousand of dollars on pirated DVD ’s, and eBay is happy with her because they make a lot of money with the sales. You can see the list of pirated material that this seller has on ebay on this page . If you can, please tell to ebay to stop protecting piracy removing sellers like “shambalakumara” from eBay. Thank you.