Have I been conned?

[MorphineSoldier]

No, they just won't take any steps that count. They're completely unable to.
I'm looking over Buy.com's seller policies, and it doesn't say anything about having to be a registered business. It does say you have to provide valid personal information and they have the right to perform background checks, but somehow I doubt they do until it's a bit late. It'd be far too costly and time-consuming to investigate everyone who registers on their site.

I know for a fact Amazon doesn't require you to be a registered business, and they're even more public.

I mean, let's face facts here. These are the same people who have been doing this since anime became a viable product in the U.S. These are the same people who were selling boot-leg VHS tapes, and then VCDs. and they moved with the times to DVDs as they became cheap.
If ADV, or any of the other companies could have done something, don't you think they'd have covered it by now?

From a consumer stand-point, I know I'd rather you leave them up there. Then at least everyone knows who they are and what they're doing. They'll know who exactly to avoid. However, if you take them down and they come back later with a new name and post office box, they not only fool new customers, but they have a chance to catch some of the ones they got before again. That's counter-productive.

Also, even if they are registered to that P.O. box under their real name, the post office can't give that information to ADV until the suit is legally brought up, and the thing about suing people is that you have to know who you're suing before you can do it. You can't sue a "company" that doesn't actually exist, nor can you sue an alias. They'd have to find out the information some other way.
It's not like this would be a criminal investigation where the police could get a subpoena for that information.

Call me a cynic - but if something is completely pointless, why would anyone bother?

[Jake]

I'm looking over Buy.com's seller policies, and it doesn't say anything about having to be a registered business.

Seller FAQ:

Why must the Seller provide the Tax Info as part of the registration process?
The "Tax Info" gives added confidence in identifying the Seller as a legitimate business.

I know for a fact Amazon doesn't require you to be a registered business, and they're even more public.

Amazon does require a different process for bulk sellers than casual sellers, though - I don't care to start the process to find out what they demand, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was something similar.

But even so, one way or another the money has to get from Amazon/whoever to the people who are selling the stuff, and thus they need bank details. It's not impossible to take out many bank accounts, but it's still not so trivial as setting up multiple email addresses, and will often start to look suspicious to people performing credit checks and the like. Odds are high that portal sites like Amazon Marketplace are able to screen out known-bad sellers by bank details pretty effectively. Again - it's in their best interests to, because it maintains the public perception of quality associated with the Amazon brand.

From a consumer stand-point, I know I'd rather you leave them up there. Then at least everyone knows who they are and what they're doing. They'll know who exactly to avoid.

... what?

If you leave them up there, the main thing which will happen is that more and more people ignorant to all this will buy from them thinking that they can't be doing anything wrong, because they're on a big trusted site like Buy or Amazon. You and I, if we want to avoid bootlegs, are far better off relying on indicators like R0 DVDs, Chinese subtitles or unfeasible numbers of episodes per disc, which very rarely happen individually and pretty much never at the same time on proper licensed releases. And more to the point, are a far more reliable indicator than the seller name - which as you note, can change at the drop of a hat.

Also, even if they are registered to that P.O. box under their real name, the post office can't give that information to ADV until the suit is legally brought up, and the thing about suing people is that you have to know who you're suing before you can do it.

Actually, no. As much as it's probably unlikely to happen in these cases, one can quite happily file a suit against unknown defendants - look up 'John Doe lawsuits', as they're commonly known. What happens is that the plaintiff files a suit against a pretend name, then uses the discovery of that suit to - say - subpoena the Post Office to provide the identity of the PO-box holder. Believe it or not selling copyright-infringing goods is actually a crime, and IIRC it's courts who issue subpoenas, not the police. Once an identity is established the filing is amended to include the actual names. This kind of thing is necessary if nothing else to allow people to bring suits against people who operate under false names!

(I'm sure I remember hearing a more 'proper-sounding' (Latin) legal term for this practice that may be UK-specific, but I don't recall what it is.)


As it happens, though, in this particular case the hypothetical defendants give full names and a business address on their website, so it wouldn't be necessary anyway.