Here's a Sri Lanka piglet who is using TWO aliases at the same time.
Salantharik and Dimuthmendi.
Yes, the typical tongue-twisting aliases of slimy twisted scumbags located in the crotch of Rat Land.
And you thought it was Florida.
In terms of book bootlegging, Sri Lanka is Cancer Central, and eBay, of course, does little to eradicate it.
What would it take to eradicate the problem?
For one thing, book companies run by people who don't have their heads up their asses and their hands on the expense account vouchers.
Yeah, Random House Penguins, that's YOU. And Scholastic. Too busy with your two hour lunches, are you? Can't assign some intern to file a few takedowns?
The excuse is, what, exactly?
Meanwhile Salantharik and Dimuthmendi (same piglet) runs the SAME ad copy with the same lines about how these stolen books will be sent to the lucky bidder via email.
Of course it would be helpful if busy authors took a few minutes to look out for themselves.
That certainly applies to the ones who give the Sri Lanka piglets the most profits: J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and that silly woman who writes all those lousy "cozy mystery" books about cake.
With a little diligence, there would be no Sri Lanka piglets crawling around eBay every day, doing BUY IT NOW auctions.
And if eBay suspended the Sri Lanka piglets after ONE violation, and if PayPal revoked the accounts for them, the problem would be solved entirely.
The Achilles heel with these bastards is that they have to explain to bidders that these are eBooks, and that they will be delivered via email or cloud (which, fortunately, IS against eBay rules).
Unfortunately, the Sri Lanka piglets (probably only two or three creeps and their families and friends with the multiple accounts) play the merry-go-round game. When Salantharik and Dimuthmendi get a scolding and their items removed, they just go find another alias they haven't used for a while, and put the stuff right back again.
If all the aliases were suspended, and if there were more complaints directly to eBay's VERO department (which is in charge of copyright takedowns) the problem would be over.
Among the current aliases (with a sample auction number) that eBay and PayPal haven't bothered to suspend:
The sad thing is that these Sri Lankan piglets provide PayPal and eBay with maybe a fifty cent profit per auction. That's not a lot is it? Not when you realize the consequence is less new authors being given a decent advance, less bookstores around, less libraries in business. There's no need for eBay and PayPal to be so greedy or short-sighted or arrogant.
