They seem to understand that being "just a venue" is not an excuse to allow bootlegging. If someone happens to notice an obvious book bootleg, all that's needed is to click the "report item" link, scroll around a few times to REPORT CATEGORY (listing practices) and under LISTING PRACTICES hit (digital delivery) and eBay gets the message.
Or do they?
Here's a rabid wombat who has sold 88 BOOTLEG copies of a Dale Carnegie book. That's money Dale's publisher will never see.
The ad copy is blatant about what this is. A DOWNLOAD that the happy winning bidder gets through a direct attachment or via a Google cloud download.
At the bottom of the ad, the thief has the gall to add, "Attention eBay, I am an authorised re-seller..." blah blah blah.
"REPORT ITEM" and, unfortunately, about a third of the time NOTHING HAPPENS.
Literally CALL THEM ON IT, and a sing-song voice from somewhere in the Far East explains, "Oh, we have MILLIONS of items on eBay, and it's just not possible to always respond."
Ebay is one of the biggest success stories on the Internet. They make a fortune. They just don't want to SPEND too much of it on removing auctions. They're claiming they simply have a limited number of employees, and if there's a high volume of complaints...TOO BAD.
The GOOD news? Ebay's negligence pays off for them. In this case, they got about 50 cents on each illegal download. And that's 88 of them. That can buy you a very nice lunch...on Dale's publisher.
Now realize THIS particular wombat has 20 or 40 other auctions going, and we're getting into petty larceny. Add that a seller like this often has several identities, and it becomes grand larceny.
Ebay's answer is, "try reporting the auction again."
Oh. One more thing. Ebay does not allow anyone to report an auction more than once. If you do, the request goes to the bottom of the queue. So you have to wait till the auction ends. If the seller is doing a 30 day auction with 10 copies available...well, TOO BAD.
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