The BBC reports that an man who sold pirated ebooks on eBay has been jailed for 21 months. The Derbyshire man made £85,000 selling copies of audiobooks with as many as 37 eBay IDs over a five year period. The books included the Lemony Snicket series, the Lord Of The Rings and the Narnia Chronicles, and the sentencing judge suggested that his sales represented a loss of more than a million pounds to the copyright owners. The prosecuting counsel said that he had been selling copies of the first six Harry Potter books for £6.49: the normal retail is around £300.
eBay sees Harry Potter cast spell over shoppers ahead of reunion
- 21 Dec
- 0
6 Responses
Daft, why would anyone pay him when you can download them for free!
Here endeth the lesson’
The more stories like this in the press the better, it’s about time the law and eBay let people know that times are a changin’ although this is a neverending battle worldwide.
The thing is, before the internet, people would use Sunday markets for copying etc as they still do, but the more people hear that this is not something that is overlooked by the law because it’s on ebay the better.
Would have been interesting to read his feedback and DSR’s though.
No Messing about in USA . 27 years for Ebay fraud
https://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/11/20/ap5721320.html
Good to hear some high value/volume frauds are being cleared from the site – more of this please. 😀
Although …..
“The prosecuting counsel said that he had been selling copies of the first six Harry Potter books for £6.49: the normal retail is around £300.”
At that “normal” retail price, I’m wondering who the bandit really is. That’s a lot more than the price of even the official DVDs of the movies – and audio books are a heck of a sight cheaper to produce than movies, and designed to give literature access to the physically disabled (the blind).
Have to ask – was that £300 actually a typo with an extra zero? Would appreciate knowing this as I have a friend who has just discovered she is heading for blindness due to an incurable condition, and she’s a bookworm and a Harry Potter fan.
Ed
No, Ed, it was not a typo. The RRP for the seven-book set is £350. Obviously it’s more if you buy them all separately.
Yeah,
Happened to me this morning as well. Just went to add one of my audio eBooks to my eBay account and… found it on eBay under someone else’s!!!
The seller is a PowerSeller, and has loads of PLR stuff for sale, so I suspect he’s probably not the guilty one, anyway, I dropped him e-mail and told to remove the listing straight away.
Let’s see what happens!:-)