Pirated / Bootleg / Counterfeit DVDs and media

[dgowans]

I wanted to put a post out there to warn users (again, this has been going on forever) about pirated media being sold on eBay!  I let down my guard and bought two items (Perry Mason: The Complete Series, and Perry Mason: The Complete Movie Collection) off eBay, and didn't inspect and check the discs when I got them in early November.  I paid retail prices for them, so it wasn't a case of too good to be true.

I then wrapped them for my wife.  It was only after Christmas, and after the return window closed, that we discovered they were bootlegs, counterfeit fake DVD sets.  See below.

One of the sellers is gone (account inactive now), the other won't respond to me (yet).  I have purchased a copy of each item (again) from legit sellers.  The movie collection direct from Amazon, which arrived and I was able to compare them and prove the bootleg was definitely not original by comparing the discs themselves.  Waiting on the Complete series from TCM Shop.  eBay will not listen to my concerns, technically I can't prove they are bootlegs without sending them to eBay - pictures and words from me just don't seem to be enough, plus - they just don't care.  Complain within the return window or you're stuck!  In the end, if I can't get my credit card company to do a chargeback I'll be out $150 for these two items.  Sad way to learn a lesson!

I have almost been burned in the past but cancelled the transactions after learning it was too good to be true when something seemed off.  For example, the collected works of Hayao Miyazaki cannot be found legitimately at anything close to reasonable prices.  You're getting a bootleg if you buy that in almost all cases.  In the case of Perry Mason, the prices were close to retail so nothing seemed off initially, even the sellers had been around a while.  Some sellers are selling bootlegs and don't even know it, their distributors are doing it.

Bootleggers LOVE things like "collected works", "the entire series", "full collection", etc.  These high ticket items are highly targeted, so especially if buying one of these, do your homework!  Check it out as soon as you get the item, and check around to compare pricing.

So I got a bootleg, so what?  Well the big problem is that I don't really like supporting piracy, and that's annoying, but even more of a problem is that the quality of the discs is much lower.  Pirates will rip the originals, reproduce the packaging (and they are getting very good at it), and produce single-layer DVDs with highly compressed versions of the original video.  Playback issues, compression artifacts, etc. are very common.  It is quite noticeable to the naked eye and can affect your viewing experience substantially.

In comparing discs the bootleg I got from eBay with the legit version of Perry Mason's Complete Movie Collection, there were these differences:

  - The packaging says the discs are dual layer.  But the bootleg discs are single layer 4.2 GBytes.  The legit discs are 6.44 GBytes, and are confirmed to be dual layer like packaging says.  The video files on the bootleg have been re-compressed to fit within 4.2 GBytes, and it is noticeable on playback.

  - The packaging says the discs are copy protected.  But the bootleg discs have no copy protection.  The legit discs have CSS/CPPM copy protection

  - The packaging says the discs are Region 1 locked.  But the bootleg discs are region free.  The legit discs are indeed region 1 locked.

  - The bootleg discs have a bunch of microscratches on the discs, the legit discs are unblemished on the playing side

  - The printing on the bootleg is _slightly_ more blurry than the printing on the legit packaging, but it's hard to tell unless they are side by side

  - Like I said, the video on the bootleg copies has compression artifacts that are noticeable - blocking, banding, etc.  They don't even use very good compression...

I haven't received the Perry Mason The Complete Series set I bought from TCM Shop yet so I haven't been able to compare, but the discs in the set from eBay are NOT copy protected, are region free, are single layer - all the telltale signs that they are bootleg.  I may post to this thread again after I get to compare them.

Now note - the packaging from the bootleggers is quite convincing, even the silkscreening on the discs looks the same, and the discs are pressed, not burned!  So it is very hard to tell from visual inspection.  As I said, you almost need the legit version to compare them to, in order to be sure.

I know eBay will never be able to stop this practice, and they don't even seem that inclined to try.  I could make this some crazy rant about how unfair life is, and that won't surprise anyone (life is unfair).  Just wanted to share my experience and put the warning out there, among the many others that have done so.

[dgowans]

Another interesting note is that illegal DVD production and distribution has often been found to be more profitable to organized crime funding than illegal drug distribution, and organized crime around the world is often funded more by pirate media than by drug trafficking.  So it's important to think about where your money might be going when you end up with a bootleg - it might not "just" be some yahoos without ethics trying to make a buck, it could be some seriously bad people getting funded.

There's plenty of legitimate stuff on eBay.  I think eBay as a platform and marketplace is definitely a net positive for the world.  I would like to see them do more to minimize the criminal element, but I think eBay shopping can still work fine, even for media, as long as people are vigilant, thorough and aware as purchasers.

[omgitlightsup]

eBay is chock full of counterfeit phones, hard drives, memory cards, electronic components, and yeah, videos too.

My girlfriend loves the counterfeit ones because they're usually from other regions and include material not found on the retail versions.

This is eBay, not FYE. If you want the genuine article you should be buying from licensed distributors.

[omgitlightsup]

Another problem is that the cost of blank media is taxed to subsidize piracy. Title 17 USC contains several provisions for record companies to get a percentage sale of all blank media.

The government has basically said it's OK to pirate music, and made us pay the record companies because other people are doing it. That's a hard tree for them to climb back down from.

As for eBay's net contribution, I rate it as an overall negative. The company has done nothing but grow and earn staggering profits, but fees keep going up, and they keep reaching back into your pocket for things that have nothing to do with selling, like payment services and postage. They also took what was in the 90s a tight-knit community and broke it up into factions of buyers and sellers, put up walls between us, and trained us over the last two decades to hate each other. 

If the site was doing anything good for the community, you'd see fewer massive drop shippers with six digit  feedback scores, and more of the kind of real human beings that actually make up communities.

[arduenna]

I found the info in this post very helpful in identifying my defective Game of Thrones set as counterfeit. https://www.theraffon.net/spookcentral/tcp/2019/06/25/counterfeit-bootleg-dvd-box-sets

I ran the software the author recommended and found the disks were region free, single layer, and at the end of the title of the disk (in the data, not on the disk itself) it says "OK" ("GAME_OF_THRONES_S5_DISC5 OK"). I'd have kept them if they didn't have unplayable disks and freezing, artifacts, and pixellation on others, but they're going back.

'

[mudshark61369]

@arduenna,

The info you posted while very helpful may not be seen by many people because this topic is over 8 months old, and many will not read old topics.  You can post your own topic on this board by using the Start a Conversation button at the upper left of the main electronics board page.  I would title the topic  "A method for checking the authenticity of DVDs".  Though it may be seen by even more people on the Buying Board which is under the Buying & Selling header above.