MPAA Chases Uploads, Ignores Open Sales of DVD-Rs?

rbrander writes "Go to TVBoxSet.com and find a remarkable sales site for box sets of TV shows, including not only surprisingly cheap deals, but offerings not found elsewhere. For example, they have a set with all ten seasons of 'JAG'. The problem is that the production company is only up to season 4 so far. Google "tvboxset" and find every link below the first is to a complaint or news website complaining of the scam. Those who do shop at the site get a product that appears to be a DVD-R recorded off of cable. The really odd thing? They're still in business! A story at the Montreal Gazette about the scam is six weeks old. Now what's in it for the content industry to beat up private citizens with $220,000 judgements or scrambling to get DeCSS sites shut down within hours, while corporate scammers openly sell pirate DVDs for months on end, unopposed?"

Re:Wow!

[ShaunC]

Anyway, perhaps the reason they aren't being pursued is that they may not be in the US. If they are in, for example, Russia, allofmp3 has shown how much fun suing them can be.

TFA makes it fairly clear that this operatiion is based in Canada.

Re:Wow!

[neoform]

The article says they're based out of Montreal..

Motion Picture Association

[tepples]

As a side note: Why would anyone contact the MPAA and not the CRIA about a situation with a Canadian company?

Because it's a movie, not a musical recording. Motion Picture Association [wikipedia.org] represents the MPAA members' interests worldwide.

Eighth Amendment

[tepples]

I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once

I.e. you broke the law. Prepare to pay the price.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. [wikipedia.org] And foreign counterparts where applicable.

Re:Motion Picture Association

[nightgeometry]

Surely that's the point the MPA [wikipedia.org] is what you linked to, but the MPAA [wikipedia.org] is what he was asking about. The MPAA would have no jurisdiction in Canada (I assume) and so you would have to contact the CMPDA [wikipedia.org], though not the CRIA.

Yeah, I got bored of adding Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] links by the time I got to the CRIA =)

The problem is....

[americanincanada]

They have been running them 'out of town' MP3Sparks was once AllOfMP3. TVBoxSet was formerly DVD-Series. Based out of: Strawinskylaan, Amsterdam 1143 XX Netherlands From they're own FAQ: "Is my order SECURE? You bet! When placing an order, Dvd-series.com uses..." It would appear someone forgot to update the page when they "moved"!

Re:Double standards!

[totally bogus dude]

If you break the law despite knowing the penalties for doing so are severe, you know what to expect.

It's hard to know what to "expect" if the law is enforced haphazardly. For example, imagine you're waiting at a pedestrian crossing and there's no cars around (but the "Don't Walk" sign is still lit), and there's a cop standing near you. You decide not to jaywalk -- just in case you get pinged for it. The guy next to you on the sidewalk ignores the cop and crosses the road; the cop sees him, but does nothing. "Fair enough", you think, "obviously that cop isn't enforcing jaywalking laws." So you start to cross... and before you know it, the cop's all over you.

Oh yeah, and the other guy jaywalking somehow made some money off of it while the cops ignored him, but you got busted. What's with that?

Not in Canada, in the...

[canuck57]

TFA makes it fairly clear that this operatiion is based in Canada.

But hosted in the USA. A lookup of tvboxset.com shows 72.52.7.20 listed whois says USA hosted.

Same thing different industry

[tompaulco]

I have a Beauty Salon, and we decided we could make a little extra income selling products on the internet. We researched the legality of it and found nothing illegal about it, and even found that Amazon and some other big names were selling the exact same products. We also read our applications from our suppliers and found nothing preventing sale on the internet, and we talked to one of our suppliers and they had no problem with it.
Our other supplier through a fit when they found out, and demanded we stop advertising the products they sold us, or they would stop selling to us. So we stopped selling their products even though we didn't appreciate their attitude or heavyhanded threats.
Then we got a cease and desist letter from one of the manufacturers. Their position is that it is unfair competition for us to sell on the internet, and that it is against our reseller agreement. Well, we fired a letter right back saying that we don't consider it unfair competition that we happen to be enterprising enough to put together a website. And secondly, we had never signed, nor even seen a reseller agreement. Thirdly, what we DID consider unfair competition was the fact that they plainly allow Amazon.com and other sites to operate internet sales of the products with impunity, while demanding that actual brick and mortar stores not be allowed to sell on the internet.
The letter went unanswered, and we still have never seen a reseller agreement, nor could we find one on the internet. For the moment, we have taken down the products from that manufacturer, but we will probably put it back up, since they were not able to provide evidence that what we are doing is wrong, and their arguments for us not doing it are all anti-competitive, and thus illegal. However, they did threaten to stop selling to us if we persist in selling on the internet, which is also anti-competitive and thus illegal. If I was just an internet sales company, I wouldn't care, but we have a lot of stylists that use those products, and if the company stopped selling to us, we would probably lose those stylists and the business would end up folding.