Ask John: Why Do Companies Selling Bootleg Anime Operate Unchecked?

Question:
Why is a company like [name withheld] still in business? How do they get away with selling bootleg Chinese imports right next to the licensed titles? No wonder anime companies are going out of business!

Answer:
Regrettably, enforcing international copyright law is significantly harder than breaking it. Although legitimate copyright owners and authorized licensors should be able to easily protect their rights, practical reality is not so generous. Legitimate distributors may sometimes disregard obvious piracy because challenging it is too costly, in both money and time.

A legitimately authorized distributor may submit a request to a retailer or distributor to stop offering a counterfeit product for sale, to varying results. In some lucky cases, the offending retailer will immediately comply. Major, international retailers like eBay and Amazon are known to first demand certified evidence that the request is being submitted by a concern with defensible, legal authorization to make the request. Then, these retailers may further request evidence that the product in question is genuinely counterfeit. Placing the burden of proof on the claimant instead of the accused offender does seem backwards, but companies like Amazon and eBay sustain their business by siding with sellers. Major retailers want to sell more product, not less. So they try to make the process of rooting out counterfeit products difficult and time consuming, in order to discourage claimants from pursuing the sellers which they profit from.

Smaller professional retailers may simply disregard initial requests and legal “cease and desist” notices, knowing that the odds of being sued are slim. Furthermore, these retailers know that even if they do have to comply with legitimate requests, they don’t have to comply immediately. The dealer also has the ability to refute the claim that the product is illegitimate. Bootleg dealers may claim that the product is a legitimately licensed import, forcing the license owner to provide evidence otherwise. And even if the official distributor can provide evidence that the “import” is counterfeit, simply acquiring that evidence can take days or weeks.

Again, the burden lies on the official licensor. If an initial, personal request to a dealer is ignored, it’s the official rights holder that must retain a lawyer to compose a demand with legal weight. And it’s also the legal rights holder that must contact legal authorities and begin legal proceedings against the offending retailer. Usually American anime distributors just don’t have the time, manpower, and financial resources necessary to invest in trying to stop a retailer from selling a bootleg product. When you consider that this entire process must be repeated with each offending retailer, it becomes clear why legitimate distributors get frustrated and give up, or simply decide that the effort necessary to eliminate bootleg sales is more investment than return.

Considering the time, expense, and difficulty involved in stamping out the sale of counterfeit anime goods, America’s anime industry often seems to find that simply informing consumers, and encouraging consumers to avoid bootleg merchandise is a more efficient, more effective means of reducing the impact of commercial video piracy than threats of filing suit.