Report for BLW 301

1. The Ethics of Bootleg
By Craig Bailey

2. What are bootleg
products?
• Bootleg products are products
that are produced but are not
the officially licensed material.
• This can include DVDs,
Collectibles, Figures, clothing,
etc.

3. Where are bootleg
products present?
• Bootleg products are present in
every form of market.
• Bootlegs pose a huge problem
to both the industry they come
from and the consumer.

4. How does this effect
me?
• Bootleg products are essentially
consumer scams, though some
people are happy paying cheap
prices for similar products most
collectors want the real item.
• If you are a collector and are fooled
by a bootleg product a lot of times
you are paying for a high end product
that turns out to be fake.

5. Ethical Ramifications
• Especially during the holiday season
many people fall victim to bootleg
products, this causes a lot of people
to be unsatisfied with their
purchases.
• Though many vendors do not care
about their customer base being
unsatisfied there can be a high
amount of legal ramifications.

6. Ethical Ramifications
cont.
• A company known as Funimation one
of the top companies for the
production and distribution of anime
products in the US has recently
started a campaign to stop bootlegs
from being sold in the US.
• Funimation has gone as far as suing
each company for a total of $50,000
per bootleg product they find where
they hold licensing.

7. Ethical Ramifications
cont.
• Along with being sued there are
other problems to violating this
licensing laws.
• By selling bootleg products you are
also opening yourself up to jail time
if caught.
• Recently more law enforcement
divisions in the US are seeking
bootleg products and their vendors.
• This is typically resulting in some
form of jail time.

8. Where do most bootlegs
come from?
• Most bootleg products come from China.
• This is strongly due to cheap labor, and
relaxed standards on production.
• For example if you go on Ebay and search
the product Figma (a high end japanese
figure line) you will find most products
listed at $10-$30 and shipping from china.
• These figures are not even wholesaled for
less than $35 a piece.

9. How this effects the
industries?
• Bootlegging takes away profits from
the licensing companies and even
the small businesses that distribute
them.
• Though most collectors are willing
to pay for a real product some
people use the bootleg prices as a
comparison to the real products.
• This causes sales to drop in a
already niche market.

10. How this effects the
industries? Cont.
• If profits are lessened in an
industry by the presence of
bootlegs it the industry is
discouraged from bringing in
new products.
• This will cause the industry to
slowly weaken and die off, or
create a less desirable product.

11. My experience with
bootlegging
• Currently I have owned a business
for 5 years.
• For the first 3 years I carried almost
exclusively bootleg products, though
at the time I was unaware I was
carrying them.
• Bootlegs lead me to have a lot of
sales and huge profit margins
however they also lead to a stigma
around my business from true
collectors.

12. My experience with
bootlegging cont.
• This stigma created a reputation
that still haunts me a little to this
day.
• After finding out I had bootleg
products and almost getting kicked
out of several events I cleaned up
my store.
• I am currently almost 100% bootleg
free at this point and in the last year
have watched my business grow by
nearly 900%