CereCere here, with yet another email that I felt was worth posting, not so much to ridicule, but to teach a lesson and get the word out on a very important subject. Bootlegging SM for profit.
First a bit of background info on this email. I received it shortly after posting
Rant # 25 - A Question, in which I said I had
not seen the SMS dubs yet. More comments from me will follow the email... so here we go...
Subject: Would you like the SMS dub?
Since you live in Canada I know you haven't seen the SMS dub yet. I have all the episodes they have shown so far on tape. Would you be interested in buying them? I would sell a tape with 12 episodes on it for 15 dollars. Let me know if you are.
Need I say it? What he is offering is just plain illegal.
He is selling a show he taped off TV for profit, profiting off Cloverway, profiting
off Cartoon Network who had to buy the episodes from Cloverway. And at 15 bucks (US)
a tape, he is making quite the profit! It would cost him, 2 dollars (at most)
for a decent VHS tape, then 4 or 5 dollars for shipping one tape to Canada, and
that's only if he buys a bubble wrap envelope for it! That's about 7 dollars,
with 8 dollars profit, over a 100% mark up on something I can wait one month and
watch for free.
If either company got wind of what this person was trying to do he would be fined for numerous copyright violations so fast it would make his head spin. If any of you out there are thinking
of doing something similar, do not do it. You may think Cloverway and Time-Warner
will not find out, but word on this Internet can spread very quickly. Someone could
turn you in, or someone with Cloverway or Time-Warner could actually read about your
offer in some chatroom or message board.
Heck, he doesn't even know me! I could turn him in for all he knows! If that
happens, well my friends you're in deep do-do. Oh and I almost left out Canadian Customs!
The tape would have to make it by them, not that hard for an unmarked tape, as they might
shrug it off as a family video, but sometimes they do check.
Now that aside, what if you are the person who wants to buy the episodes?
First of all, you are for lack of a better word, nuts. They are illegal tapes,
you can add Cartoon Network to your cable package in the states for much less
than 15 bucks a month and get a lot more shows than just 12 episodes of SM,
and in Canada if you have cable, more than likely you have YTV, so why not
wait one more month to see them for free?
Then there is a matter of trust.
This guy does not know me, I don't know him, and believe me, with my secret
identity he's not going to find out my address anytime soon. But that's another
issue altogether! Anyway how do you know that you can trust this person to actually
send these tapes to you. You could send the money and get nothing! Especially if he
gets caught before he sends out the tape.
So I posted this email, not to really mock this person, but to
teach a lesson. If you're planning to pull a scheme like this, don't, and
if you're thinking of buying, don't. Now if a friend of yours from
the states offers to send you a tape for free, or for the cost of shipping
and the tape, then it's okay. Your friend isn't making any profit, and
it's also a friend that you can trust more than some stranger who emails
you out of no where.
July 19th, 2000
