Bootleg Material

Following ethical standards for library professionals Marmot Libraries will not catalog or circulate bootleg or pirated material in any format. If you discover that material is a bootleg, please notify the UCC email list so that other libraries can know not to buy specific titles. Library staff will exercise due diligence in ensuring that media added to the catalog have been released and are legally available for circulation.

If you find a title in the system from another library that you think is bootleg, contact the Union Catalog Coordinator, and they will contact the other library to investigate.

• To spot counterfeit media materials from the item, consider checking the following before ordering and/or circulating:

  • The cover design should be the same as the item being sold through a reliable outlet. Variations on the cover art could be suspicious.

  • Look for misspellings (e.g. Warnar Bros.)

  • The image quality of the art on both the cover and disc surface. A variation in colors could be indicative of it being photo edited or photocopied.

  • Look for trademarks, copyright information, IFPI codes, studio logos. Also look at the disc surface for the official DVD and Blu-ray logos. Counterfeit artwork and/or discs will often be missing this information.

  • Look at the region in which the disc is encoded for. For DVDs, the United States is region 1 and for Blu-rays, it is region A. Region 0 means that it has no region coding and is sometimes associated with pirated materials.

It is recommended that every Marmot library have access to at least one computer that has a DVD drive so the contents of media can be checked. To spot counterfeit media materials from the content of the item, consider checking the following before circulating:

• If it looks blurry or distorted in any way and the sound is not clear, it is likely a counterfeit.

• When placed into the disc drive of a computer, if the size of the disc is lower than 5GB, it is likely a counterfeit product.

**REMEMBER: Websites that use third-party sellers (Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc.) are most often the origin of the materials in question. There must be research and scrutiny of materials when ordering from these vendors. Just because something is available to buy on these sites does not automatically mean it’s a legitimate product. (Here's an article on how to tell who you're buying from on Amazon: https://www.howtogeek.com/695896/how-to-tell-if-youre-buying-from-a-third-party-seller-on-amazon/ .)

If you find an item in Sierra that could be a bootleg let the Union Catalog Coordinator know and they will work with the owning library to determine if it is legitimate.

• All holds will remain as is on the bib until there is validation of a legitimate release or something is done to change the status so the bootleg doesn't appear in Pika anymore. Libraries can remove holds for their patrons if desired while investigation is occurring.

• The Union Catalog Coordinator works with the libraries who own the copies.

  • They will ask the owning library where they purchased the item. If it was Walmart or Amazon, was it a third party seller? Who was that?

  • They will investigate if the item was ever legitimately sold in the same format.

  • The owning library will examine the physical item.

• If the copies are valid, share with UCC where the official copies can be purchased and/or information from the publisher indicating there was an official release in the specific format owned (DVD, Blu-Ray, 4k).

• If the item is found to have been purchased legitimately, but it can no longer be purchased by other libraries, and the large number of requests is creating problems for the other libraries

  • Change the itype to one that is non-lendable outside of the owning library

• Once the copy is removed or the bib is suppressed from Pika, notify all libraries through the UCC email.

• Libraries can then cancel holds and inform patrons of the canceled holds.