I work for a record label (not Sony) and one of my jobs is doing EBAY sweeps and having bootleg material removed. I'm certain other labels do the same.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

I've bought some ace Oasis boots off ebay - before I discovered this forum and its download section, I bought an acoustic collection, the Jools Holland SOTSOG sessions on CD, as well as a whole bunch of TV appearances on DVD (great because I'm Aussie & it's awesome having access to their UK appearances).

I don't see the point in buying boots of official DVDs, but I don't see what the big problem is with anything else. As far as I'm concerned, if there's no official release of something, be it a live show, a demo, or whatever, then you're not depriving the band or record company of royalties so it should be permissable to own it/ buy it off ebay. Anyone who buys a shoddy quality live show is most likely to be a ticket-buying fan anyway (ie, they're not buying a cheap DVD boot as a substitute for a concert ticket).

But on ebay, what I've had happen a couple of times is I've won the auction on a certain item, paid for it, and then ebay has suddenly realised the item is a bootleg and they've removed the item from their database so you can't view its description or leave feedback for the seller. This really pisses me off because it doesn't actually stop the seller from listing the illegal item, but instead punishes the buyer (the seller has no incentive besides honesty to post off the item because they've already received payment & the buyer can't leave feedback saying "I didn't receive the item, you bastard!").

When ebay came along I thought "Oh great! Bootlges again!" When I used to go to record fairs years ago, they'd have bootleg CDs and videos all the time until the cops came and arrested people who were selling them.

I guess the problem is that someone's making the money off Oasis this way - that's why the bootleg download section of this forum is so great - it's free and it's for the fans.