As you know, Discogs now blocks any listing that shows "unofficial" as label/source. My suspicion is that neither E Bay nor Amazon block such offerings unless they receive a notice, similar to a take-down notice, from a party in interest (e.g., sound recording rights owner).
A couple years ago I was on the phone with someone at Universal who was combing through their archives for me, using Discogs to check some information. In a couple cases (this was before that platform instituted a blanket ban on "unofficial’ releases), he saw a few for the masters we were researching that were not licensed and he said "I’ll have to let Business Affairs know about these."
There are several questionable labels still on sold on Discogs that are known to be "iffy" as to provenance, yet still appear today for sale. As to "legitimate" sellers, pretty much anybody can be a (re)seller, often with a high feedback count, from their home, basement, whatever.
From the sound recording owner’s perspective, it’s a question of time and resources to play whack a mole. My experience in the old days with record piracy or bootlegs is that the major labels went after the bigger plants if they could identify the source; it didn’t pay to chase downstream sellers for many reasons other than a letter the equivalent of a takedown notice to an Internet platform. The selling platforms didn’t and probably still don’t research the legitimacy of the label, and weren’t/aren’t incentivized to do much on their own to stop this. Suing for Amazon or E-Bay would not be the first step in most cases. In the good old days, a record retailer typically wasn’t sued for piracy unless they were more directly implicated in the actual manufacture of the records, even though distribution, without more, is actionable at least in the States as copyright infringement. The DMCA notice and takedown provisions have also probably had an impact on approach (even though I don’t think they literally apply in these instances to provide a safe harbor), in addition to cost effectiveness and resources from the perspective of the rights owner. No legal advice intended or supplied.
A couple years ago I was on the phone with someone at Universal who was combing through their archives for me, using Discogs to check some information. In a couple cases (this was before that platform instituted a blanket ban on "unofficial’ releases), he saw a few for the masters we were researching that were not licensed and he said "I’ll have to let Business Affairs know about these."
There are several questionable labels still on sold on Discogs that are known to be "iffy" as to provenance, yet still appear today for sale. As to "legitimate" sellers, pretty much anybody can be a (re)seller, often with a high feedback count, from their home, basement, whatever.
From the sound recording owner’s perspective, it’s a question of time and resources to play whack a mole. My experience in the old days with record piracy or bootlegs is that the major labels went after the bigger plants if they could identify the source; it didn’t pay to chase downstream sellers for many reasons other than a letter the equivalent of a takedown notice to an Internet platform. The selling platforms didn’t and probably still don’t research the legitimacy of the label, and weren’t/aren’t incentivized to do much on their own to stop this. Suing for Amazon or E-Bay would not be the first step in most cases. In the good old days, a record retailer typically wasn’t sued for piracy unless they were more directly implicated in the actual manufacture of the records, even though distribution, without more, is actionable at least in the States as copyright infringement. The DMCA notice and takedown provisions have also probably had an impact on approach (even though I don’t think they literally apply in these instances to provide a safe harbor), in addition to cost effectiveness and resources from the perspective of the rights owner. No legal advice intended or supplied.