[Slowhand] Re:Once more of geographics

[Kris Senden]

Hi,

I am from Belgium and I got caught trading bootlegs by the Belgian customs
two years ago. I had to sign a document stating that I would no longer trade
and they took the discs I traded. If they ever caught me again trading
bootlegs I had to pay a very high fee per song. Can you imagine?

I immediately stopped trading of course, I took my site ofline and informed
everyone I was trading with at that time!

So to answer your question, it indeed is a likely scenario! On a regular
basis they pick some packages out and inspect them, if it contains something
illegal, you are invited to explain what it is all about. If it's your first
time they catch you and if you play it well all you get is a warning (if you
are lucky enough like me) but if they really want they can make you pay a
lot.

As long as you trade inside the European community (without Switzerland)
they don't inspect these packages but if you send something to the States or
outside the European community....

Kris

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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 11:22:03 -0500
From: "Lucky and Alice Crumpler" <crumplers at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [Slowhand] Re:Once more of geographics
To: <weedweed at tiscali.fr>, "slowhand" <slowhand at planet-torque.com>
Message-ID: <006501c47976$03cdfe70$1502a8c0 at Selma>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

Interesting you should say that about Belgium....about three years ago I
started a trade with a fairly well know EC trader in Belgium and sent his
discs (17).  He claimed customs seized them, that he could not trade any
more, and that he could not send me anything in return for the 17 discs I
sent him.  He seemed flaky at the time and not very credible, and I just
didn't believe him, so I put him on my trade list as a bad trader.  I later
noticed him up and trading, but his site says he only trades with people
from Europe now.  I also noticed that his list contains the titles I sent
him, but of course that could be a coincidence...he could have gotten them
elsewhere after having them seized.

For those of you with more experience with Belgium customs, is this a likely
scenario?  And I imagine several of you have guessed exactly which EC trader
I am talking about...should I have believed him about the seizure?  Lastly,
what is the correct trading protocol here?  If your country seizes your
incoming discs, should you send the other fellow anything to complete the
trade?

I'm not really worried about this...this was all a long time ago in a galaxy
far away, but this thread got me wondering if I had judged this guy too
harshly.

Lucky