Mercado Livre announces this week that it has closed a cooperation agreement with ABDR (an association that brings together authors and book publishers) to combat piracy and counterfeiting of titles on the platform.
With the partnership, the company promises zero tolerance for fraud and kicking out users who sell irregular products.
Mercado Livre says it has tools capable of scanning by reading text and images to identify pirated products and their respective sellers. Igor Donato de Araújo, manager of intellectual property protection at Mercado Livre, says that the violating user may face warnings or be banned from the platform.
Last year, entities that defend copyright tightened the siege against Mercado Livre because of the volume of pirated books for sale on the marketplace.
“There was an evolution between Mercado Livre and ABDR. In the past, there really was this issue of many advertisements with content of pirated books on Mercado Livre, but it is not a specific phenomenon in Brazil. It is something worldwide. I think the investments contributed to , if not, drastically reduce the problem of illegal products”, says Dalton Morato, a lawyer at the entity.
Mercado Livre says it disabled 900 sellers last year and removed nearly 700,000 ads that infringed copyright and editorial rights in Brazil.
The move comes amid increased scrutiny of how ecommerce works in Brazil. The company’s name has also recently ended up in the imbroglio of Brazilian industry representatives who accuse foreign marketplaces such as AliExpress and Shopee of promoting a digital street vendor with goods sold without due payment of taxes.
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