A few months ago, I purchased a doujin album on YJA.  The album arrived with all of the original artwork, but was missing the disc!  Seeing as I have basically no recourse as a proxy buyer, I just chalked it up to bad luck.

Later, I bought another copy of the same album.  Interestingly, I found that the album's disc was just a generic branded CDR.

This got me thinking that it would probably be possible to sell my discless copy, specifically by burning a second copy of the album, and including the burned copy with the discless original artwork (fully disclosed of course).

The question is: would it ever be okay to do this?  My sense is that the answer is no.  On the other hand, the alternative is basically to throw the discless artwork in the trash, since no one would want it without the disc.  That seems kind of sad too.

If it's relevant, the album is 15 years out of print, and was originally sold at Comiket.

Are proxy buyers not willing to file a complaint when a seller messes up?  It seems they should be willing to do provide a reasonable amount of service for what is usually not an insignificant amount of fees that go in their pocket.  Otherwise, the legal perspective would probably be the most compelling reason to not try to sell a burned CD.  Selling it locally may be easier to get away with.

Re: proxy buyers, if there is an issue with the item, you can register a complaint with the proxy, and they will mail the seller about it. 

From there, if the seller doesn't respond, there is nothing they will do (as far as I can tell).

In the two cases where I've had an issue (this being one of them), the seller "didn't respond."

Since it's a doujin album, are you sure the original disc wasn't actually a generic CD-R in the first place (e.g. the artist himself burns the copies)? For example, a few albums from my favourite former-doujin musician uses blank white CD-Rs for, I assume, cost reasons, instead of professionally copied CDs with artwork/labels etc.

And as you probably know, while on eBay where buyers have all the power, on Yahoo Auctions, it's the sellers who do. So whether there is any compensation will depend on the seller's honesty. I haven't used most of the big-name Yahoo Japan Auction intermediaries but I assume they all have some sort of "we are not responsible for bad transactions and therefore will not offer financial compensations out of our own pocket" which I guess makes sense. This bad transaction would have happened anyway, whether you used an intermediary or not. The least they could do however, is contact the seller on  your behalf. But then again, sellers have the power...

A few years ago, I bought the Final Fantasy VII - Original Soundtrack (Limited Edition) on Y!J which turned out to have bootleg discs (if I paid more attention to the photos, I would have noticed it). A quick email to the seller and they refunded it. So it's worth a try.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the original disc was a generic CDR.

In this case, it's not even a white CDR, which is pretty common for doujins.  Rather, it looks like this (below), which is less common in my experience:

https://club.myce.com/uploads/db9252/or … 8be96f.jpg

Usually when someone asks a "Is X ethical?" question they already know the answer, yet are hoping the majority with bless the unethical choice. You got another copy anyway so chock one up to buying stuff through unconventional means. Its always going to be a gamble