Bootleggers are well known for selling items, originally alcohol, without proper permission and avoiding tax or other duties, making them cheaper and therefore popular.

These days a bootlegger is better known for making copies of music or films and selling them without the artist or producer's permission and without paying any royalties properly due. The expression is first recorded in the mid 1800's and applied to those who sold illegal liquor to Indians in the Far West.

Those making the sales would ride out to the reservations with thin bottles of alcohol concealed in their riding boots and quickly became known by the authorities as bootleggers. The phrase travelled across the pond to the UK and was soon applied to anyone involved in counterfeit activity.