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eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves

aggtech2 in eBay Copyright Theft

aggtech2 of College Station, TX, United States, stole our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photographs to use on eBay, without permission to try sell his own bar. Totally dishonest.

He failed to state or warn potential buyers that the superb condition gold proof coin in our high quality photograph was not the coin you would receive. This is deception.
Image theft is endemic on eBay, and most sellers appear not to care whether their buyers are deceived.

High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty

When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 0, according to eBay.

eBay Copyright Thieves

Many eBay vendors use our coin photographs to sell inferior quality coins on eBay. These eBay members are dishonest and should be avoided.
We believe eBay profits from IP rights infringements (copyright theft), and does so knowingly, only removing infringing items reluctantly, if at all.

Sample Listing

PAMP Suisse with Certificard
Item specifics
Geography: United States Weight: 58.32 Grams
Year: 2010 Type: Investment Gold
Certification: 999.9 %

P.A.M.P. Suisse Gold Bars
Mostly the gold bars I sell are intended purely as an investment in gold, however I get many requests for specific makes or styles of bar for gifts or collectors, and so I try to provide these as an extra service. Naturally I charge extra for supplying specific designs and makes of gold bar.
( Please Specify so Cost can be Calculated )
Fortuna by PAMP
One request I get is for Fortuna gold bars made by P.A.M.P. (Produits Artistique de Metaux Precieux). While I cannot always obtain these on demand, I try to buy them whenever I can, in which case I can supply them as shown in the table below, otherwise they must be re-ordered.
Photographs
I show the front and back of a PAMP fortuna (sic) 58.32 gram gold bar, the other sizes are similar in design.
Gold Bar Prices & Availability
These are prices based on gold per gram.
Please Email me for current prices and avaiIability.
They Sell fast however, if you want an Item in the description I can order it.
Shipping Instructions
Shipment will be Arranged through International Airmail, Orders will be sent after Instructions are made. Please allow 10 Days after payment is cleared.
You will receive a Shipping Confirmation when your Order is placed
( Please Leave a Valid Email Address )
PAMPS Suisse Gold bars
Grams Description Availability Price Quantity
1000 * P.A.M.P. Credit Suisse Yes $35,277 1
500 * P.A.M.P. Credit Suisse Yes $17,682 1
58.32 * 5 Tolas PAMP with Certificard Yes $2,955 1
50 P.A.M.P. Suisse Yes -----
30.1035 1 ounce P.A.M.P. Suisse Yes $1,124 1
10 * P.A.M.P. Suisse Yes $432.00 1
5 P.A.M.P. Suisse Yes $225.00 1
_____________________________________________________________________________________I hope that I can clear this up so that you can make an Informed decision regarding your Investment. The most Important fact you need to know is 24 carat gold does not exist except in theory or possibly in infinitesimally small amounts in scientific laboratories. This should be followed by a statement of its purity indicating or specifying the degree of precision. Other solutions to the dilemma would be to ask the questioner what he means by 24 carat, or perhaps a quicker solution would be to ask whether he meant to ask for four-nines.
Summary
Carats Percentage Per Thousand Decimal Pronounce
24 100 1000 1.000 Pure or Fine
23.9976 99.99 999.9 .9999 Four Nines
23.988 99.95 999.5 .9995 Three Nines Five
23.88 99.5 995 .995 Nine Nine Five
Wrong Question
If you are looking for or asking for 24 carat gold bars, you are asking the wrong question, in which case you are likely to get a wrong answer. To understand the answer to this question, you need to understand something about truth, accuracy, and honesty. If you ask the question in imprecise terms, you should not be surprised if the answer you receive is at a similar level of imprecision or approximation. Perhaps we are being slightly pedantic, but I prefer to give accurate information, and the shortest answer is not often the most precise.

Changes

Revision summary for item #320603225529
The seller has revised the following item information:
Date Time Revised Information
13-Oct-10 20:05:04 BST Description PictureURL: Pictures Added/Deleted
13-Oct-10 20:07:32 BST Description
13-Oct-10 20:24:23 BST Description
15-Oct-10 14:22:33 BST Title
15-Oct-10 14:24:50 BST Description
15-Oct-10 14:26:14 BST Description
The seller may make revisions during the listing period. However, the seller cannot change some of the information, such as format or duration of the listing. Learn more
As a buyer, you can see the item you purchased from the Purchase history page. Learn more

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
aggtech23206013382243rd Oct 2010Boat Shaped Gold Tael Bar$49,358
aggtech23206044883629th Oct 20102 - 2009 Uncirculated & Proof Gold Sovereign$575
aggtech23206040888828th Oct 201035 Gram Gold Bars Rose Logo $1,263
aggtech232060580661814th Oct 2010P.A.M.P. Fortuna Gold Bars with Certificate$325
aggtech232060615689614th Oct 2010WOW ! 58.3 gram PAMP Suisse with Certificard $2,955
aggtech232060623467314th Oct 2010Rothschild's .9999 fine gold bar$1,899
aggtech232060623477714th Oct 2010Rothschild's .9999 fine gold bar$1,899
aggtech232060322552917th Oct 2010PAMP Suisse with Certificard$2,955

What's Wrong?

We invest a great deal of time, effort, and cost into creating some of the best photographic coin and gold bar images on the internet. We strongly object when lazy and dishonest people decide to use them without a by your leave or thanks, doing so in competition with us.
Copyright theft is dishonest. We recommend you avoid doing business with dishonest dealers.
It is always possible, even likely, that sellers who steal photographs do not own a similar coin, and have the intention to totally defraud potential buyers.
The vendor is not only cheating us by stealing our copyright images, he is fraudulently or ignorantly misleading and deceiving all potential buyers. Gaining pecuniary advantage by deception is the definition of fraud.

Price

The seller was asking a starting price of $2,955 for his item. His description did not specify what size or weight it was, although the "Item Specifics" did state 58.32 grams.
Whatever the item "sold" for, after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the crook may have been much better off selling the coins to us, instead of stealing our photographs.

Quick Starter

Considering this guy has a feedback of zero, and only joined eBay in October 2010 (this month), has alleges to have already sold a Rothschild 50 gram bar, and has a Boat Shaped Gold Tael Bar listing which ended on 13th October. This listing used our photograph of a 100 gram Rothschild bar!

Crook, Fraudster, Conman, Idiot?

We don't know for sure whether aggtech2 is a fraudster, an idiot, or both, but we have extremely strong suspicions that he does not own any of the gold items he is purporting to offer for sale, and is therefore a would be fraudster.
We do not see it as our job to warn eBay specifically about this, as they tend to either ignore our reports, or do nothing.
While we sympathise anybody who sends money to such crooks and gets ripped of, it is partially their own fault for being stupid enough and greedy enough to get caught, and partially eBay's fault for having such sloppy anti-fraud measures.
This particular eBay seller and all his listings reek strongly of fraud.

eBay Truculence, Tardiness, Stupidity, or Obstruction

Most of the time, eBay do remove reported copyright infringements fairly quickly, but sometimes we experience delays, queries and challenges, the reasons for which we find hard to understand.
We will our reproduce our complete NOCI (eBay's acronym for its Notice of Claimed Infringement) report here, because it will only encourage some idiot to send spoof e-mail reports in our name, but will include sufficient to demonstrate that our NOCI reports to eBay should be capable of being understood by most English speakers with even a modicum of training or intelligence:
Notice of Claimed Infringement - Statutory Declaration
eBay International A.G.
Attn: VeRO Programme
Fax: +44 (0) 870 458 4522
Date: As below
Dear eBay,
I, xxxx
Of xxxx
do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:
I am the owner, or ... authorised to act ..., of certain intellectual property rights (“IP Owner”);
• I have a good faith belief that the listings identified below (by item number) offer items or contain materials that are not authorised by the IP Owner, its agent, or the law, and therefore infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to English law; and
• I make this declaration conscientiously believing it to be true and correct and in accordance with English law.
Rights owner: xxxx and / or xxxx
Address of the rights owner: 32 - 36 Harrowside, Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1RJ, England
I may be contacted at: Yours faithfully,
Signature
*Reason Code*:
*Copyright—Infringing **/Listing /**Content *
4.2 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copy of copyrighted image
or
4.1 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copy of copyrighted text
or
4.3 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copies of copyrighted image and text
We also hereby request you to supply us with the full contact details of the infringing member.
Please note that in our experience, eBay members infringing copyright should also be treated with suspicion, as it is likely that they do not own the coins or other items for which they are using copied images, they may be falsely misrepresenting the condition of the coins offered, and if copying our text, they may be falsely pretending to have expert knowledge of the items being offered.
Please also note that most of our images can be identified and verified by the presence of a Digimarc watermark.
Item Number(s)
Member ID
Date
Further & Better Information
Where we show a URL below, further and better information can be found at the specified URL for your information, or for the benefit of your infringing member:
(Link to this page).

eBay's "Err, Wot?" Response:

eBay VeRO Program - NOCI Received - More Information Requested Hello,
Thank you for contacting the VeRO Program.
We reviewed the Notice of Claimed Infringement you sent us today and the items you identified.
aggtech2
320605806618
320604088882
320604488362
320606234777
320606156896
320606234673
The Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program is designed to process reports of intellectual property infringement. From the information provided, however, the nature of intellectual property infringement you are attempting to report is unclear.
If you feel that these listings do infringe on your intellectual property rights, please respond to this message and provide us with a more detailed explanation.
If you'd like to report a stolen item, please go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/stolen.html
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
VeRO Program
eBay

Our FBI Response (Further and Better Information) re eBay Copyright Theft

We reproduce our standard response template, with a few insignificant edits to deter spoofers:
Dear Sirs,
We have reported these items as infringing under solemn declaration (quoted):
Your "Notice of Claimed Infringement - Statutory Declaration"
does not stipulate that we give a "more detailed explanation.", and we do not consider it should be necessary, as we have made clear to you numerous times in the past.
We cited "*Reason Code*:
*Copyright—Infringing **/Listing /**Content *
4.2 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copy of copyrighted image
or
4.1 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copy of copyrighted text
or
4.3 Listing(s) uses unauthorized copies of copyrighted image and text "
in our original report.
Your statement: "From the information you have sent us, it doesn't appear that you are reporting an intellectual property infringement." is hard for us to understand. Why else would we report a copyright infringement.
We believe that your repeated messages querying our reports demonstrates a lack of commitment, education, training, and communication in your VeRO department.
Would you please pass a copy of this message to the senior manager of your VeRO department, and your legal department.
Please ensure the offending listings are removed without further delay.
We will repeat that we will bring each and every delay or failure to remove, and do so in good time, to the attention of our legal advisors, and also to a court in support of any and all claims against you.
The images used in this listing are our copyright images.
Our Digimarc watermark can be found on your member's listing, if viewed using a Digimarc enabled browser, or other Digimarc plug-in to a suitable product such as Adobe Photoshop.
We have also included a link to a page of our one of our websites where we explain, in considerable detail, the details of this particular infringement, together with any other infringements on eBay by the same eBay member, samples of our own photographs as used by your infringing member, and a link to a page of one of our websites where the original image or images can usually be found.
Regards,
xxxx
xxxx
32 - 36 Harrowside
Blackpool
FY4 1RJ
England, UK.

Case History

  • We reported the above 6 item listings on Thursday 21st Oct 2010
  • We received a "eBay VeRO Program - NOCI Received - More Information Requested" query on Saturday 23rd Oct 2010
  • We sent "Further and Better Information re eBay Copyright Theft" e-mail on Saturday 23rd Oct 2010, with a copy to their European Head Office in Bern Switzerland, including in both a link to this page.
  • By Monday 25th Oct 2010, we had received no acknowledgement of reply.
  • On Monday 26th Oct 2010, we received an -email informing us that the items had been removed. It only took 5 days and the threat of legal action.

aggtech2 Telephoned Us

On Monday 25th Oct 2010, aggtech2 telephoned us. One of our administrative staff found it difficult to understand what he was on about. I explained to her that eBay's VeRO department usually sent out a misleading e-mail to infringers which falsely conveys to them that our complaint is that they are selling a product which is our copyright, rather than a photograph.
If the eBay seller is stupid or ignorant enough not to be aware of copyright, then eBay's email will not help them understand, it will lead them to further misunderstand.
During the telephone conversation, aggtech2 admitted that he did not own one of the 35 gram gold bars he was offering for sale on eBay (Item number 320604088882).

On Monday 25th Oct 2010, aggtech2 E-Mailed Us

Greetings,
I needed to ask your permission to copy pictures from your website, to sell them on Ebay.
Most of the Buyers i've (sic) talked with are interested in the Gold, and perhaps other things you sell.
This will be done with your permission, and I will follow your instructions completely.
I realize this request is unusual, and if you feel like this is presenting a problem for you I will gladly withdraw my intentions, and perhaps we may talk in the future.
You may reach me at: aggtech2@gmail.com , or 979-703-6677
Best Wishes,
Bruce Manning

eBay Guilty of Negligence or Complicity

We will be reporting this example of copyright abuse using our standard Statutory Declaration via the eBay VeRO programme, and wait to see if they chose to action or ignore our report. We look forward to taking legal action against eBay for their negligence and / or complicity if they fail to take down the offending material promptly.

Copyright Notice
Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.

Buying Gold Coins & Bars on eBay

Selling Gold Coins & Bars on eBay

Copyright Thieves on eBay
We already have a page naming and shaming dealers using our images without permission. It's time we did the same for eBay, although if we include them all, this could be a very long page.

Alphabetical Listing of Other Copyright Theft Sites

Other Scams

Other Web Sites

All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-

aggtech2 eBay Listing Using our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

aggtech2 eBay Listing Using our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

Our Images

Our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

Our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

Our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

Our PAMP Suisse Fortuna Five Tolas Gold Bar in Combined Display Card & Certificate Photograph

eBay Index

 


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