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eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves

aussiecoincollector in eBay Copyright Theft
aussiecoincollector of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia stole our 2005 Australian Gold SovereignPhotographs to use on eBay, without our permission, to try sell his own coins, and failed to mention the coin in the photograph was not one of the coins he owned, if any. Totally dishonest.
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 304 with 100% Positive Feedback 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

2005 GOLD SOVEREIGN PROOF plus BOOK
2005 Gold Sovereign PROOF - Rare
2005 Perth Mint Commemorative Sovereign Proof
Housed in book 'Australia's Sovereigns'
2005 GOLD SOVEREIGN - SYDNEY MINT TYPE 1 REVERSE
In celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Australia's first Gold sovereign, The Perth Mint meticulously re-crafted the distinctive 'colonial' reverse of the Sydney Mint Type 1 gold sovereign on this 2005-dated Australian legal tender gold coin.
The Perth Mint's tribute to the extremely rare Sydney Mint Type 1 sovereign is produced from the same purity of gold as the 1855 coin. Its flawless proof finish, strictly limited mintage and magnificent presentation packaging add further allure to this extremely collectable release.
Each 2005 Commemorative Sovereign comes with the book 'Australia's Sovereigns'. Written by sovereign specialist Andrew Crellin, this invaluable historical reference provides fascinating information about the many obverse and reverse designs that appeared on sovereigns produced from Australian gold by the Sydney, Melbourne and Perth branches of the Royal Mint between 1855 and 1931. Packed with illustrations and invaluable hints and tips for collectors, it also incorporates a numbered Certificate of Authenticity and is protected within a stylised outer sleeve.
Table of Contents
Background
1. Introduction
2. The impact of gold discovery
3. Gold sovereigns in Australian culture
4. Australian gold sovereign types
The Mints
5. The Sydney Mint
6.The Adelaide Assay office
7. The Port Phillip Kangaroo Office
8.The Melbourne Mint
9.The Perth Mint
Australian Sovereign Reverse Designs
10. The Australian reverse
11. The Shield reverse
12. The St George reverse
Australian Sovereign Obverse Designs
13. Type I Sydney Mint Queen Victoria portrait obverse
14. Type II Sydney Mint Queen Victoria portrait obverse
15. Queen Victoria Young Head obverse
16. Queen Victoria Jubilee Head obverse
17. Queen Victoria Veiled Head obverse
18. King Edward VII portrait obverse
19. King George V Large Head obverse.
20. King George V Small Head obverse.
The Perth Mint released just 7,500 of these superb books with the 2005 Commemorative Sovereigns.

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
aussiecoincollector32064130095411th Jan 20112005 GOLD SOVEREIGN PROOF plus BOOK$599.00
aussiecoincollector32065675576115th March 20112005 GOLD SOVEREIGN PROOF plus BOOK$575.00
aussiecoincollector32067191423618th March 20112005 GOLD SOVEREIGN PROOF plus BOOK$560.00

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 bar, 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 for a Buy It Now price of $599.00.
Even without after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the seller would almost certainly have been much better off selling the coins to us, instead of stealing our photographs.

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.

Another Indignant Digger
On 2nd February 2011, we received yet another near anonymous e-mail from yet another indignant Aussie image thief:

From: Laurie grobe(sic) lauriegrobe@yahoo.com.au
(no title)
To Whom it may concern.
I receieved an email about the copyroght (sic) of the image taken from the Royal Australian Mint site..
You have stated to ebay (sic) that it belongs to you ...over in the UK.
You need to prove that this image belongs to (sic) within 7 days , or I will begin legal action for defamation against you.
I demand to know you're (sic) real name and telephone number so I can contact you in reagrds (sic) to this matter
Regards
Laurie

Slightly Ironic
We are somewhat amused by his demand that we tell him our real name and address, while omitting to include his own except for his first name Laurie, which must narrow it down to about 10 or 20 thousand Australians, and by inference from his e-mail address, but nothing to link it to a specific listing or eBay username.

Who Me?
On 20th March 2011, we received the following e-mail from aussiecoincollector, at least it was polite, which makes a change:

Please provide specific details about the item that was a copyrighted image in my listing as I do not know to what you refer.
Details of the emial (sic) I received from ebay are found below
Kind Regards,
Mark Crnkovic

MC019 eBay Listing Removed: Copyright Violation - Unauthorised Listing Content (459750882)
Hello aussiecoincollector(aussiecoincollectors@gmail.com),
Thank you for your recent listing on eBay. Unfortunately, we removed the following item(s):
320671914236 - 2005 GOLD SOVEREIGN PROOF plus BOOK
The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, Chard Limited, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.
The following information may help explain the reason for your listing(s) removal:
Members are not permitted to use another member's listing's text or images without that member's permission. Using another member's listing's image or item description may violate copyright laws. Images used as part of another website may be protected by copyright law. Therefore, you should not copy and use such images from another website without obtaining permission to use that content. We encourage members to take and use their own photographs.
Your item was removed because of a request we received from Chard Limited, a member of our Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO), asking us to remove the item for:
- Listing(s) uses unlawful copy of copyrighted image.

So, even though eBay could have done more to educate their recalcitrant member, they did tell him enough for him to be able to work out for himself exactly what the problem was, if he could be bothered to think it out!

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:-

aussiecoincollector's eBay Listing Using our 2005 Australian Gold Sovereign Photographs
aussiecoincollector's eBay Listing Using our 2005 Australian Gold Sovereign Photographs

Our Images
Our 2005 Australian Gold Sovereign Photograph
Our 2005 Australian Gold Sovereign Photograph

eBay Index

 


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