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eBay Copyright Thief 'touranvwpower'
Yet another repeat eBay copyright thief, using our Krugerrand photographs, this time on eBay's German site ebay.de, whose VeRO team appear to be particularly obstructive and reluctant to remove copyright infringements.

Touranvwpower
This eBay member, who appears to be in Germany, has stolen our Krugerrand images to use for his own eBay auctions at least 3 times. We first spotted some of his listings in March 2008, and reported them to eBay's VeRO department. They eventually removed them, but apparently made no effort to warn him about his dishonest behaviour, and that Intellectual Property Rights Infringement (copyright abuse), is a serious legal matter. If they did give him any warning, it must not have been sufficiently clear, or strongly enough worded, because now in April 2008, he has repeated the offence, and we have reported it again. As we write this, we are still waiting for eBay's VeRO department to remove the listing...

SOUTH AFRICA KRUGERRAND GOLD COINS 10 pack Item number: 220225206606

Gold - S. African Krugerrand (10.00 ozs. total, 1 ounce each coin)
Symbol: GCSK100
Weight: 10.00 ozs. total, 1.00 oz. each coin
Condition: Uncirculated Denomination:
Rand Content: 91.6% pure gold Diameter: 32.60 mm. ea.
Uncirculated South African Gold Krugerrands 1.00 oz. each, totaling 10 ounces of gold

SHIPPING & HANDLING Within USA: 17 USDollar Flat Fee. Each item for Shipping and Handling (S&H) - Approximate delivery time is 10 to 15business days. Our products will ship via USPS (US Postal Service). We cannot guarantee that your items will be shipped together. For this reason, we cannot discount your Shipping and Handling fees on multiple auctions. We ship with the following specifications: Insured; signature required
PAYMENT OPTIONS
Please use the ebay check out provided at end of auction. We do not accept PayPal or Credit Cards because of very small margins on precious metals and to provide a better investment value to our customers. Bank wire transfer are preferred. Thank you.
Meet the seller
Seller: touranvwpower( 40Feedback score is 10 to 49)
Feedback: 100% Positive
Member: since Jul-10-07 in Germany
Positive Feedback:100%

VeRO Inefficient and Ineffective?
Or are they deliberately obstructive? We can't tell, because we don't know, we have not yet managed to work it out yet, but like almost any communication with eBay, it's like swimming through treacle.
For those who don't know, VeRO stands for Verified RIghts Owners (according to eBay).
It exists to act on IP infringement reports, and to "take-down" offending or reported material, to limit any Rights Owners claims against eBay for Copyright Infringement.
Under OCILLA, The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act known as DMCA 512 or the DMCA takedown provisions, is a 1998 United States federal law that provides a safe harbor (sic) to online service providers (OSPs, including Internet service providers) that promptly take down content if someone alleges it infringes their copyrights.

Slow!
We firmly believe that eBay persistently fails to promptly remove content on its numerous websites which we report as infringing our copyrights. Yes, it does, more often then not, remove reported content, but sometimes fails completely to do so, but in most cases fails to do so promptly.
We are not legal experts, so do not know what a court of law would interpret as "promptly". It would almost certainly depend on the circumstances. For an entity such as eBay, with multiple sites, and with international coverage, where items can be listed, viewed, bid on, bought, sold, and payed for 24 hours per day, 365 day per annum, and who offer auction listings lasting for as short a time as 1 day, then "promptly" should be interpreted as meaning something considerably less than 24 hours. We have told eBay this numerous times, and complained that their take-down process is unfairly slow. It appears to have little or no effect, and it appears that we are going to have no alternative but to take legal action against eBay for breaching our IP rights by their persistent and repeated failures to remove infringing content, or to do so promptly. We have also notified them of this numerous times, and advised them that we will hold them responsible for the legal costs of any and all legal actions. Occasionally, this appears to produce faster results in individual cases, but on the whole they remain slow and unresponsive.

Deliberate?
It's hard for us to believe that eBay's slow and bureaucratic response to our reports, and complaints about delays and failures, is not deliberate. eBay are so big (they have achieved de fact worldwide domination in the online auction market), and have vast revenues (circa $10 billion per annum), that they can afford to be stubborn and uncooperative. Their size and wealth means they can employ armies of the best lawyers to defend legal actions. If you have enough money, you can probably win at law even when you are wrong. It has been well-reported in the media that large luxury goods manufacturers and vendors such as Cartier have not been completely successful in legal actions against eBay. Although we are one of the biggest three gold bullion coin dealers in the UK, we are very small indeed compared with eBay; the story of David and Goliath comes to mind.
If eBay make if difficult for IP rights owners to get satisfaction, perhaps they will give up?

Profitable? - Business Strategy?
We conducted some small scale research a few months ago, and concluded that a large portion of eBay's income came from illicit dealings. By this we mean stolen good, non-existent goods, misdescribed goods, and those sold using unauthorised copyright images. We concluded that eBay make at least One Billion Dollars each year from such listings, and that the true figure may be much higher. It would not surprise us if over 50% of all eBay listings wee tainted, as against our conservative estimate of 10%,
If we are correct, then it is not surprising that eBay drag their feet when it comes to removing content promptly. They would probably dive into loss and eventual bankruptcy if they took the time and effort to police their sites ethically, responsibly, and legally.

No PayPal?
Incidentally, we notice this particular listing states that "We do not accept PayPal". It's interesting that in the UK, and a few other countries where the law is soft enough to permit it, eBay uses its de fact monopoly to force almost all its vendors in almost all categories, to accept PayPal, and to do so without any extra charge to the buyer. We believe this constitutes bully-boy tactics, and is unethical, and should be illegal. It probably is in some countries or states, but it appears not to stop eBay getting away with it in others.

Fraudulent?
It is our guess that if an eBay member is dishonest enough to steal images, then it is more likely than usual for him to be offering non-existent goods, and be attempted to defraud other innocent eBay members. We have also communicated this to eBay on numerous occasions, with no acknowledgement, and apparently no interest or action.

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
touranvwpower22021904672217th Mar 2008SOUTH AFRICA KRUGERRAND GOLD COINS 10 pack CASED$
touranvwpower22021904673717th Mar 2008SOUTH AFRICA KRUGERRAND GOLD COINS 10 pack CASED$
touranvwpower22020462758631st Mar 2008?$
touranvwpower22022520660618th Apr 2008SOUTH AFRICA KRUGERRAND GOLD COINS 10 pack CASED$9,306

Notes
Seller ID. There is nothing to stop eBay members changing their "Seller ID", or opening a new account.
Item Number. We may have shown only one out of many similar items.
Date = End date or date added to this page if item still current.
Description = Description as used by the seller as his item title.
Price = Final selling price if known, otherwise "Current Price", or "Starting bid".

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

Copyright Infringements Remedies
Our suggested draft remedies for copyright abusers dependent on category - competitors, bloggers, pseudo-expert & advice sites acting as eBay & Google portals, eBay & other auction site sellers.

Other Copyright Abuse

Other Copyright Abuse

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

TouranVWPower 10 Krugerrands eBay Auction Listing Item No. 220225206606
TouranVWPower 10 Krugerrands eBay Auction Listing Item No. 220225206606

More eBay Copyright Thieves & Crooks

The Most Copied Coin Image on the Internet
The Most Copied Coin Image on the Internet

The Second Most Copied Coin Image on the Internet
The Second Most Copied Coin Image on the Internet

Version of our 1974 Krugerrand Obverse Image as Used by TouranVWPower
Version of our 1974 Krugerrand Obverse Image as Used by TouranVWPower

 


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