eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves
gold_smart in eBay Copyright Theft
gold_smart of newcastle, United Kingdom, stole our 1974 One Ounce Gold Krugerrand Obverse Photograph to use on eBay, without our permission, to try sell his own coins, and failed to mention the coin in the photograph was not the coin 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 327 with 100% positive, 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
KRUGERRAND 1 oz OF FINE GOLD 1978
FULL KRUGERRAND 1oz OF FINE GOLD
SOUTH AFRICA DATED 1978
THE COIN IS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION
NO SCRATCHES OR MARKS
NICE INVESTMET (sic)
RECESSION FORCES SALE
PAYPAL ONLY PLEASE
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Seller ID | Item Number | Date | Description | Price
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gold_smart | 280542994762 | 30th Jul 2010 | KRUGERRAND 1 oz OF FINE GOLD 1974 | £0.99
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gold_smart | 280543002725 | 30th Jul 2010 | KRUGERRAND 1 oz OF FINE GOLD 1978 | £0.99
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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 £0.99 for his coins.
Whatever the item "sells" for, after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the seller may have been much better off selling the coins to us, instead of stealing our photographs.
For once, we were wrong about this:
How Much?
If we had not seen it happen before, we would not have believed it, and in a perfect world it would not happen, but...
This coin "sold" for £840!
What's more, there were three different bidders at over £800
Why would anybody in their right mind pay £40 to £50 pound more for a common commodity bullion coin from some unknown, possibly crooked seller on eBay, instead of buying from any one of a number of well-established reputable coin and bullion dealers, including us. At the time we added this comment, we had well over 100 Krugerrands in stock, and our selling premium for a single piece is 7% compared with about 12% for this eBay item.
We think it was Einstein who obversed observed that only two things are known to be infinite, the universe and human stupidity; and we are not absolutely certain about the first one.
Even More Astounding
gold_smart's second Krugerrand listing has reached the even dizzier heights of £850, as we write this, with over 5 hours to go, although currently there are only two completely stupid bidders so far. Einstein was right.
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.
We should probably delay reporting this item until a buyer has sent some money. This may sound cynical of us, but if enough greedy buyers got conned, they might kick up enough fuss, go to the media, and get eBay the publicity it deserves. It is not our job to act as unpaid policemen for eBay.
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
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:-
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