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eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves
mcharryh in eBay Copyright Theft
mcharryh, of Wilmington, NC, USA, United States, stole our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos photograph to use on eBay, and failed to tell buyers the image was not of the same coin or coins he was selling. Totally dishonest!

High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 183; 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 - 1

50 PESOS MEXICAN *GOLD* COIN uncirc. 1947
Beautiful coin marked "Oro Puro" (pure gold) 37.5 Gr 50 pesos 1821 1947
I'm not an expert, but I believe this coin to be uncirculated. It was found in my father's safe deposit box in original packaging. He purchased it many years ago. Shipping is at my expense by insured, registered mail.

Sample Listing - 2

50 PESOS MEXICAN *GOLD* COIN uncirc. 1947
These were purchased by our father some years ago and kept in a safe deposit box in original packaging. They were kept in original wrapping and seldom if even viewed. We are not coin dealers or collectors but have sold a similar one with excellent feedback. With the value of gold rising, it should be a good investment for the gold value alone.
This is a very beautiful and easily recognized coin which should be easy to resell any time in the future. It will be shipped to you at no charge and insured within the USA and to other locations that allow insurance. If you are purchasing from a country to which it cannot be insured, you assume risk for the shipment, though proof of shipment will be provided.

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
mcharryh18040871608119th Sep 200950 PESOS MEXICAN *GOLD* COIN uncirc. 1947 CENTENARIO$1,275
mcharryh1804169541908th Oct 200950 PESOS MEXICAN *GOLD* COIN uncirc. 1947 CENTENARIO$1,200

What's Wrong?
We invest a great deal of time, effort, and cost into creating some of the best photographic coin 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.
This particular eBay seller not only stole our image of the reverse of a 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos, he used it to sell his own coin on eBay. He did mention to potential buyers that the high quality photographs of a near mint condition coin was not his own photograph, wrongly stating it to be a "library photograph". We wonder which library he is a member of, or whether he pays any fees or subscriptions for his membership.
Most buyers will see the photo of a mint condition coin, and assume that this is the coin on offer, and not read all the description.
It's possible he is ignorant of such fine points, or just plain ignorant.

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 $1,275 for his first coin, and $1,200 for the second listing.
For at least one of his "feedback" items, he would have got more by selling to us when eBay's new 10% selling fees are taken into account, even ignoring PayPal fees.

Double Stupid or Double Dishonest?
Most of the time, eBay copyright thieves do not contact us to apologise for the copyright abuse. Most simply steal somebody else's picture next time.
A small proportion try to tell us the picture was not ours, because the stole it from a different site. Some insist it is their own photograph taken with their own camera, others say a friend took it for them. We think they all have something in common. They all seem to think we are stupid enough not to know the difference. Whether they are pathological liars, or whether they are self delusional, we do not know.
This particular eBay mcharryh sent us the following e-mail:

mcharryh to eBay:
I received an email saying my item was removed for intellectual property rights reasons. There are no valid reasons and I already have two bids. The listing seems to still be appearing tonight.
Was some sort of mistake made?

eBay to mcharryh:
Dear Hugh,
Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your item.
Your listing was removed through the VeRO Program because of a Notice of Claimed Infringement that eBay received from Chard Limited alleging that your listing infringed their intellectual property rights.
In order to prevent your account from being suspended, and to continue to enjoy the privilege of listing on eBay, it is important that you avoid any future removals due to further VeRO Program. It is also important that your listings are not removed due to violations of eBay policy.
Should you have questions about the removal of your listing, please contact Chard Limited at:
(our e-mail address)
If you believe your listing was removed in error we encourage you to contact the rights owner who reported your listing. If they agree that the listing was reported in error, please have them contact us directly to withdraw their notification of infringement.
If you contact the rights owner, please allow at least 5 business days for them to respond. If they do not respond to your email, and any follow-up email, you may let us know and we will attempt to contact the rights owner in order to request that they respond to your inquiry.
For more information about intellectual property rights and the VeRO Program, please go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/programs-vero-ov.html
To learn more about creating listings, go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/compliant-listings.html
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Pete
eBay Customer Support
(3433673)

mcharryh to Chard:
Please advise me why you asked that my listing be canceled (sic) . I know of no copyright infringement and the number your reported for me was not the listing numbe (sic) .
Hugh McHarry
mcharryh@netzero.com

What's Wrong?
Typical of most eBay users, he omitted to tell us his eBay ID, the item number, or his full contact details. It is only because his eBay ID is very similar to his actual name that we can work out who he is.
eBay rather stupidly do not advise their members to give the IP rights owners this information. Perhaps they do not realise how stupid their members are, but hey it's not their problem, so why should they care?
Also we give eBay some quite detailed information whenever we report any item. This includes the fact that it was our photograph(s) which were copied, and the fact that they normally included a Digimarc watermark. eBay consistently fail to pass on any of this information to their members. We believe this is unthoughtful, and possibly negligent of them. They apparently do not remind their members that they agreed to used their own photographs, or ones they permission or authority to use, which in our opinion they could and should do; after all, it is their members who are committing the infringements, and eBay benefit hugely from fee income form illegal, unethical, or immoral listings. eBay should gain some moral high ground by educating their members better, instead of joining them with their snouts in the same trough.
Of course, mcharryh is quite wrong. You would think he should know that he copied the two photographs on his listing, even if he did not know where he stole them from. Again eBay could have helped to avoid this by properly informing their member (fee paying customer).
We also think it is reprehensible of eBay to push responsibility for informing their cheating members to pester IP rights owners for explanations. As it happens, many years ago we created an auto-response e-mail which pre-emptively answers most of the questions that cheating eBay members ask us.
mcharryh is possibly confused, as he has another similar listing running. Clearly he has not got the brains or clarity of thought to work out that we have reported his earlier listing, but not yet reported his current one. We have adopted this policy because we believe it causes most inconvenience to the two dishonest parties in each case, the eBay member and eBay itself. It does actually give the brighter members chance to change their images before the listing ends. some do, and some don't.
If we didn't get so many eBay members stealing our pictures, and we had time, it could almost be interesting to see if they manage to work out why in time to stop their subsequent listings being reported and removed. Our guess is that this particular guy will fail.
In fact, he did fail, and we have just reported his second listing. It could be interesting to see how long it takes for him to work out what he is doing wrong?

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:-

mcharryh eBay Listing Using our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Photograph
mcharryh eBay Listing Using our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Photograph

Our Images

Our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Reverse Photograph
Our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Reverse Photograph

Our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Obverse Photograph
Our 1947 Mexican Gold 50 Pesos Obverse Photograph

eBay Index

 


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