Copyright Theft of Coin Images
Perhaps we should be flattered by the number of people including dealers who continually infringe our IP (Intellectual Property) rights by using our copyright images, but we do not find it amusing, and will take legal action against any copyright thieves.
Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com Image Theft
Quality Gold Bullion Online (qualitybullion.com) is yet another dishonest gold coin & bullion website committing copyright theft by using our images without permission.
Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com PAMP Gold Bullion Bar Page
This page contains an image apparently of a 5 gram Credit Suisse bar, however we recognised the image as being one of our own.
This page also contains a link to their Credit Suisse Gold Bullion Bar page:
Quality Gold Bullion Online Credit Suisse Gold Bullion Bar Page
Credit Suisse Gold Bullion is one of the most well-known gold bullion names and is a popular choice among gold bullion investors and collectors.
Common Bullion Bar sizes include:
• 1 gram, 2 grams, 2.5 grams, 5 grams, 10 grams, 20 grams, one troy ounce.
The Credit Suisse Gold Bullion Bar, also known as Credit Swiss gold bars, is made with 24k gold refined to 99.99% fine gold.
Measurements of the Credit Suisse
1 Gram Gold Bar 3/8 inch x 5/8 inch (9mm x 15mm) .03oz
5 Gram Gold Bar 1/2 inch x 7/8 inch (14mm x 23mm) .16oz
10 Gram Gold Bar 5/8 inch x 1 inch (15mm x 25mm) .32oz
One Troy Ounce Gold Bar - 1 inch x 1 5/8 inch (24mm x 41mm) 1oz
Suisse
French for Switzerland
Certification Mark
Credit Suisse Gold bars are refined, manufactured, and certified by Valcambi SA head quartered in Switzerland. The certification stamp CHI Essayeur Fondeur appears towards to the bottom of gold bars manufactured by Valcambi SA. There have been claims of counterfeit bars having a certification stamp of CEI (sic) Essayeur Fondeur.
Credit Suisse Bank of Switzerland
The Credit Suisse Group is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and was founded in 1856. Credit Suisse opened its first bank in the US in New York City in 1942 and is traded on the SWX (Swiss Exchange) under CSGN and on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) under CS.
Altered Images
The Credit Suisse 5 Gram bar image used by Quality Bullion measures 125 x 219 pixels. Because they have resized our 400 x 700 pixel image down, it has lost its Digimarc watermark. When we went to check their image against ours, we could not find a 5 gram bar photograph in our Credit Suisse Gold Bars directory, yet we recognised the image, and knew it for our own. Doing a visual search, we realised that the our image that Quality Bullion had used was in fact a doctored 50 gram bar picture.
Quality Bullion, or their web designer had gone to the effort and trouble of faking a new bar picture from ours, its quite easy to do stuff like this using Photoshop or other image editing software. They had changed the "50 g". into "5 g.", and the serial number from 321902 to 111900.
If our 400 x 700 image is sized down to 125 pixels wide, and kept in proportion, it is 219 pixels high, the same as the Quality Bullion image.
One might wonder why somebody would go to all the trouble to create a fake photograph, and we believe we can deduce the correct answer.
Quality Bullion, the website, is not owned or run by a gold bullion dealer, it is a kind of pseudo expert information and advice site, set up to generate advertising, There are Google Ad links on the sidebars, and links to relevant eBay categories.
Because they did not own any gold bars, they simply used other peoples' pictures and edited them, presumably to avoid detection for copyright abuse, or infringement of Intellectual Property Rights. Most casual readers of the site would believe that the site offered genuine expert advice and opinion, and never notice that it was using fake stolen photographs, cleverly disguised to protect the guilty.
Quality Bullion, we caught you red-handed!
We think this deviousness, and attempt to hide the infringement, is worse than straightforward image copying and theft.
Judge For Yourself
We show our own original photograph resized down to 125 x 219 pixels alongside Quality Bullion's Cloned Fake.
Spot the difference!
Our 50 Gram Credit Suisse Gold Bar Photograph 125 x 219 Pixels
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Quality Bullion's 5 Gram Credit Suisse Gold Bar Photograph 125 x 219 Pixels
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Ignorance?
Although in law, ignorance is no defence, Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com has seen fit to place a copyright notice "Copyright © 2009 Scrap Gold" on all of its web pages, thereby demonstrating, or pretending a knowledge of copyright law, and also claiming ownership of Intellectual Property Rights which it does not own. We consider this to be not just "borrowing" images, or using them without the owners consent, but as image theft. All theft is dishonest. It is also illegal.
What's Wrong?
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First, and most obvious. Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com have taken and used our copyright images without our consent or prior knowledge. This is a clear breach of our Intellectual Property Rights. We call it image theft, and it is dishonest. It is also unprofessional.
If the company is an important well established bullion dealer, then surely it could afford to take its own photographs, buy them from an image library, or commission them from a professional photographer. Instead it appear to have chosen to steal our pictures. Apart from exposing them as cheapskates, it is unfair competition.
- Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com pretends to have some degree of expertise about gold coins and investment, which we feel it may not possess.
- Quality Bullion is generating income for itself using the fruits of our labour, and the links on its site are all to companies or individuals in competition with us. eBay for example provide programmers and web designers with their A.P.I. (Application Programming Interface), so that they can easily create web sites or pages which will contain links to appropriate eBay categories or searches. Whether eBay know that many of these sites abuse copyright we do not know, but we suspect they do not care.
Our Advice
Avoid this pretentious and dishonest web site, along with any others like it.
Don't take any notice of "expert" advice offered by anonymous authors. If the author can not or will not publish his name alongside his work, it is fair to assume the advice is suspect at best.
We also do not have a high opinion of eBay paying website operators such as Gold Coins For Sale GoldCoinSale.Net to feed customers its way in preference, and to the cost of, real, expert, and genuine, professional coin dealers.
Experts?
Quality Bullion state authoritatively that Cedit Suisse bars are made by Valcambi. This demonstrates their limited knowledge. Some indeed are, but others are and have been made by other prolific refiners such as Johnson Matthey. We exhibit photographs of a dual marked Credit Suisse Johnson Matthey bar on its own page.
Other Copyright Abuse
Other Web Sites
All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-
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Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com PAMP Gold Bullion Bar Page Including a Credit Suisse Gold Bar Image Stolen from Us.
Quality Gold Bullion Online qualitybullion.com Credit Suisse Gold Bar Page
Our Images
Our 50 Gram Credit Suisse Gold Bar Photograph
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