eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves
stewarts1977 in eBay Copyright Theft
stewarts1977 of nowhere apparently (eBay listings normally show an item location based on the sellers address), stole our 1974 One Ounce Gold Krugerrand Reverse Photograph to use on eBay, without our permission, to try sell his own coin, 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 42 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 Troy Ounce Fine Gold 1974 Krugerrand
Hello,
My grandad left me this in his will and have decided to take the kids to Florida for a holiday. He would have liked me to do this and get as much money for it as possible. As the gold price is high at the moment I'd like to releuctantly (sic) sell this and put the proceeds towards our holiday - hopefully swim with the dolphins!
My Mum tells me that this was bought in Jersey from the "Jersey Coin Ltd", 26 Halkett St, St Helier. I still have it's (sic) packaging.
I haven't sold anything like ths before so I'm not going to add anything more. Any Questions just ask!
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Seller ID | Item Number | Date | Description | Price
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stewarts1977 | 150509927192 | 21st Oct 2010 | 1 Troy Ounce Fine Gold 1974 Krugerrand | £500.00
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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 £500 for his coin.
This is a dumb starting price, as it costs £2 to list instead of 10 pence (free at present), and provides no real protection against selling too cheap. Using a reserve also costs an extra 2% of the reserve price, £10 in this case, so this seller has already given eBay £12 too much in fees before the auction starts, and before selling commissions.
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:
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
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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stewarts1977 eBay Listing Using Our 1974 One Ounce Gold Krugerrand Obverse Photograph
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Our 1974 One Ounce Gold Krugerrand Obverse Photograph
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