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eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves

amischiefmaker in eBay Copyright Theft
amischiefmaker of East Gippsland, VIC, Australia stole our 2008 Australian Kangaroo at Sunset $25 Gold Proof Coin 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 one of the Coins 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 685, 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

2011 KANGAROO AT SUNSET GOLD PROOF $25 COIN AUSTRALIA
2011 Kangaroo at Sunset Gold Proof
Don't miss your chance to own one of these rare coins. My coin is on it's way and it will be sent registered and insured to the winner as soon as I receive it.
2011 $25 gold proof as issued from the Royal Australian Mint. The photo is only a stock photo of a previous coin issued. Payment by Paypal or direct deposit, sorry no cheques.

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
amischiefmaker1106220414999th Dec 20102011 KANGAROO AT SUNSET GOLD PROOF $25 COIN AUSTRALIAAU $1,200
amischiefmaker11062422480413th Dec 20102011 KANGAROO AT SUNSET GOLD PROOF $25 COIN AUSTRALIAAU $975

What's Wrong?
We invest a great deal of time, effort, and cost into creating some of the best photographic Coin and gold 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.
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 for a Buy It Now price of $1,200.00 or a bidder was able to make him an offer.
Even without after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the seller would almost certainly have been much better off selling the Coins to us, instead of stealing our photographs.

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.

E-mail Clue - Detective Needed
On 16th December 2010, we received the following e-mail. While it was not entirely anonymous, it may as well have been. Neither the sender's name or his e-mail corresponds with the eBay ID of any of the three eBay members who recently stole our image. This is not unusual with eBay members. The writer also failed to appreciate that he might not be the only eBay stealing the same image at the same time.
We could not tell which of three different possible candidates he was claiming to be. Our auto-response email will have told him this, but we have not yet heard further.
We also do not see why we should be expected to respond to copyright thieves. or correspondent who do not have the intelligence or courtesy to identify themselves fully.

From: imac (etphhome@mac.com)
Subject: coin image
6.59
Good Morning,
After much consideration I have decided to contact you regarding a matter of you slandering my name.
The image you are referring to actually belongs to the Royal Australian Mint. It is online free to use for anybody. I did not knowingly use this image to commit a violation. However, I do think that your heavy handed slander on line is not appropriate or warranted. I honestly only used the image as it is the exact image as pulled from the mint which is free to use. I look forward to receiving a reply and hopefully resolving this misunderstanding.
Regards
E. Thomas

The Three Recent Australian Copyright Thieves
amischiefmaker1106220414998th Dec 20102011 KANGAROO AT SUNSET GOLD PROOF $25 COIN AUSTRALIA
$1,200.00
coinhunter0613046352391810th Dec 20102011 $25 Kangaroo At Sunset Gold Proof RAM Ballot
$1,200.00
royale_coins_and_banknotes37046456515410th Dec 20102011 ...$25.00... GOLD PROOF KANGAROO SUNSET...SOLD OUT
$1,399.00

More Guesses
We had to guess that it was the Kangaroo at Sunset image that our complainant was referring to, although it is not the only Royal Australian Mint coin we sell, and therefore not the only R.A.M. coin photo we get stolen. For clarity we should add that the photos of Royal Australian Mint coins we use are photos we take of Royal Australian Mint coins, and not Royal Australian Mint photos of Royal Australian Mint coins.
If Mr. or Mrs. Thomas cars to look closely he will see that our photos are not the same ones as he ignorantly believes are the same as on the Royal Australian Mint website. We think our photos are better, they are certainly different*.
* Unless the Royal Australian Mint have used our photos, which we rather doubt.

Not Free
We tried to compare our photo with the Royal Australian Mint, but could not actually find the relevant image on their website. We did find a few images, on other sites, which are probably Royal Australian Mint images, but in any case, images found on the Royal Australian Mint are not free to copy and use. If you look, the Royal Australian Mint's website states "© Copyright Royal Australian Mint" on all its pages.

In Triplicate
As we do not know which copyright thief is our complainant, we have posted this whole section on all three pages.
It is of course entirely possible that our Mr or Mrs Thomas is not any of these three, but a completely different eBay copyright thief. We await further clues, but will not hold our breath.

Another Indignant Digger
On 2nd February 2011, we received yet another near anonymous e-mail from yet another indignant Aussie image thief:

From: Laurie grobe(sic) lauriegrobe@yahoo.com.au
(no title)
To Whom it may concern.
I receieved an email about the copyroght (sic) of the image taken from the Royal Australian Mint site..
You have stated to ebay (sic) that it belongs to you ...over in the UK.
You need to prove that this image belongs to (sic) within 7 days , or I will begin legal action for defamation against you.
I demand to know you're (sic) real name and telephone number so I can contact you in reagrds (sic) to this matter
Regards
Laurie

Slightly Ironic
We are somewhat amused by his demand that we tell him our real name and address, while omitting to include his own except for his first name Laurie, which must narrow it down to about 10 or 20 thousand Australians, and by inference from his e-mail address, but nothing to link it to a specific listing or eBay username.

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

Buying Gold Coins & Coins on eBay

Selling Gold Coins & Coins 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:-

amischiefmaker's eBay Listing Using our 2008 Australian Kangaroo at Sunset $25 Gold Proof  Coin Photograph
amischiefmaker's eBay Listing Using our 2008 Australian Kangaroo at Sunset $25 Gold Proof Coin Photograph

Our Images
Our 2008 Australian Kangaroo at Sunset $25 Gold Proof Coin Photograph
Our 2008 Australian Kangaroo at Sunset $25 Gold Proof Coin Photograph

eBay Index

 


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