eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves
eBay Fail to Remove Copyright Images Reported
Although mikey.p of Manchester, United Kingdom, removed our 1999 Princess Diana Gold Proof Five Pounds Reverse on his 2nd eBay listing, eBay once again failed to act on our NOCI report.
This happens too often, and we repeatedly bring it to eBay's attention. Their responses include:
- eBay is committed to helping intellectual property owners protect their
rights.
- The Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program is designed to process reports
of intellectual property infringement. From the information provided,
however, the nature of intellectual property infringement you are
attempting to report is unclear.
If you feel that these listings do infringe on your intellectual
property rights, please respond to this message and provide us with a
more detailed explanation.
Please send us the location of where the images and/or text were taken
from so that we may investigate the matter further.
Ignored
Sometimes, they simply ignore or neglect to process our reports, for this reason, and others, we cease to believe their claims to take copyright abuse seriously.
eBay Negligence
mikey.p relisted his overpriced coin, and had the intelligence to remove our pirated photograph from his second listing shortly after the first was removed. What he probably should have done was to cancel the listing, and then create a new listing untainted by the copyright abuse. There are several reasons for this. Firstly a potential buyer may have seen our high quality photo and been positively influenced by it, before its removal. Secondly, and mikey.p may not know this, but the eBay system is very complex, and contains cross-marketing subsystems. One of these shows the original thumbnail photo from the Gallery listing (or similar), in the "My Recent Activity", "Viewed Items", and "Watching" sections. These are often shown on the personalised index or front page eBay creates for individual members.
Our screenshot clearly shows our image twice on our personalised page, and it would do the same for any other member who had recently viewed or watched the offending item listing.
We reported this to eBay using their NOCI (Notice Of Claimed Infringement) e-mail form, on 12th April 2010.
As the item listing had not been removed, we sent a reminder on 16th April 2010, with our original e-mail attached, but received a reply stating that the eBay e-mail system automatically removes e-mail attachments, and inviting us to send a fresh NOCI.
We created this page to make it idiot-proof for them to see the problem, as from experience, we guess we would receive one of their standard "NOCI Received - More Information Requested" responses.
mikey.p in eBay Copyright Theft
mikey.p of Manchester, United Kingdom, stole our 1999 Princess Diana Gold Proof Five Pounds Reverse photograph to use on eBay, and failed to tell buyers it was not the same coin 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 1096 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
1999 UK 5 POUNDS 22CT GOLD PROOF DIANA MEMORIAL COIN
Diana Princess of Wales Gold Proof Memorial Coin.Diameter 38.61mm,Weight 39.94gm.
Issue Limit 7,500
Comes in the Original Red Velvet-like case within the Original Red outer box with booklet and in the original outer sleeve.1.165oz of Pure Gold.This item is listed on ebay for £1349-50
UK BIDDERS ONLY FOR SECURITY REASONS
Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.
This is a private listing and your identity will not be disclosed to anyone except the seller.
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Seller ID | Item Number | Date | Description | Price
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mikey.p | 110514307325 | 3rd Apr 2010 | 1999 UK 5 POUNDS 22CT GOLD PROOF DIANA MEMORIAL COIN | £999 / £1150
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mikey.p | 110518453787 | 11th Apr 2010 | 1999 UK 5 POUNDS 22CT GOLD PROOF DIANA MEMORIAL COIN | £999 / £1150
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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 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 high quality images of our Our 1999 Princess Diana Gold Proof Five Pounds Reverse Photograph, he used it to sell his own coins on eBay. He did not mention to potential buyers that the high quality photographs of a mint condition coin was not his own photograph.
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 £999, and a BIN price of £1,150.
Stupid or Crooked?
If mikey.p had posted his coin to us, we would have been happy to buy it.
Selling it through eBay, he will have had to pay eBay a selling fee which is a commission of 10%. If the buyer paid him through PayPal, he will also have had PayPal commission to pay (between 2.9% and 4.9%), so he would receive less than selling direct to us.
eBay is full of sellers stupid enough to think that they will get the best price selling by auction on eBay, often they are wrong because they have not checked market prices (perhaps mikey.p tried to sell them to a local gold buyer and was only offered scrap gold. If he managed to find the photos on our websites, it would have been simple for him to pick up the telephone and ask what we were paying. The only downside for his is that we would expect his to pay the postage to us. The advantage to his would be getting more than using eBay, not having to create the listing, and getting paid more quickly.,
What's in a Name?
On 20th April, we received a snail mail letter from Arthur Holme, if our presumptions based on his e-mail address being arthur.holme@ntlworld.com are correct, who is apparently mikey.p!
Quite why some e-Bayers go to such lengths to conceal their true identity, we cannot fathom.
As usual with eBay copyright cheats, he protest rather vehemently, but is rather economical with the truth, omitting to include the fact that his relisting originally used our photograph, and that even after he had the brains to change pictures. What he should have done was to cancel the second listing, and then create a third listing completely untainted by the copyright abuse.
Arthur (or arthur as he calls himself), moans that we are are uncontactable. Our standard NOCI template to eBay states an e-mail address for members to contact us. We believe and trust that eBay do pass on this information to their copyright abuser members, but it is possible that they fail to do this consistently. As we rarely get to see a copy of their message to their member, it is difficult for us to monitor this. Of course, if they fail to include it, the member will experience more difficulty in contacting us, and therefore we are less likely to see eBay's e-mail, a Catch 22 situation.
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:-
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eBay UK Index Page Using our 1999 Princess Diana Gold Proof Five Pounds Reverse Photograph
Our Images
Our 1999 Princess Diana Gold Proof Five Pounds Reverse Photograph
eBay Index
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