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eBay Cheats & Copyright Thieves

sgm101 in eBay Copyright Theft
sgm101 of Redditch, Worcestershire, United Kingdom, stole our 2003 Sovereign Obverse & Reverse Photographs to use on eBay, without permission to try sell his own 2003 Half Sovereign. Totally dishonest.
He failed to state or warn potential buyers that the superb condition full sovereign in our high quality photograph was not the coin you would receive, or that the photograph was a full sovereign when he was offering a half sovereign. This is deception.

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 1, 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

2003 QE2 Half-Sovereign Gold Coin
New coin in plastic protective casing/blister pack
4g in weight
Obverse shown in picture 1 - Queen Elizabeth II
Reverse shown in picture 2 - Scene of St. George and the dragon. Very small initial of B.P. in bottom right-hand corner denote sculpture Benedetto Pistrucci

Seller IDItem NumberDateDescriptionPrice
sgm10132060206109610th Oct 20102003 QE2 Half-Sovereign Gold Coin£105

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 bar, 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 £50 each for his items.
This is a stupid starting price. Starting at £0.99 costs £0.10 in eBay listing fees, starting at £50 costs £1, so the seller is giving eBay £8.10 more than necessary on his 9 current gold coin listings. Alternatively, he could have selected a cautious but realistic price such as £200 per sovereign, and this would have cost him £1.30 per item. His actual starting price is a waste of his money for no real effect.
Whatever the item "sold" for, after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the crook may have been much better off selling the coins to us, instead of stealing our photographs.
Many eBay sellers seem to forget that they will have to pay 10% commission on the selling price, and possibly about 5% more in PayPal fees. If his sovereigns "sold" for £200 each, he would be lucky to receive £170 each, we will pay much more, unless the coins are stolen, damaged, or fake, any and all of which are likely on eBay.

Nice e-Mail
Just for once, we got a response, and even more rarely, it was apologetic:

Dear Chards Ltd,
I write in relation to a matter of copyright infringement which has been brought to my attention. I have unfortunately allowed photographs from your website to be attached to several items I offered for sale. As the seller I accept full responsibility. I entrusted another to take photographs for me and I am shocked and disappointed that they have used photographs belonging to another. I removed the listed items myself immediately on becoming aware of the situation and no items were sold.
I wish to apologise and I undertake that there will never be any repetition.
Gina McEwan
(sgm101)
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to e-mail. We are happy to accept your apology, explanation, and undertaking.

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.

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:-

sgm101 eBay Listing Using our 2003 Half Sovereign Reverse Photograph
sgm101 eBay Listing Using our 2003 Half Sovereign Reverse Photograph

Our Images

Our 2003 Sovereign Reverse Photograph
Our 2003 Sovereign Reverse Photograph

Our 2003 Sovereign Obverse Photograph
Our 2003 Sovereign Obverse Photograph

eBay Index

 


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