vivaldi_1977 of mancot, Flintshire, United Kingdom, stole our 2008 450th Anniversary of the Accession of Queen Elizabeth I Gold Five Pound coin of photograph to use on eBay, without our permission, to try to sell his own. 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 82 with 97.6% Positive Feedback 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.
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. It is always possible, even likely, that sellers who steal photographs do not own a similar item, and have the intention to totally defraud potential buyers.
Copyright theft is dishonest. We recommend you avoid doing business with dishonest dealers. 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.
Sample Listing
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- Seller ID:
- vivaldi_1977
- Item Number:
- 230929705689
- Date:
- 22nd February, 2013
- Description:
- 2008 Five Pound Coin
- Price:
- £1.00
The seller was asking for a starting price of £1.00.
Do eBay Take Copyright Theft Seriously?
According to eBay, the answer to this is yes:
As part of our mission, we are committed to help protecting the intellectual property rights of rights owners and to providing our users with a safe and enjoyable place to trade.
They also claim that by us using the VERO reporting programme we can experience the following benefits:
VeRO Programme participation entitles you to the following benefits:
– Dedicated eBay staff to assist you in getting the most out of the Programme
– Rapid response by eBay in ending listings reported by you as allegedly infringing, pursuant to the VeRO Programme notice of infringement
– The ability to obtain identifying information about eBay users
This however, is not the case. We rarely receive information about the eBay user, despite asking in every report we complete. It has now been 21 days since we reported this listing and multiple others, and the listing still remains on eBay, with our photograph. eBay clearly do not take copyright theft as seriously as they claim, or perhaps they are simply so busy dealing with thousands, if not millions or reports, because they do not have a system in place that stops copyright theft altogether.
