"Stolen" Photos on Ebay

Not really. He has the coin. He has the camera that took the pic. And his testimony is not hearsay.

 

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As I stated above, eBay never question my claim to ownership when I complained about my images being stolen and used. They just took action. My guess is that when you say it's yours, they take it seriously for liability reasons.

 

I now have a connection at eBay. Let me try him and see if he can tell me how to handle this.

 

This just in. eBay doesn't care about buyers. They don't care about sellers either. They care about their profits. Do you think third-hand allegations of stealing pictures is going to get them to take action. I mean seriously, guys, I admire that your heart is in the right place, but this might work better: :headbang:

 

Well said! :thumb:

But I can't stand by and not do something so I will continue to report them, knowing all the while it will do no good.

Ribbit

 

You are a good man, Toad. I admire your idealism.

 

I know when I first started buying "stuff" on eBay (1998), many auctions had descriptions only (pictures were optional... digital cameras were quite expensive). It was more like looking through the classified section of a newspaper.... you never knew what you were going to get until you opened the package.

 

I tend to agree that ebay cannot be expected to jump into action at every complaint sent in by joe blow...in this cases as well as when people report fakes...ebay is not a coin authentication service and unless a person is willing to take the time and make a case that they are a copyright holder for a photo being used...I wouldnt want ebay taking action simply on some guys email...People seem to expect ebay to take marching orders from them and get mad if they dont...ebay should just take their word for it.

We want ebay to jump to it when we say, be a coin authentication service, copyright infringement police...but god help them if they charge one penny more or we will complain about that as well.

I regularly see my photo of a Krugerrand as well as other photos of mine being used to either illustrate the coin on someone elses site or on ebay in multiple auctions...I cant be bothered to send out missives every time I see one of my photos pop up, make a case that its mine, nor should they be expected to police all auctions for my picture or just take my word for it....

 

First of all, I own the 1830 N6 in question that was pictured in the seller's auction. My thoughts:

I don't mind if people use my photos with my permission, and for the right reasons. Listing a coin on eBay with my photo, and not EXPLICITLY mentioning that the coin in the photo is a STOCK photo, does not qualify. In fact, this is outright deception, as (at least in this case) the photograph pictures a very scarce 1830 N6 small letters reverse, which would probably have been bid up to $100+ by eagle-eyed bidders who recognize the variety. Of course, the high bidder would be extremely irked to receive a different coin! I know I would.

If someone buys one of my coins and subsequently wants to resell it, by all means they could use my original photo. My personal policy is, if you buy a coin from me, you also are granted all rights to the original photo to use however you like.

As far as proving the coin is mine, here's my photo, on my personal website: http://www.largecents.net/collection/coinpics/1830n6.jpg. (I guess I could fetch the coin from my safe deposit box and take different photos of it to prove I still have it )

As of this morning, the auction has prematurely ended, so fortunately no one will be ripped off by this seller.

Tom Deck
EAC #4574
http://www.largecents.net

 

The auction was pulled by eBay. Apparently, you complained to them directly.

And, welcome to CT. Sorry it had to happen with these circumstances, though.

 

I had it happen a few times with people selling Scottish banknotes - with images lifted from my site and with my flipping copyright notice on them.

I changed the image names, they were using the URL on my site since they apparently had no hosting service then you put another image with the same URL and file name like for instance this one:

 

I see you're a member of the NBA.

Ribbit

 

I didn't know what slahsdot was until you pointed it out. I am familiar with the system used on youtube, urban dictionary, and others (similar).

I thought about monetary forces operating every time I was looking for reviews on stuff like camcorders, LCD TVs, etc. What assures me that Sony and all the other companies don't have a couple of employees whose job is to go on amazon, etc., and write favorable and unfavorable reviews all day pretending to be other people? I guess the answer to that is "nothing", if you are paranoid enough, but the truth is common people will review these things too, and it adds up.

 

Are you sure about that? I mean, are you a lawyer or something? Because technically, an e-mail is an official communication (as much so as any signed letter or statement).

 

Heresay is secondhand info, so unless you are directly involved, it's heresay. So he is/was correct but that doesn't mean you can't report it, it just means the likelihood is Ebay won't do anything about it unless you are the owner of the stolen photo.

Ribbit

 

Positive. Is it notarized? Can it be notarized?

 

Toad,
inre; your listing where they used a public picture, here is the answer I got back. I am not positive that you can access the all categories listed and he was not super confident that they would work all the time, but he is the pertinent part of his response;

 

Yes, I believe it can, as long as you can prove you were the one sending it (like whether someone else has access to it or not, for instance). In this circumstance, I think it can also be admissible in court. I'm never absolutely sure about these things, because I confuse the law in my own country with the law in this one.

Nice sig btw.

 

Thanks RLM! :thumb:

Ribbit

 

Notarized = signed by the author/parties in front of a notary public and signed and stamped by notary public. Just how are you going to do this with an email? People can forge documents. Normally, just plain signed documents are hearsay. That is the purpose of the notary - to prevent this. Just imagine how easy it is to forge an email. You could not even prove that the sender's cat did not type it - seriously.