eBay Copyright Thieves & Crooks Named and Shamed
It's dishonest to copy photographs, and misleading to buyers.
dianeg*2010 Using Copied Sovereign Images on eBay
eBay seller dianeg*2010 of bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom , not only stole our 1832 William IV Gold Sovereign Obverse & Reverse images without permission, but failed to tell buyers his coin was not the same coin.
High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 15; with 100% positive according to eBay.
It also demonstrates that high eBay feedback is no indicator of honesty.
Sample Listing
1831- william iv gold soveriegn(sic)
here (sic) i (sic) have a beautiful 1831 (sic) william iv gold soverign (sic) diameter 22mm.
stamped with w.w (william wyon) at the bottom of the truncation. reading what i can i believe that the coin is very rare according to the spinx (sic) guide 2001. as the w.w has no full stops, happy bidding.
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 a near mint 1832 William IV Gold Sovereign, he or she failed to state that the coin shown in the photographs was not the same coin he was selling.
dianeg*2010 probably stole the images from CoinQuest, who stole them from us.
Stupid, Dishonest or Both?
This stupid person used our photo of an 1832 sovereign, yet described it as an 1831, so it possibly blind as well as stupid.
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.
We guess the answer to our partially rhetorical question is "both".
Illiterate. Lazy or Both?
Perhaps we are being elitist, but we do wonder why people trying to sell things, on eBay or elsewhere, cannot be bothered to use correct grammar and spellings. Does it reflect the poor state of British education that so many people can't be bothered (arsed in the vernacular) to use capital letters in titles, town names, their own names, the names of kings and queens, mis-spell key words such as sovereign, and change Spink or Spink's to spinx?
Perhaps it does, but it also shows a lack of respect, which might well stretch to include potential buyers (customers).
We guess the answer to our second question is also "both".
Not a Registered User
About an hour after we spotted this listing, we thought we would have a look at this other items, and were surprised to see they had been removed, as had the original item we noticed. His eBay feedback page now read:
dianeg*2010 ( 15 ) Not a registered user
Positive Feedback (last 12 months): 100%
[How is Feedback Percentage calculated?]
Member since: 16-Apr-10 in United Kingdom
We guess that one of the many concerned but unpaid eBay vigilantes had spotted the items, and come to the same conclusions as us.
Next week dianeg*2010 will probably be back with a new identity.
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Seller ID | Item Number | Date | Description | Price
|
|
dianeg*2010 | 320557637363 | 5th Jul 2010 | 1831- william iv gold soveriegn | �150
|
Price
The seller was asking a starting price of �150 for this listing.
Whatever the items "sell" 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.
Any buyer would have cause for complaint about the misleading photographs and description, if they paid any price reflecting the grade of the coin in 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.
Selling Gold Sovereigns & Other Coins on eBay
We point out that sellers may often get more money, for less effort, by selling to a specialised dealer, such as us, rather than via eBay.
Copyright Notice
Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.
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