About half of those we report get nasty, and e-mail or telephone to demand why we have reported them. On an almost daily basis, we notice other eBay members using our images without our permission, and on an almost daily basis, we report these copyright infringements to eBay, who remove them more or less promptly. The reason most operators do so is to protect themselves from expensive legal action for copyright infringement. eBay call their system VERO, Verified Rights Owners. Even though the design of most coins include copyright owned by the countries, mints, or monetary authority that issues them, photographs of those coins constitute a different and original piece of "art", and the copyright of the photograph belongs to its "author".ĮBay like most website operators have a "takedown" system in place, whereby they accept notices from copyright owners, and remove reported offending listings within a shortish period of time. For those who do not know, copyright exists in any original artwork including photographs, and its rights rest with the owner of the film or disc which was used to capture the image. Naturally, we are quite protective about this. We have invested a great amount of money, time, and effort into camera equipment and the skill needed to capture a good quality photograph of a coin, and process it into an attractive, faithful, and useful image for use on our websites. When we did, we started to notice how many eBay members were selling their sovereigns, krugerrands and other coins using our photographs. We only started this website at Christmas 1999, and it took us until 2001 to get round to registering on eBay, and even longer before we started using it. What's more, we also have a "feel" for fake people and fake offers. We have over 40 years experience in the numismatic and bullion business, so we are quite good by now at spotting fake coins. We report some, and eBay do nothing leading us to conclude that eBay are content to makes profits from fakes, fraud, deception, and copyright theft. Day after day, we see misleading, fraudulent, or counterfeit items offered for sale on eBay.
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