kastriotis in eBay Copyright Theft
kastriotis of KASTORIA, KASTORIA, Greece, stole our 1947 Swiss Vreneli Gold 20 Francs Reverse photographs without permission, and failed to tell buyers it was not the same coin he was selling.
He probably found the image on our Swiss Brief History page.

High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 416 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

Helvetia – Vreneli 20FR Gold Coin ( 1947 )
(All the body of the listing was comprised of images, making it difficult for us to reproduce it here)

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 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.
Whether kastriotis is misleading them deliberately or in ignorance, we cannot tell, perhaps it is a mixture of both, in which case he is not only lazy, but stupid and dishonest.

Price
The seller was asking a starting price of $0.99 for this listing.
Whatever the item "sells" 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.

Revised Listing - 100 Red Worms ( nightcrawlers ) for Fishing & Compost Same item number!

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.
We should probably delay reporting this item until a buyer has sent some money. This may sound cynical of us, but if enough greedy buyers got conned, they might kick up enough fuss, go to the media, and get eBay the publicity it deserves. It is not our job to act as unpaid policemen for eBay.

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:-

• Chards
  www.chards.co.uk
• Investment Gold Bars & Coins (This Site)
  taxfreegold.co.uk
• General Coins & Jewellery:
  www.24carat.co.uk
• Gold Sovereigns:
  goldsovereigns.co.uk
• 18 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.18carat.co.uk
• 9 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.9carat.co.uk