alanwcourtney in eBay Copyright Theft
alanwcourtney of Creston, CA, United States stole our 1oz Krugerrand Obverse Photographs to use on eBay, without our permission, to try sell his own coins, and failed to mention the coin in the photograph was not one of the coins he owned, if any. 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 10, 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

1975 Krugerrand 1 oz. Gold Coin
1975 South African Krugerrand 1oz Gold Coin
1oz . Fine Gold Coin
1975 South African Krugerrand
This coin is uncirculated and in good condition.
PAYMENT METHODS
PAYPAL (sic) is the only payment method we accept. Payment is due within 48 hours of auction close.
SHIPPING AND HANDLING
We do not ship outside of the United States.
All items will be packaged and promptly shipped within 2-3 business days of cleared payment.
Buyer pays $5.65 shipping via USPS Priority Mail with delivery confirmation.
No international bidders.

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 bar, 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.

Just Ignorant or Stupid?
We received the following email from alanwcourtney:
Dear Sirs,
My listing on Ebay was removed because you claimed a copyright interest in the image that I used in the listing. The image has no copyright notice affixed to it, so I do not understand how you could claim to own a copyright in an image without affixing a copyright symbol to it. Would you please let me know what copyright was allegedly infringed and how you are able to claim a copyright interest in an image with no copyright symbol affixed to it.
Thank you,
Alan Courtney
Price
The seller was asking for a starting price of $0.01.
Even without after eBay's greedy 10% selling fees, and possible PayPal charges, the seller would almost certainly have been much better off selling the coins to us, instead of stealing 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.

Copyright Notice Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.

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