Amazon (amazon.com) is yet another website owner operator who has used and profited from, or allowed partners to use our copyright images and text without permission.
Copyright Theft is Dishonest - Can You Trust This Dealer? Using other people's copyright images is illegal, it is dishonest, and it is unethical. Using the hard work of a fellow dealer to sell the same goods in competition with him demonstrates an extremely low standard of ethics. We would not recommend anybody to transact business with this person or company.
Thick as Thieves
Actually, we first noticed the offending image on eBay, which we regularly monitor for copyright theft.
Amazon Claiming Copyright? At the bottom of each page of their website, Amazon have the line:-
© 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliatesSo they are clearly aware of copyright law, and cannot claim ignorance. In our opinion, this makes their offence worse, because they are trying to pass themselves off as originators of all the material on their website, and claiming they own the Intellectual Property Rights in it. Effectively they are stealing our property, possibly along with that belonging to others.
Who's the Guilty Party?
We would be surprised to discover that Amazon themselves had copied and illegally used our web content, including our high quality photograph, and our text, and we guess that it may be one of their "affiliates", "associates", "members", or whatever Amazon call the dealers they permit to use their website to market new and second-hand goods including books and coins.
Currently, there are four sellers offering to sell Churchill Crowns using our image. It is not clear or easy to determine which if any of these four uploaded our picture and text, or how many other vendors may have been offering similar items using our pictures.
Amazon Sellers - Prime Suspects? The four Amazon Sellers listed as offering Churchill Crowns linked directly from the infringing page, are:
- bored betty
- jfried1009
- racokbooks
- only-in-canada
Discovery We intend to serve legal notice on Amazon that the use of our image and text both infringe our intellectual property rights, request them to remove the infringements without delay, and to furnish us with all relevant information about who copied and uploaded the material, when, and what income and other benefits Amazon have derived from this and any other pages containing or repeating our image, from all sources including selling commissions, advertising fees, and goodwill.
Response We intend to publish Amazon's response here, with our comments.
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.
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 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
Amazon's 1965 Churchill Commemorative Crowns Sir Winston Churchill Five Shilling Piece Page
Our Churchill Crown Image
32 - 36 Harrowside, Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1RJ, England. Telephone (44) - (0) 1253 - 343081; Fax 408058;
E-mail: Contact Us The URL for our main page is: taxfreegold.co.uk