Power Sellers Unite

georges2004 · Joined: 07 Mar 2010 Posts: 3

Hello,

I am new user here although I have been reading these forums for a while. I have a couple of questions and I would really appreciate if anyone more experienced than me could tell me how to handle a problem I have. Two ebay members have copied the description of my listing. After reporting both to ebay, the copied listings of one of those two members were immediately taken down by ebay. For now, ebay refuses to take down the listings of the other member requiring more information from me.

Please let me describe as briefly as I can my ebay history. I started the shop about 2 years ago and I had the copied descriptions since then. The only thing is that I never used the "good till canceled" format until only about a month ago. For a long time I used to relist manually every 30 days. I know now that this was unnecessary work but I did not know very well the differences between 30 day relist and good till canceled. Now ebay is requiring me to provide them with an original listing from me prior to September 26 (I guess this is the date that the other member uploaded their copied listings and ebay would like to see something from me prior to that date). The thing is that ebay deletes all info older than 90 days so how I can give them what they want? Does the fact that I relisted manually every 30 days instead of good till canceled makes my job more difficult? How can I prove that those descriptions are mine? I would appreciate if anyone has any useful ideas that could help me. Sorry, for the English mistakes I am not a native English speaker.

Thank you :)

finegemdesigns · Joined: 28 Jun 2009 Posts: 107

Do you have any text files or Word .doc files that contain your descriptions?

If so you could send these to eBay as proof of your claims. If you right click on the files and click Properties you will get a window that gives the date that the document was created and/or modified.

I also highly recommend using a program to watermark all your photos and pictures. I use Watermark Factory. Excellent program that allows you to watermark photos singly or in big batches.

ehustle · Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 621

In most of my listings I have a copyright free clause. I invite folks to take my images and/or text as much as they want with no mention of where they got it.

One of the reasons I do this is because I spend a HELL of a lot of time on historical research, pulling it all together and I appreciate it when I can find information on a designer or era, style of vintage jewelry.

I often have to write to museums, etc to get my information also.

For me, I could care less, let it live on.

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4782

It's been quite some time since eBay let everyone know that any content listed on their site, including descriptions and pictures, became their (eBay's) property, and they would allow others to make use of it.

Unless you opted out of the program by a certain date, you're basically screwed.

Stockmiser · Joined: 03 Jun 2006 Posts: 1146

Lizard - that's only for listing photos and text of items used in Ebay's internal "product" searches - which would be a generic type of product.

It's still against ebay policy to directly copy another seller's listing or photos.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/image-text.html

"eBay members are not allowed to use images—including photos and other pictures—or text they didn't create themselves. Exceptions to this policy would be if they are authorized to do so by the owner, its agent, or the law."

thegolfingdolphin · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 617

If you have sold this item prior to the date in question, give eBay the item number for the sale. If you saved a copy of the packing slip or invoice you can find the item number there. EBay should be able to pull up older sales records past 90 days.

Making sure you have a copy of the invoice is important as there is a wealth of information that can be used later. This is just one example.

georges2004 · Joined: 07 Mar 2010 Posts: 3

Thank you everyone for your replies. I do not have the info saved in a Word document. However, it is all saved since 2 years ago in my Auctiva account. Could that help?

Finding the item numbers of old sales is not a problem. One just has to look in his feedback. The item numbers are still there below the comments regardless of how old they are. I tried already to use that argument with ebay but the problem is that the descriptions are all deleted past 90 days.

jfreemanagain · Joined: 16 Mar 2010 Posts: 3

Wortpoint.com takes sellers photos and descriptions. They buy them from Ebay, they post them as their own database, and then they charge subscription pricing to review the pictures and descriptions. Worthpoint.com makes money from your camera, your time, your intellectual property with no remuneration to you. Why are more Ebayers not taking umbrage with Worthpoint.com.

mpearson · Joined: 07 Jul 2009 Posts: 137

Thats surprising. So Circuit City can't describe a TV the same way as Best Buy? I didn't think you can copyright a description. Do you think you are losing sales because of this? I know it would be hard to prove. I don't know why ebay would get the first violator but come back to you for the 2nd. That's shoddy customer service.

One thing you may want to do is make the description an image.

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1398 Location: Puerto Rico

That happen in any place. In eCrater a find a seller that copy some of my photos for her items. She even is in this forum.

So don't worry about it. Get worry if someone steal your identity.

ehustle · Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 621

Some actress ..Lindsey ..is sueing E Trade for her likeness in a commerical. 50 million bucks er something, anyone else see that?

Anyway, back to topic, copyscape is a good program if this is of serious interest to anyone on how to prevent and what to do if it's copied.

You can find more here:

http://www.copyscape.com/

luckyalive · Joined: 27 Apr 2008 Posts: 479

This is why you need to leave ebay - you are their trained dog jumping through more and more hoops. the fact that their payment system is totally unsafe - a buyer can steal an item from you simply by canceling their payment while their item is in transit - should be reason alone to leave.

That said:

1. Watermark images. Plenty of often free software that will batch mark whole files of images. Be sure to download from legit site.

2. PDF. On Apple computers you can easily save entire web pages as pdf files with dated headers with built in OS tools.

Install some type of browser plug-in to do this such as pdf it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7528

Probably a zillions apps out there that will also do this using a hands off approach - you submit url and it saves copy to a file according to your predetermined preferences.

3. Get some inexpensive usb portable drives and whenever you save a pdf make a copy of it on the drive for backup.

wphamilton · Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 1940 Location: Georgia

It's going to happen regardless. dalizard is right, eBay does own all the rights to everything when you list: 'When you give us content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future.", but they only allow other sellers limited rights as Stockmiser said. I'm not sure you'd even have a legal right to enforce against another eBay seller copying you.

My solution is to allow anyone to use any photo and not worry about it. The same for text - except in one case a well-known mineralogical site copied some of my research and text, and then months later they sent me a takedown demand! It wasn't worth my fighting about. So a copyright notice might be a good idea after all, just to protect yourself even if you have no intention of ever enforcing it against anyone.