I had an issue of copyright infringement succesfully dealt with by both eBay & Oztion auction sites about 2 years ago.
It involved,
http://myworld.ebay.com....me=STRK:MEFSX:SELLERID, a "business" that sells "knock off" crap.
One of their products is a cheap wall clock with images of various models of popular cars on the face. I found that they had used an image of my car that is on the EH Holden Car Club of Victoria website. This is an image that was suject to copright & stated on the actual page the image was taken from. The only reason I found out about this item in the first place, was through a guy from interstae who recognised my car. He rang me to ask, tongue firmly in cheak, "how much I was getting out of the deal?"
Once I notified the seller of the breach of copyright, they denied that it was my car, pointing out the 4 or 5 "differences" between the 2 images, theirs & mine. Examples: No rego label, no number plate etc. With that, they refused to remove the item. As with all car nuts, our own car is very distinctive, one offs. Ah, good old photoshop.
Big email to eBay. Item was removed as it was deemed by eBay to be a breach of copyright. EBay cannot afford to be involved in such breaches once made aware of them.
Another clock was then listed, same process taken, item removed.
I then sent a very technical & forceful letter regarding said breach of copyright to the "manager" of this business. After I had received a couple of denial letters, he then suddenly changed his tune, apologised at his lack of understanding of copyright law, blamed his editor & thanked me for pointing out his error.
Then he listed the same item on Oztion. Same process followed & never have I found this item again, so far, on either site.
Images & information found on the internet, whilst available to anyone that has a computer, may be subject to copyright to the original owner of the image or information. Many people are unaware when using info or images taken off the internet, that infact, they may be breaching copyright. Be very careful!
Checkout the link, you may find a picture of your car being used on these crap wall clocks. Funny thing, the first reply email I received was implying that I was only following this path to get some financial gain from the "royalties". Just like the guy who pointed it out to me. Far from it, I have owned my car for 23 years & I didnt want to be associated with this crap product.
Theres my 20c worth.
Utility8
