Proof that eBay Caters to Content Thieves

(Or Why eBay Sucks and Why You Shouldn’t Use It)

I never fully understood why Doug Heil hated eBay with such a passion. I always looked at it as a giant disorganized yard sale, coupled with a bunch of get-rich-quick scammers spending more on their eBay auction listings and flea market merchants that were too cheap, lazy, and/or stupid to build a real e-commerce site. I’ve always been of the opinion that “eBay sucks”, but I’ve never really hated it.

Until this week, that is. An incident involving a content thief known as Mrs. Bouquets and my silk wedding flower client, Hibiscus Florals has plainly illustrated just how disgusting eBay’s policy toward content theft is and how they deal with their own content thieves. There is a chronology for this incident that does need to be outlined first, but the proof does appear toward the end.

The Initial Email

On Tuesday,a fellow vendor named Sarah Read from Sarah’s Flowers, a wedding florist based in the United Kingdom, was kind enough to contact Hibiscus Florals to let us know about the content theft.

Hello

My name is Sarah Read From Sarah’s Flowers Limited. Can i just bring to your attention this website, as they are using some of
your pictures…www.mrsbouquets.com
They are also using them on e-bay…

http://search.stores.ebay.co.uk/Mrs-Bouquets_bouquet_W0QQsaselZ411424099QQsofpZ0

We have had the same problem, ours have now been removed now.
There are a few bouquet we don’t recognise, if you do would you be kind
enough to pass the message on.

Kind Regards Sarah Read-MD
Sarah’s Flowers Ltd
www.sarahsflowers.co.uk

Thank you very much for this, Sarah Read. We do actually appreciate it and did act on it accordingly, as you will see below.

My Initial eBay Contact

With the information passed on about Mrs. Bouquets from Sarah Read, I attempted to contact eBay. Like many large corporate monolithic sites, contacting eBay for a specific issue requires more skill than the average user can muster up. I would provide a direct link to the form that I filled out, but unfortunately due to the bizarre way in which eBay generates links, it is impossible for me to do so.

However, I can at least provide you the link to eBay’s stolen property page (you can email them via the link from there).

I filled out the eBay contact form with the following:

This concerns eBay items 300165476935, 300159107276,
300166408464, and 300159110721.

The pictures themselves were copied but not from another eBay item. They were taken without permission from www.hibiscusflorals.com, which is a site that I am the webmaster for.

To help you find the original images:

http://www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets/wine_calla_lilies_wedding_bouquet_290.htm
http://www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets/pink_cymbidium_orchids_andsign_roses_modern_bridal_bouquet_271.htm
http://www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets/ivory_roses_andsign_pink_peonies_teardrop_bouquet_266.htm
http://www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets/white_callas_andsign_roses_bridal_bouquet_283.htm

There may be other items from other sites that this vendor is misrepresenting as her own products. We have received notification
about these eBay items through another vendor.

I expect that these items will be removed within the next 48 hours. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at this email
address. Thank you.

eBay’s Response

Approximately 24 hours later, I received a completely response from “Skip” in “eBay Community Support”.

Hello,

Thank you for writing to eBay. I am happy to assist you further with this report.

I have reviewed the information that you provided regarding the use of images in the item numbers that you reported, but at this point find
that I do not have enough evidence to show that the member has violated any eBay rules.

Regrettably, we will only be able to take action if the seller copied images from another ebay listing. Therefore, we often cannot remove
listings based on the representations of third parties whose credentials we cannot verify.

We do understand the potential for further issues in this type of situation. That is why, if you feel strongly about this issue, we
recommend that you contact the seller and request them to remove the images.

I suggest you to apply to our VeRO program, once qualified, you will have a formal channel to report such listings and protect their work.

More information can be found here:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/confidence/programs-vero.html

Again, thank you for your email and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Regards,

Skip
eBay Community Support
______________________________

Save up to 9% on shipping - right from My eBay & PayPal. Try eBay’s
Online Shipping tool today!

http://ca.ebayobjects.com/2c;148072750;12386207;c?http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sellerguide/shipping

In all fairness to eBay, anyone could make a stolen intellectual property claim and not all of them are going to be accurate. I can understand and accept that.

However, there are two things that eBay has suggested that are completely unacceptable and ludicrous:

• The Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program itself. The Verified Rights Owner Program, on the surface, is nothing but a PDF that most people won’t find on the VeRO page (I missed it the first time myself) and that accomplishes nothing, other than a physical signature, that email correspondence fails to accomplish.
• The statement that eBay cannot do anything unless another seller’s rights are violated. While it is understandable that eBay would give preference to its members, this policy accomplishes nothing as well. What if Seller 1 complained about Seller 2’s “stolen intellectual property”, and Seller 1 originally stole it from Seller 2’s non-eBay website six months ago? Or what if Seller 1 stole it from anywhere else, for that matter?

The Proof That eBay Sucks and Caters to Content Thieves

As I was thoroughly dissatisfied with eBay’s form answer and summary dismissal of my complaint about Mrs. Bouquets without even the slightest bit of research, I decided to do some for them.

A quick glance at the Mrs. Bouquets eBay storefront reveals an anomaly that I suspect the photographers among you will pick up on: the pictures themselves are remarkably inconsistent, both in terms of theme and of style.

Some of them have faded edges.
Some of them have writing on them.
Some of them are sharp.
Some of them are blurry.
And at least some of them are stolen, as I demonstrated to eBay in the email below.

HELPFUL HINT: For those of you who may or may not be aware of this site (I suspect most of you aren’t), The Internet Wayback Machine is an online “great library” of sorts. It finds and indexes web pages for the purposes of historical research, much in the same manner as its brick-and-mortar counterparts do.

However, unlike brick and mortar libraries, The Internet Wayback Machine publicly datestamps entries into its library within the URL in YYYYMMDD format. For example:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060810095913/www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets

The URL in question was created on August 10, 2006. This particular aspect bears some significance, as it provides sufficient proof of stolen intellectual property. As a further measure, I CCed another vendor whose images were stolen and clearly demonstrated proof of that issue as well.

Dear Skip,

Please note that I do find your answer to be completely unacceptable, as it would be far too easy for anyone to steal other people’s products and represent them as their own. Had you even made a cursory inspection of the seller in question, you would have realized that many of the images that the seller uses contain watermarks belonging to other non-eBay vendors. I have carbon-copied one such vendor on this email (Flower Source), as their images were also stolen, as will be demonstrated later on in this eamil.

For example, I would like to draw your attention to:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SILK-WEDDING-FLOWERS-BRIDESMAIDS-HAND-TIED_W0QQitemZ300166023733QQihZ020QQcategoryZ98734QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

If you look closely, you will see a watermark in the center of the image which is clearly not that of the seller. This isn’t our image either, but I provide it to demonstrate that the seller in question is using images that do belong to other vendors.

Here is another, much more clear, example:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SILK-WEDDING-FLOWERS-BRIDES-HAND-TIED-LILLY-BOUQUET_W0QQitemZ300159108944QQihZ020QQcategoryZ98734QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Flower Source

The logo for Flower Source, as well as the original image, can be found on:

http://www.flowersource.com.au/wedding/index.html

I would also like to draw your attention to the following page as additional evidence of the claim.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060810095913/www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets

As you can also see, the picture in the top right corner is of the same ivory roses and pink peonies bouquet that was shown in item 300165476935. As you can also see from the date embedded into the Internet Archive URL in question, the date that this page was cached is August 10, 2006, over one month before the seller signed up as an eBay member (September 12, 2006). How is it possible for us to be stealing from this eBay member when our site was cached by the Internet Archive before the eBay member joined in the first place?

On the same page, please also note that the third picture from the top, on the left hand site, is the same image as the one posted on item 300159107276. Again, this page was indexed and archived August 10, 2006.

For even more proof, item #300159110721 was archived on the Internet Archive on August 13, 2006 (2nd picture from the top, on the left hand side):

http://web.archive.org/web/20060813133329/www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets/silk_wedding_bouquets_2.html

I’m not sure whether or not “Mrs. Bouquets” had this product listed on another previous auction before the initial archive date on our end for item #300166408464, but it was certainly archived long before the item listing itself was added (2nd picture from the top, right hand side).

http://web.archive.org/web/20061206002336/www.hibiscusflorals.com/silk_wedding_bouquets

Please remove all items that have any pictures that are in any way similar to images on the Hibiscus Florals website, and I would strongly recommend that you suspend this seller outright, as it is now obvious beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt that the seller is using pictures from other sites without permission and representing them as her own. I would also strongly recommend in the future that you look beyond your own site when others who may not necessarily be eBay buyers and sellers contact you with regard to claims of stolen intellectual property, as it is relatively easy to find and establish proof of such things.

Have a nice day,

Adam Senour

eBay’s Answer

I would have gladly provided eBay’s answer to this email below, except for one small problem: they never answered me.

The listings with the stolen images are all still there (although the auctions have since expired):

Item #300165476935
Item #300159107276
Item #300159110721
Item #300166408464

Flower Source stolen pic listing

Point of Comparison: How the Mrs. Bouquets Host Handled the Situation

The stolen Hibiscus images themselves were also used on the mrsbouquets.com site itself. As a result, I contacted the web host, Daily.co.uk, and received the following reply:

Dear Customer,

There has been the following update to ticket number 12738

———-
Hi Adam,

We have been in touch with the site owners and they will be taking the images down now

Regards,

Ray Supple

Sure enough, the stolen Hibiscus images have been removed from the mrsbouquets.com website. There are other stolen images on there from sites such as FTD, Teleflora, and others, but the other vendors are starting to spread word to each other (as Sarah Read quite nicely did for us).

Other “eBay Sucks” Comments

While not directly related to eBay and content theft as such, these posts illustrate just how far out of touch eBay is getting with common sense and reality.

“Like” is not Allowed in the eBay Title
Tech Savvy eBay User Can’t Get His PrayPal Password
eBay and Their Policy on Autographs
eBay Shuts Down Sellers for No Apparent Reason

Fight Back Against eBay Content Theft

If you have had content or images stolen from an eBay seller, please post it here and hopefully the power of numbers will illustrate how much eBay sucks and sorely needs to adopt more rigorous policies as it pertains to original content and images.

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