How do sellers get away with it?!

[totallypersonal]

Hey guys,

I am new to all of this dye sub lark, and will hopefully be making and selling mugs on eBay soon.

I have been looking around ebay to find good designs that sell well, and have noticed lots of sellers using photos of sports people etc.

They obviously don't pay to use the images, so how do they get away with it so easily?

I know where to find the images, so I would be fine if you are allowed to do it - but surely it is not legal?

Thanks,

Rob.

[bms]

so how do they get away with it so easily?

By people not reporting them, or the owners of the royalty images not taking action.

[gstk]

They do get caught. When we started and were very green in the gills we did them. Had a good run until one day a letter arrives from a German solicitor on behalf of the rights owner for Valentino Rossi. They wanted 5000 euros for us not to settle out of court and cease selling immediately. I thought it was a scam so I decided to check it out. It was real. While checking it out another ebayer contacted me and they had been done for £10000 which they are paying at £100 a month for the foreseeable future.

Since then we havent sold any items that are copyrighted and had to evolve. Its a dangerous game and best avoided.

[fr3spirit]

Fantastic, it's good to hear that these people do get caught out, unfortunately not quick enough though! gstk you're lucky it wasn't more of a fine. At present copyright theft can be pursued at a minimum 50k fine, cease selling immediately and destruction of any fake goods already produced, not to mention the harm to your business and image.

[DaleCh]

Don't advertise 'copyright Images' on any media - Ebay, Amazon, Web etc. - if you do them as a 1 to 1 request for a customer - that's reasonably safe (but not excluded from fines if you're discovered doing it!) - stick with the 'Personalised Images' - the customer usually owns all the rights to those (usually! - but we won't go into that right now?)

[DaleCh]

I guess you can compare it to 'have you ever exceeded the 30 mph speed limit in an urban zone??' - risky, but in some cases worth it in getting to work on time???

[Dave S]

What I do is I design my own, much easier and a lot better than getting a Solicitors Letter through the post, which happened to me years ago when I was selling Football £20 Note fridge magnets on ebay

[accdave]

Maybe we should all have a policy of reporting one ebay seller per week that sells the copyrighted stuff. You never know we might get a level playing field

[phoenixalpha]

The more high profile the image the quicker ebay will crack down on you. Get caught more than once and your ebay account risks being yanked. It's SOOOO not worth the risk at all. Dont even think of doing football players or football teams logos as you'll be hammered before the week is out with lawyers letters et all. It's kinda like selling unlicenced, unauthorised sporting merchandise outside a football ground. Yer gonna get caught and done pretty quickly and it's gonna hurt. You might think a quick couple of hundred quid is easily made but when a lawyers letter demands £5k+ for damages and you dont have a leg to stand on....

[fr3spirit]

I like accdave's idea!