Image Theft by Island Tea Shop on eBay

[Space Samurai]

An eBay company stole my work and is using it without my permission.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ORGANIC-CEREMONY-GR ... m153.l1262

http://anotherteablog.blogspot.com/2008 ... atcha.html

The company has ignored my emails and my requests to remove the image, which at the very least is misrepresentation as it is not the same product they are selling. I am posting this on forums in hopes that it might somehow help.

I'm not asking everyone to help flood the company's inbox with requests to do the right thing here, but I wouldn't mind.

This is unethical, inexcusable behavior for a business.

[Chip]

BOOOOO...iSLAND tEA sHOP. I would not give them a penny for their product. In fact, they could give me their product. If the steal images from creators, who knows what other shady things they may be up to.

Space, with your permission, I can place this in TeaDay temporarily as a seperate thread. It will get more hits there and responses...your call.

[Victoria]

I sent this:

PLEASE REMOVE THE UNAUTHROIZED PHOTO FROM THIS LISTING. EBAY HAS BEEN NOTIFIED.

You can do it anonymously through the "ask the seller a question" option, if you so choose.

[Space Samurai]

Space, with your permission, I can place this in TeaDay temporarily as a seperate thread. It will get more hits there and responses...your call.

Chip, that'd be great. Please do.

[bi lew chun]

I added my gallon to the flood.

[Wesli]

Yeah, it happens. Just file a report to Ebay.

[Space Samurai]

Yeah, it happens. Just file a report to Ebay.

I did, they may be ignoring me, too. Besides, this way may be more harmful to the company.

[Geekgirl]

Report to ebay, here's the information:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/in ... ty-ov.html

Ebay does not allow theft of intellectual property by its sellers or users.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/ver ... theft.html

Note to members: Space has to report his own property stolen and copyright infringement. If we go there and report it for him, it will likely be dismissed. I would suggest that you make the theft report on every listing containing your image. You might also want to shoot an email to Starbucks. Looks like he has also stolen images from them, and I KNOW I've seen the one with the matcha and chasen somewhere.

[Space Samurai]

Thanks guys for the links, but like I said, I've already contacted eBay about the problem. The problem may be that their rules specifcally refer to taking intelectual property from other sellers.

Its a holiday, perhaps eBay will do something next week.

[omegapd]

Space, I'll send an email too.

I have you beat, though. One night at work, I was riding through a cemetery and took a picture of what I can only describe as a ghost. I posted it on a forum one time when ghost stories came up and didn't think anything else about it. Like 2 years later, I was watching the Discovery channel and they had my picture on a commercial about some hauntings show. I watched the show and the picture was never used in it, but that was my 5 seconds of fame in life.

EW

[Salsero]

Speaking of intellectual property, this from RFDT:
Date: Thurs, Jul 3 2008 4:41 pm
From: Brent

• On Jul 3, 10:48 am, Dennis Pang <dpan...@gmail.com> wrote:
  > This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from the Twinings
  > Tea Blog, where you will find the best tea blogs by tea lovers from
  > around the world.
  
  One of my posts was mentioned. I do not like how you wrote "from the
  Twinings Tea Blog," as it suggests that I am somehow writing *for*
  you, which I am most certainly not. If you were truly interested in
  sharing my post, not just driving up your site's traffic, you would
  have linked to the original source rather than your own site.
  Brent

Katrina's lovely chataku post was also cited.

[Chip]

tWiNinGs tea bLoG has been making a strange journey around the tea forum circles. The offending poster on GTF also joined here (somedia)...for some reason he never posted as he rampantly did on GTF...he was shown the door pretty much over there.

Seems very strange that twinings would be involved in such bizarre activity...or do they have one bad egg in the batch...or a new marketing strategy to win us over...

[henley]

Space, I'll send an email too.

Me, too. Hope you can get this resolved.

[Space Samurai]

Thanks guys for your help. Mission accomplished. The store took the pictures down (I think he missed one, but whatever). I think its bad to let something like this just slide and set a precedent for future abuse.

Thanks, ya'll.

[chamekke]

Glad this was resolved, Space.

Image theft sucks.