Image Theft

[Space Samurai]

Check it out. Stupid eBay company stole my work.

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

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

I've contacted the company and eBay, both are ignoring me.

grrr

[Victoria]

Oh no!! That is so wrong! When did you find it and send the letters?

[Space Samurai]

This morning I woke up to an email from an anonymous person about it, and I immediately sent the emails. There's not much I can do. Sure I could try to sue them I guess, they are a compnay making money off of my propery with out permision, but I don't think it's worth it.

Out of curiosity, I am looking into copy rights to see if there's anything I can do to protect myself in the future.

[Victoria]

I say we all write and jam his mailbox for one, demanding he take it down.

[scruffmcgruff]

Dude, that's ridiculous. I wonder if you could also get him on false representation of his product, since it's a different matcha.

[Space Samurai]

Dude, that's ridiculous. I wonder if you could also get him on false representation of his product, since it's a different matcha.

I can try that angle with eBay, see if they'll do anything then. It looks like I can copyright my site, if it isn't cost prohibitive, that's what I'll do.

[Victoria]

We had this happen in my circle of bloggers too. We all put this language on our blogs:

- VICTORIA'S OWN -
Copyright Information:
All Rights Reserved.
(Photos and Text)
This work is licensed under:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

And the link:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/






http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

[scruffmcgruff]

I thought that copyright was assumed for any material published online. I'm not sure though, so don't take my word for it.

[Victoria]

I thought that copyright was assumed for any material published online. I'm not sure though, so don't take my word for it.

That may be true since there isn't any official registering for using this license.
But on the other hand, it's a good idea to have it visible there to point to. It also may serve as a deterrent.

[Chip]

Ebay responded to me very quickly to a claim of a probable fraudulant seller...took their site down...and they contacted me a few times about it. I was actually stunned by the responsiveness...but this is different, it does not threaten Ebay in the same way.

Regardless, they should respond to you and take some action.

Alex, your blog has no built in copyright protection? Yeah, with the quality of your work, you should look into it.

Jamming the sellers box and also threatening to discredit them on a few tea forums might get their attention. If they do not take it down, then by all means, take it right to the forums!!! Then send them links...

[chamekke]

I say we all write and jam his mailbox for one, demanding he take it down.

Sounds good to me. But we should do this in an organized way, I think... and really hammer them with our disapproval, our withdrawal of potential custom, and our willingness to publicize their theft on forums and blogs.

Really, shame on Island Tea Shop. SHAME.

Incidentally, I did a Google image search on the term matcha, and SpaceSamurai's image is on the first page of search results. I'd be willing to bet that's how they found it

[joelbct]

Yah really, for shame... selling something under a picture of something else is just plain sleazy, not to mention the copyright theft.

It's like, if your matcha's so good, take its own darn picture!

[Space Samurai]

THanks for your help, the shop took the pictures down this morning.

[hop_goblin]

Is it possible to be angry and proud at the same time??

[ABx]

You could also let Matcha Source know about it. They may not be particularly happy about another vendor using a picture of their matcha