Hi Jim,

Thanks for this great article.

If I may, I’d like to comment from the customer side of things. I’m a certified computer security professional (and I also have a conscience) which means that I’ve promised to uphold intellectual property rights. Of course, like everybody else, I also like to save a few dollars when I can, so I do like to spend some time on eBay.

After my last experience, however, I’ve decided that I will no longer purchase any Internet marketing products on eBay unless it’s obvious that the owner is selling it and there is a clear statement that they own the intellectual property rights. I recently purchased what I thought was a legitimate copy of a well-known Internet marketer’s big-ticket item, but when it arrived, it was an obvious copy (and remember, I’m a computer security professional — I know what to look for). Of course, I immediately contacted the marketer and even offered to send the contraband copy as evidence, at my expense.

Yes, it ticks me off that much. I was willing to forfeit a chunk of cash just to put a countefeiter out of business.

I hope that your blog post gets around to LOTS of people (I’ll be posting a link to it on my blog at http://www.TomBrownsword.com/news). Other customers need to follow my example and report these parasites that hurt legitimate marketers and other intellectual property owners. I sure there are lots of marketers out there that would be able to contribute fantastic information products — products that would enrich and enhance the lives of everybody — except for the fact that still have to work at a regular J-O-B because their current product sales are sluggish due to these low-life parasites. Let’s help everybody by doing everything we can to shut these thiefs down.

Again, Jim, thanks for your blog post. Show no mercy!

Your customer and subscriber,
Tom Brownsword

It shouldn’t be shocking to see this article, but it is. Why people insist on doing things like this is beyond me. Theft is theft and, like the people that seek to obtain financial information by “imitating” places like eBay and PayPal, these people need to be a) put out of business, and, b) arrested and tried.

Thanks for the warning, Jim, and the ideas for keeping track of possible thefts of intellectual property. I’m getting ready to post some of my own on eBay.

I’ll be adding this post to my eDragon Marketing blog.

Another customer and subscriber.

Great article Jim. Actually, I wrote the book on this sort of thing, showing ALL the ways thieves rip honest info marketers off… It’s at www.informationproductprotection.com.

Here are a few tips… primarily for hard products…

1) CD-R EVERYTHING with CD-R printed on the CD. eBay will not let you sell a CD-R, even if it’s original unless you are the copyright holder.

2) Color, where you can. Book covers, CD-inserts, you name it. It’s hard to copy and make it look good.

3) Binding: 3 Ring Binders are the easiest to copy. Hot Glue, or coverbind are the worst.

4) You can “Fake Serial Number” each E-Book. Make it look official. That may deter some.

5) Vero is VERY dicey. For example: If I buy your e-book, who says I Can’t sell it? Unless you disclose this, up-front on the sales page, I can sell your e-book that I legitimately purchased… Once. But, you can’t sell it more than once. Three Big name info marketers have had their VERO status cancelled because of abuse here.

Great post Jim.

-Phil

Good article - I’ve been having ebay auctions shut down for nearly five whole years now, hundreds of them, from malaysian and other pirates, who copy my videos and try to resell them on ebay.

Having a persistent search, where ebay emails you whenever your keyword search shows a result of your product, is the best automatic notification I know of … plus I check ebay daily, have for years, for pirated copies of my stuff.

I’ve had great success with ebay shutting down 100% of the illegal auctions I’ve sent notifications in via VERO/NOCI forms, highly recommended. Plus I .cc my attorney with a file of these as well, for follow-up/C&Ds if they’re US-based. For overseas, I fax it to the US consulate’s office for follow up.

Ken Calhoun
www.CopywritingUniversity.com

This has happened to me a couple of times.
I bought my book from them and left feedback to the effect that the person is selling stolen property. Then I used Vero to get it removed, and the negative feedback stayed.

Jeff

Ebay is the world’s biggest fence and they don’t do enough to stop the fakes. Last week I notified John Reese’s helpdesk that a person had sold 9 copies of Traffic Secrets within the last 30 days.

There’s a lot of things Ebay could do to help cut down on the copies. For instance, they could watch sellers who made 2nd chance offers and always use private bidding. I’ve never had a second chance offer that I believed was for a genuine item.

On one auction for an expensive course, I was the third highest bidder and I got a 2nd chance offer. I contacted two of the other bidders and found they also had gotten offers.

I told them I believed the courses were fakes but they bought anyway. I was able to notify the author who did shut the seller down.

It would be easy for Ebay to monitor the areas where fraud is prevalent, but I’ve seen no indication they do. Nor do they provide any cautions for bidders who view buying through Ebay, like buying from a store. Instead it’s like buying on the street, let the buyer beware.

Good post.

What would be even more helpful, however, would be to provide readers with some specifics about how they could implement some of your suggestions.

Don’t tell ‘em WHAT they need to do, also tell ‘em HOW they can do it.

For example, you said:

“First, set up automated searches on the major online auction services. Set them up to automatically notify you whenever an auction
gets posted that includes your name or the name of your product.

You can also set them up to email you whenever an auction gets listed with certain keywords in it, in my case “write ebook.”

So, many of your readers are left wondering: “Where do I go to set this up?” and
“How do I do it?”

Thanks

Auction Sites Trafficking Stolen Goods Online

Auction Sites Trafficking Stolen Goods Online
- by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
www.IGottaTellYou.com
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ah yes, eBay! The online auction giant that makes all your
dreams come true for finding …

Hi Jim, as usual I appreciate your article. I have a question. My mother has purchased a number of Mike Litman CDs and was thinking about selling them on eBay now that she is finished listening to them. So is that illegal? At 81 years old, she doesnt want to have her account shut down for doing the wrong thing.
Thank you,
Carol

-=-=-=–=-=-=-=-
FROM JIM:

I’m not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV)… but in my opinion:

If they are her own personal copies and there is no license restriction on Mike’s end against it, then she should be able
to do it.

If she made backups, she would need to destroy those (can’t sell or
use them) and uninstall any software, etc. that came with the products.

Can’t use any of Mike’s sales copy to sell them… have to write
your own descriptions of the product to list in the auction.

Yep, selling stolen digi products on ebay certainly is rampant.

Once a month I have one of my staff members go to ebay and shut down anyone selling my downloadable course.

They even copy the sales page and take images from my website! It’s amazing.

What can you do, other than stop the fraud where you can and hope the people who buy the products come to you for more info?

Donna

Yes, theft it a problem with digital product, but Ebay also creates a huge market for all stolen goods. I’m boycotting Ebay. Not that they’ll notice. In my retail store chain, one of the store managers was stealing product from the store and selling it on Ebay. She had several thousand positive feedbacks so you can imagine how much damage she did to the business in less than a year. Ebay makes it easy to find the digital stuff since the product sells best when explicitly identified. And once identified, it’s pretty clearly copied or not copied. But how about products that are readily available throughout the country in standard retail channels? How would you ever find out whether its your stuff (stolen) showing up on ebay? There is no good way to stop this anonymous, protected fencing of stolen goods, and it’s not just downloadable, copyrighted product that’s getting ripped off and sold every day. Think about it before you buy anything from an individual over Ebay. It could be stuff stolen from your house or your business or someone else’s house or business. Lots of positive feedback doesn’t make it not stolen - it just makes them a good thief.

Ebay is without a doubt the worlds largest fence, we have to spend around 20 minutes every single solitary day checking ebay for a number of our ebooks.

I have on average 2-3 listings removed every week via VERO.

VERO however has serious flaws. For example although Ebay move quickly to remove an illegal listing they do nothing to stop a repeat preformance from a user who’s sole objecive it is to sell other peoples property using ebay as his illegal shop front.

I have had constant battles with ebay proving catagorically that xyx user is a repeat offender even faxing them the original VERO removal request form for the said users.

Ebay do nothing and I mean nothing at all to stop repeat offenders, they simply remove the listing and the theft continues.

Therefore I have taken a few steps to stop the problem with considerable success.

Some things you can do :

1 - Download something like PLUCK and get it to check ebay automatically for listings with your key words.

2- On your ebook download page make it very clear you will sue the ass of anybody using ebay to sell your product, explicitly stating you check it each day and you will leave negative feedback when the listing is found

3- In your follow up e-mail send the same message

4 - In the PDF itself have a front page message explaining you will sue for copyright infringement and you check ebay every day , that you will get their account shut down and or leave neg feedback.

5 - on the footer of each page make it clear again that the copy they purchased is for their own use only etc.

-

Some stuff you actually do on ebay

1- Obviously get signed up to the VERO program here :
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/vero/about.html

2- Use PLUCK or Ebay’s own service to check for illegal listings

3- Leave negative feedback for the user with the wording along the lines of

Ebayer is selling stolen property - reported to Ebay

(They love that, they never list your property again trust me)

I do suggest you set up an account on ebay just for leaving negative feedback for these scum balls.

Additionally use some common sence, if it looks like the kind of user with a shop full of stolen intellectual property, go with the neg feedback, if not simply use VERO .

My tact is if they are repeat offenders or simply have created a complete store of other peoples property , I leave neg feedback AND then get VERO to remove their listing so they suffer both ways.

If they are just plain stupid and think because they purchased it they can sell it as their own, I simply get VERO to remove it.

It’s a problem there seems no solution to until somebody manages to get a partnership deal with Adobe and creates a true PDF protection system that does not require passwords usernames, works on macs and PC’s and simply ties a PDF to the hardware manufacturers hard disk ID. As a bonus if it could have a ‘turn off and lock ebook ‘ feature which presents the customer with a code which they give to you and you then refund them we would all be laughing.

Ebook pro etc have had a crack at it but nobody has come up with a true PDF protection system that is not flawed in on area or another.

Jim, I loved your article. And I appreciate the posted comments concerning experiences with intellectual property theft and how to stop it. This type of information is of value to both the eBay sellers/buyers, and ebook authors.

I have purchased many ebooks on Ebay. How would I know, as a purchaser, if what I’m purchasing is stolen or what I’ve already purchased is stolen? Ebook purchasers on Ebay needs some advice, too.