Clearly they need to prune down those reporting options then, if they have no way of acting in regard to some of them. I agree in regard to The Tolkien Estate. It ain't, obviously, going to happen though.

BH

Did tolkienfkesignature win the auction????

Yes, currently ignoring the seller

Urulókë wrote:
In eBay's defense, I have had an auction of mine taken down due to someone reporting it, so the reporting button/function does work - I am guessing they just don't know what to do with something as subjective as "is that a forgery or a real signature"?

Longer story - I was selling a boxed software product and as it turns out, that particular version was distributed as "not for resale" and I didn't know that - you could only tell from the UPC code. I didn't relist the item once I knew what I had. The report was made by the software maker, so they had "legitimacy" in the eyes of the eBay minion who handled the report.

Sorry but I'm not happy with your ebay defense as it does not work, in your case it is almost certainly because they are VeRO registered with ebay, so they had "legitimacy" http://pages.ebay.co.uk/vero/

The one and only success that I have ever had with ebay stopping a fake ebay auction, is because HarperCollins asked ebay to remove it and they are VeRO registered.

I may be wrong, but I strongly believe that in 100% of non-VeRO reported items, ebay take zero action.

Well, you say I'm not happy with your ebay defense as it does not work but both of us agree that reporting items does work - just not for us.

Again, look at this from eBay's perspective. They probably get thousands and thousands of reported items every day. Some of those are reported by other sellers trying to get a competitive advantage. Some are by frustrated buyers trying to sabotage a seller they think wronged them. Some are by specialists with excellent knowledge trying to protect others from buying fake items. How do they tell the difference? If they researched every reported item from unverified users, they would be buried and not survive the costs of doing so.

I agree that odds are extremely likely that unverified reports are filed away and nothing proactively done with them. However, they may serve a valuable purpose if the buyer then files a dispute, with the reports being used as evidence to back up the buyer's claim, so I do think they still have some very small value, even though the buyer is still pretty much screwed.

I think the best course of action is to lean on HarperCollins contacts to be our proxy to report things, as none of us are the rights holder.

Basically eBay backs this up if you read through the VeRO documentation. For example:

If you want to report other suspected infringing items to eBay write to Community Watch. We are happy to receive such information, but must advise that we may be limited in our ability to respond to your request absent formal notice from an authorized rights owner.

Essentially, eBay is taking a neutral stance unless legally compelled to act. They see this as a case of "he said / she said" between the seller's opinion of veracity and our opinion of forgery.

The fake signature was re-listed and did not sell, wonderful

I think he was shill-bidding against me last time. Tip Never bid on Private Auctions on ebay, you have no view on who is bidding against you (could very easily be the seller, to inflate the price)

eBay Item #161085001540

One bid in the last auction, they ignored 'buyer beware'.

eBay Item #161091945312

eBay Churchill fakes seller Allan Formhals sentence upheld

"Allan Formhals was jailed for 10 months in 2012 after being found guilty of 10 counts of fraud

An antiques dealer jailed for selling forged Winston Churchill memorabilia on the online auction site eBay has failed in a bid to overturn his convictions.

Allan Formhals from Milford on Sea was found guilty of 10 counts of fraud in December and jailed for 10 months.

The 67-year-old lawyers appealed his sentence, claiming the original jury's verdicts were "logically inconsistent".

Three Court of Appeal judges in London said there was nothing wrong with the verdicts and upheld his convictions.

But Lord Justice Davis, sitting with Mr Justice Nicol and Judge Elgan Edwards QC, said the trial judge had accurately summed up to the jury what Formhals' defence was.

Dismissing the appeal, he said he and his fellow judges "can see no logical inconsistency in the overall result" and that the court was "satisfied the convictions are safe"."

So this means that he will now face the Proceedings of Crime laws in the UK, in which he will be required to repay all the money that he gained illegally from his criminal activities.

If anyone on the board has suffered financially from Allan's activities then please let me know the amount and I will inform the police?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-25044756

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proceeds_of_Crime_Act_2002

eBay Item #171182619781

Do we think this is anotehr Allan effort?

Either way it looks poor to me. Why would he sign on the edge of a page like this. RUBBISH in my view
Thoughts