![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eBay followup
Aug. 13th, 2007 04:46 pmI thought I'd just make another post instead of trying to reply to everyone's comments individually :)
First off, thanks to all who replied for your support! It really means a lot to me.
The seller refunded my payments (of the files that weren't there). I don't know whether the VeRO process means that the other buyers got refunds for their stolen goods; I'm not sure how that works, and while I emailed eBay to find out, they haven't gotten back to me yet. She sounded rather hostile in terms of voluntarily refunding the buyers, which does piss me off; I'm always telling the kids "If it's not yours, don't touch it!" and I think that applies equally well to this situation: "If it's not yours, don't sell it!". Should be fairly obvious, in my view. Seller claims that she found the patterns on some free baby crafts site that labeled them free to use, distribute, copy, change, or "do what you like with them", so (according to her) not on my site. This is the same thing the previous seller claimed, but she did not produce the site in question. I've emailed this seller a couple of times for the URL; as with the previous one, she's "too busy" to find it and doesn't seem savvy enough to check her history (which I suggested but haven't heard back yet). I told her I'd withdraw my negative feedbacks from her if she could find it for me, so there is some incentive there!
Now, the question is, if this site exists, what the heck can I do about it? Because, if they've been giving away copies of my (and other people's) work like this, "free to distribute etc." it seems possible that there may be dozens of places my patterns are now being distributed for resale, and that making major changes to my own site to keep people from selling the patterns is closing the barn door after the cows have been rustled. I might be able to get the originating site (if the seller can point me to it -- I have spent literally hours searching for such a place and keep coming up empty, at least the way she describes it) to take down my work, but that's not going to help with any others that might be out there.
I'm pissed that this little industry exists in the first place. Pissed for me, and for the hundreds or thousands of other people whose work is being ripped off and resold. It's amazing what some scumbags will do for a buck :( If anyone has any leads about this kind of site (where not just links are posted -- I think those are fine, provided they make clear that the works being linked to are not for sale -- but to places that offer "free" PDFs for resale), please let me know. I guess my google juju isn't as strong as I thought it was, or I'm searching for the wrong terms (or looking in the wrong places -- after all, I have "moderate safe search" turned on...) but I just can't find anything like what the sellers have described. I wouldn't be surprised if it existed, but I am surprised that two people as totally un-computer-savvy as the two sellers seem to be could both find this site, when I (an internet user since 1992) cannot.
First off, thanks to all who replied for your support! It really means a lot to me.
The seller refunded my payments (of the files that weren't there). I don't know whether the VeRO process means that the other buyers got refunds for their stolen goods; I'm not sure how that works, and while I emailed eBay to find out, they haven't gotten back to me yet. She sounded rather hostile in terms of voluntarily refunding the buyers, which does piss me off; I'm always telling the kids "If it's not yours, don't touch it!" and I think that applies equally well to this situation: "If it's not yours, don't sell it!". Should be fairly obvious, in my view. Seller claims that she found the patterns on some free baby crafts site that labeled them free to use, distribute, copy, change, or "do what you like with them", so (according to her) not on my site. This is the same thing the previous seller claimed, but she did not produce the site in question. I've emailed this seller a couple of times for the URL; as with the previous one, she's "too busy" to find it and doesn't seem savvy enough to check her history (which I suggested but haven't heard back yet). I told her I'd withdraw my negative feedbacks from her if she could find it for me, so there is some incentive there!
Now, the question is, if this site exists, what the heck can I do about it? Because, if they've been giving away copies of my (and other people's) work like this, "free to distribute etc." it seems possible that there may be dozens of places my patterns are now being distributed for resale, and that making major changes to my own site to keep people from selling the patterns is closing the barn door after the cows have been rustled. I might be able to get the originating site (if the seller can point me to it -- I have spent literally hours searching for such a place and keep coming up empty, at least the way she describes it) to take down my work, but that's not going to help with any others that might be out there.
I'm pissed that this little industry exists in the first place. Pissed for me, and for the hundreds or thousands of other people whose work is being ripped off and resold. It's amazing what some scumbags will do for a buck :( If anyone has any leads about this kind of site (where not just links are posted -- I think those are fine, provided they make clear that the works being linked to are not for sale -- but to places that offer "free" PDFs for resale), please let me know. I guess my google juju isn't as strong as I thought it was, or I'm searching for the wrong terms (or looking in the wrong places -- after all, I have "moderate safe search" turned on...) but I just can't find anything like what the sellers have described. I wouldn't be surprised if it existed, but I am surprised that two people as totally un-computer-savvy as the two sellers seem to be could both find this site, when I (an internet user since 1992) cannot.
