Picture of my car Used to sell on ebay !

[mdbrich]

So story goes, one of my yellow fog lights burned out. I went to look at prices on ebay. Typed something along the lines of CRZ FOG LIGHT. When I get a result back with a picture I used for car of the month back in April or so. So someone has been stealing photos from out COTM section and using them to sell online. Now I personally took the time to take these photos and own all rights to them. Coming from a background with photography and digital arts its not ethical for someone in that business to take a random photo online. Not to mention the listing is for yellow overlays, which my car does not even have.

I wrote the seller this:

I am writing because I am the sole owner of the car, and owner to the rights of the photograph with the white CRZ you are selling overlay covers with online. I know where you took the image from. I have the .raw image files to back up my claim. Please remove the image of my car from any ad's. Thank you. As a side note my car does not even have overlays it has yellow bulbs.

[Kyleseghatch]

You should mark thee photos with some sort of name or emblem. That's some bs bro.hope he removes them.

[CR-Z Canadian]

I'm surprised he's not trying to sell your car!
Don't stop at conversing with the seller -report abuse to eBay directly.
I'm not sure you'll get anywhere with the image ownership thing (that's the reality of the internet age), but if the image isn't showing what he is selling, then it is false advertising. And that's something that eBay should be able to pull the auction for, and possibly sanction the seller. He'll only start with a new ID, but at least he will lose his feeback (assuming that is worth holding on to).

If it becomes an isssue, we can all buy his products, then complain to ebay and get PayPal to refund our money, and give him nasty feedback! Sometimes you have to get nasty to get results.

[hotboxn]

Flag it through eBay and it'll be removed quickly.

[hoisumguo]

Is it the jdmfanatic one? Seems like they would have picked one that didn't have a distinctive headlight setup at least. Might as well have picked Fred's as it's just as recognizable. Jacked dude, sorry...

If u find a complaint link I'll submit 4 u too as I'm sure multiple complaints has more weight than a single.

-Hoi

-Hoi

[Scotty001]

I face these types of issues frequently in one aspect of my job.

^ do a google on "internet copyright". Bottom line is if you publish an original work to include a graphic to the internet regardless of whether you officially copyright it, or just put the copyright statement on it - or put no notice on it - it belongs to you and someone else can not use it without your permission.

Where it gets a little muddy is if they just link to it as opposed to downloading it and reusing it. The basic premises is they still should ask permission. But, like I said, a bit muddy when linking to open source information.

But in this case, I believe you have a case and should pursue it if you want. They are using your graphic to attempt to sell something.

If others have concerns on this subject, when posting a picture or other material, you can put a copyright statement on it.

Copyright (c) 2011 John R Doe. You do not have to register to put the copyright statement. Copyright on original material is automatic. Just may want to make others aware of it.