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Trillion

PayPal refusing to let me sell the stickers other sellers are selling on Ebay

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You will be much better off creating your own or buy some cds that give permission to use their art work or photographs.  There are many out there and they are very reasonable ...

 

Everyone Speeds sometime or another but not everyone gets caught ...

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also remember that not all cd's you buy are legit - there have been several people on here buy cd's and dvd's of images that were protected that they thought were legit.

 

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Try searching royalty free images Just read the fine print and like Scott said there still are some copyright images even on some of the good disks.  Just use common sense If it shows a Harley Decal you know you cant use it.

 

Sign Torch is a good one to look at what I mean

 

http://www.signtorch.com/store/Free-Vector-DXF-Art-Samples

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If you are going to be selling someones work then you need to have an agreement with them like mr300s mentioned. Look for royalty free vector work and be sure that the purchase agreement allows you to reproduce and sell the graphics. Many will let you do that once you buy the design from them but they will usually have some restrictions that apply to the design as well. They usually also have a contact number or email where you can discourse with them and be sure you are not getting yourself in trouble. The many people selling the things you see on eBay MAY have a license to do so or they MAY be just skating by. The only one you can control is you. US Copyright law protects the work at it's inception without filing any special paperwork or anything. I have no clue what the rules are in the UK. Trademark has a different set of rules completely and must be registered to take effect. I don't know how trademark and copyright laws work over country lines. 

 

Bottom line is there are ways to get permission to sell. Once you have that you can respond with a copy of your agreement to any of these claims and they should let you sell it at that point or at least explain why they won't. A good design can take a long time to dream up and create so by cutting and selling someones work without the proper permission you are in effect stealing from them. Therefore they have certain rights to come get what's owed. We tend to take copyright and trademark infringement pretty serious and being "in the business" we know how easy it is to ultimately copy someones design and use it. Not every craft has that ability or tools so there is a certain self restraint that is required to resist the temptation. It's like being in a bank with someone else's money sitting on the counter and they walk away for a moment leaving it unattended. Does that give you license to take it just because they weren't watching? Some people think so but I don't. 

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Notice that the ad that you linked as a fellow copyright offender doesn't list their items as being "Adidas" or "Batman" anywhere in their ad - just in the pictures.

If you included the name of the copyrighted logo that you were selling, you made it *much* easier for the copyright owner to find you - all they had to do was type "Adidas" in the search bar and look at every listing outside of sports apparel and bam - there are most of their copyright offenders.  Adidas doesn't make video game light bars, so anything with Adidas in the Video Games category is 99% certain to be a violation.

Just because other people are getting away with it doesn't make it right - they'll be caught - eventually.   Just be grateful that this was the worst that happened to you.  You can be sued for willful copyright violation and it adds up into the hundreds of thousands PER VIOLATION.

Figure that anything with a brand logo or even brand name is copyrighted and off limits.  Anything with a sports team logo or team name - or a college name - movie title - etc. are all copyrighted.  If someone else created/invented it and people are willing to pay for it, then you shouldn't be making it without securing a license to reproduce it first.

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There's no need to respond in such an aggressive manner and with such rubbish. There are several larger businesses operating on Ebay selling these stickers and as I've explained I naively assumed this would be fine for that reason. I am not arguing that there's an issue now that I've read up on it, I'm simply confused at why other, larger sellers are allowed to continue operating selling the same decals that presented an issue for me.

 

Break the law? Calm down mate, not exactly selling Cocaine on Ebay am I?

 

Dude, you are breaking the law.  You might as well be selling cocaine, check out the fines:

https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/penalties.html

 

http://supolicies.syr.edu/docs/alcohol_penalties_federal.pdf

Secondly, watching someone else break the law isn't an excuse to do it yourself is it?  Larger companies may not be "caught" as you put it, because they have either gone through the proper channels and received licensing agreements to reproduce the logos or they are simply better at hiding like maybe not naming their item by the copyright holder's name (ie adidas widget).  Secondly, you just got a letter, who's to say that the other companies didn't get the same letter and are just ignoring it, or maybe there's a pending lawsuit you don't know about, which would take longer than sending a letter. 

So, all in all, you're just being immature, you did something wrong, you got caught and now you feel singled out so you're trying to justify your actions by stating that "everyone else is doing it".  A copyright judge wouldn't buy that and neither do I.  So, once again, don't be a dunce.

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