I sent Marius an email to let him know that his photos were stolen by this scammer so that he could report it and get it taken down.  In the meantime, exercise caution.  http://www.ebay.com/itm/201051348688

is it possible that he truly has Nordland cutting but needs good pictures? Is it illegal to use any picture found on internet to push a product? I am just curious...

Just saw that myself and thought they look very familiar.

Wow!!
Almost word for word!!
Wait a minute, it is word for word!! 

Are all the pictures marius' or some of them?

I'm not excusing the dude, but when you are on Ebay and you look up a listing, it asks you "Do you have one to sell?"  And if you click on the box, you can list a duplicate item.  Ebay's system just does it for you.  That might be what the guy did.  I know when I listed things from Jim's mom's estate, I did that a lot.  I'd find an antique bowl like hers, click on "I have one to sell," and just fill in my info.  I did make a lot of changes, and put in my own photos, BUT this is pretty much how Ebay makes it easy for sellers.

Suzi

Suzi nevertheless how hard is it to take one picture yourself?

I do not know the person selling or the person who's pics those are. But i have to deal with stuff like this all the time. This is what i know.

There exists a law. It's called copyright infringement.
If i took a picture of my tree or fruit i would own that picture. Nobody else is allowed to use that picture without my written permission.

If someone uses it falsely the course of action to take is you need to notify the person and say that you are the owner of those images.
You let them know they are using your images without your permission and ask that they take them down immediately.
Email or contact Ebay and inform them as well.

If after these steps have been taken the issue is not resolved. You can then go see an attorney and for a small fee take legal action.
You can go see the attorney before you take the above steps and for a bigger fee he will do the same.


90% of the time once the person see's the warning they know better and remove the images. The 10% of the time they don't..... Lawyer will have fun with them. Especially if they are making money off your images.

it is "illegal". you are using someone else's property without permission. with internet where you can get pix off almost everywhere, this practice of "barrowing" without permission is rampant. if eBay is allowing this to happen, maybe some sue crazy person can sue them for promoting illegal activity.

[QUOTE=If someone uses it falsely the course of action to take is you need to notify the person and say that you are the owner of those images.
You let them know they are using your images without your permission and ask that they take them down immediately.
Email or contact Ebay and inform them as well.

If after these steps have been taken the issue is not resolved. You can then go see an attorney and for a small fee take legal action.
You can go see the attorney before you take the above steps and for a bigger fee he will do the same.[/QUOTE]


Could you give me an example of what a "small fee" would be?

To be honest with you it's never gotten to the point where i actually had to hire the lawyer to take action.
The guy i went to see told me the steps to take. You email the person doing it and the organization/site hosting the images. (In my case it's on FB)
If you don't notify them you can not file a suit later on.

He charged me 50$ When i asked him how much it would be if i had to escalate action. He didn't quote me an exact price but he said between 350$ and 500$
I guess it would depend on the lawyer and the area as well.

the way I see it is that , unless you have watermarked your pictures, there is no way you can get a good result out of any action taken. I might be wrong but... i'm just being practical.

In another life I was an event photographer. I only had to do this once, luckily. Owning the original (digital) image and camera secures your claim to be the owner of the image. Metadata is imbedded in your image, shot number, camera serial number, owner name... The easiest thing to do is to download a "Cease and Desist" template, fill it in, and send it to the person who is using your images. Of course, it's a lot easier to do this if you have the person's email. Sending the letter electronically, taking a screenshot of the image, and including dates in the letter are helpful if you ever want to escalate. People I've spoken to about this told me to be corteous and friendly when doing this, since most of the time people don't know they are infringing, and will happily take down the images.

I have no idea who the seller is,but these are 100% my photos.....
Marius

When you list an item on eBay do you give them rights to use your image in whatever way they see fit (such as letting another seller use it, pre-populated for their listing)?

Not that I think its right but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that is in the fine print.

No ebay doesn't claim the rights to photos... they are just like a shelf in a store and all they are interested in it you selling your item so they can collect a fee and doing it legally...

I just sent him a message, I don't know If anyone else did. I'm not expecting to hear back though

The owner of the Photos (Marius) can click on to a link Report Item, hopefully this gets this item off.

Those are excellent and illustrative photos.  It definitely depicts the Nordland fig better than any other photos I have seen.  

I don't know how copyright laws works but I was told once that you need to put the copyright symbol in your documentation or computer program code if you want to start the copyright process for software you write.  If not someone can copy the code and you would be hard pressed to do much. 
Not sure how or if applies to published photographs.  But many photographs have watermarks, metadata or some stamp that states the photographer/owner...  Some websites even prevent you from copying photos by disabling functions in your browser.

When you publish a photo on the web can people use it or do they owe a royalty when using commercially?

eBay may make it easy for folks to copy the work of others but it does not give the others the right to use Marius' work.  eBay also makes it easy for someone like Marius to report it and then eBay will promptly take the auction down.  It has happened many times before.  Since the seller has the dubious honor of copying the photos and description from Marius, I certainly would not trust them to be selling what they claim to have.  I don't see any history of selling figs.  Marius recently sold some for $51 and it appears they just want to cash in on the action.

Bidding is up to over $28.  Marius, please report it by going to http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ReportItemMember&items=201051348688&seller=krackalaka&active=1&state=1 and selecting the obvious choices there.  Jon has had to do this many times.

Anyone can use anything they want as long as it is within fair use: 
[QUOTE]In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship.[/QUOTE]
Notice those uses are all for the public good, so we can communicate freely. 

For commercial purposes permission is always required, royalty or not. Even if that seller bought the cuttings from Marius they have no right to use the photos to sell anything.

Last (and only) time I bought a fig from a listing with stolen photos (later discovered) I received 3 dead cottonwood seedlings, and I consider myself lucky because I wasted no time in getting a refund. But people usually end up with unwanted trees in this type of situation and do not know they have been bamboozled until it is too late.

Let"s all bombard the seller with messages that they are not his photos. Some group action maybe?

This is the response I got today;


These cuttings are from my own tree. it is same kind and I apologize for
using his pictures, but I cannot change it now. I lost my pictures of my
own trees and will take new pictures this year and make sure I don't lose
them. I am not listing this item anymore until next year once I have my own
photos. All i have found is a few pictures of the fruit that I took last
year, but no pictures of the trees. I was going to edit the listing but it
has bids. Whoever wins the auction will not be let down, it is an amazing
tree. But as I said, I will not relist this item until I have pictures of
my own trees and fruits, which will be quite some time in the future.

-krackalaka

Interesting.  There apparently have been some bid retractions as the price has dropped $20.

I see $8? And that is still too much for empty promises.

if we talk about a fig named "Monkey's Butt", i bet it will be on the ebay very soon.. it's red a fig with unusual colored pulp. 

Oh yes, I have that one. Very unusual taste.

ok I want a Nordlant!
hey Pete, speaking of a new variety "Monkey's Bott", does it have a tight "eye" or would it be a hole in this case? I'm just curious....to see if it's going to do well in Los Angeles, specially in WeHo, LOL

Can anyone comment on that golf ball of a breba, I did a little searching and it seems like Nordland brebas should be much more elongated. Pic is labeled with the date 7/4/13. 

krackaloka!

Satoshi nakamoto? I didn't know there was a fig cultivar named after this guy...

Another listing was posted as well with another pic, and another eBay account. Marius' photos have been removed as well as the name Nordland, but the seller kept the Nordland story.


Looks like another Paradiso JM.

OK, I want Paradiso too!
LOL

Hii any body, i get this figs from japan and the other from us,

In the eBay listing he references "More info on figs4fun.com". May even be a forum member here. My gut says this was more likely poor photo etiquette than anything else....The pics are down from the eBay listing now so clearly someone got the message.

Or

There are 24 bids in and the price is up to nearly $50, so maybe there's something to this...Seems steep for a cutting.

More importantly - This Norland sound like an awesome cold-climate fig. If anyone can point me to someone who has them I'd like to get my hands one one..... For less than $50 per cutting I'm hoping.... That's like $67 Canadian

Too bad there isn't a way to lock ancient threads.  It is always confusing when they pop up.

I never noticed that it was old til you said that

Hey Marius.

Did you get the email I sent you?