Before the rumors start flying around I thought it best to write everyone and tell them why we have nothing listed with eBay right now.

On Saturday we received an eBay notice stating that some of our listings were removed because the New York Fantasy Gaming Society had submitted a NOIC to VeRO saying we were infringing on their copyright.

I responded to the eBay notice asking how I might get in touch with the New York Fantasy Gaming Society to find out what they believed I was infringing upon. They supplied me with an anonymous email account through Yahoo.

I have written this anonymous account twice and have received no reply. According to eBay I must give them 5 business days to respond to my inquiry and if they do not write back to me I can then continue to file a Counter Notice with eBay stating that I believe my listings were removed in error.

In total eBay removed more than 10 listings at the behest of the NOIC form faxed in by the New York Fantasy Gaming Society. I removed the other 990 listings to prevent my eBay account from being suspended because of the large number of listings being removed by eBay抯 VeRO department.

According to eBay they do not know how I infringed on the New York Fantasy Gaming Society抯 copyright. They do not investigate nor validate these faxes when they are sent to eBay. They take the fax from the machine, hand it to a VeRO employee who then removes the listings as they are recorded on the faxed document. They do not read my listings and they do not try to call the complaining party to find out why they are sending the fax.

Furthermore even though I am given the email address for the New York Fantasy Gaming Society they do not have an obligation to respond to me and tell me how I infringed their copyright.

So basically anyone can fax a form to eBay抯 VeRO department, they will take the listings down. They will continue to remove your listings until you fix the problem?but they won抰 tell you what the problem is and the only way to get a copy of the fax to see what you are being accused of is to obtain a subpoena. I have spoken with eBay through multiple phone calls and emails and they have assured me that there isn抰 any way I am going to find out what I抳e been accused of without a subpoena.

To me this seems like a fantastic way to get rid of the competition. You can fax a form to eBay and let eBay aid you in your quest to eliminate the competition. eBay will remove the seller抯 listings and not give them any just reason and because you can抰 know what you抮e being accused of without a subpoena (and most people aren抰 going to spend the time and money to hire a lawyer) then you can fill out the form, lie your guts out about owning the rights to a copyright and no one will ever be the wiser because eBay doesn抰 take the time to validate what is written on the faxed form. So even though you are signing a legal document who would catch you in the act of perjury? No one unless they obtain a subpoena.

At this point we抮e more than reasonably sure that this is a competing seller that has done this and after speaking to a few government offices and legal officials they too feel pretty confident that since there is no record of this organization in New York State that this fax is a fraud.

I spoke with the Department of State, the United States Copyright Office, the United States Trademark Office and two attorneys today who cannot find any trace of the New York Fantasy Gaming Society ever existing. So we will see how this plays out.

At some point this harassment has to come to an end. Many of you have been keeping up to date on all of this in the forums and for those of you who haven抰 we, and other sellers, have been repeatedly harassed and bullied on eBay, on the internet, through email, have had our collectors contacted and discrediting lies told to these collectors, and a mound of other issues. I have never seen a level of harassment like this before and that is why we抳e decided to pursue this to the hilt, someone has to stand up to people of this low caliber.

We抣l let everyone know about our intent at a later date, and of course you can join the forum and be kept up to date every day.

Tags: Metaphysical