On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Bob Blakely wrote: > He has not stolen any images. He has merely linked to images. It's > possible to provide images for your sites that can not be linked to if > this is important to you. If you don't want someone linking to your > images, make your site a tiny bit more sophisticated. Make the folder > that contains the images off limits to the screaming public. It's not > that hard. Frankly, I would have provided a standard (click to see) > link to Boz's site myself for any particulars to go along with my own > photo. Last I heard, links are legal whether we like it or not and > software that automatically incorporates such links is standard. He > didn't copy the image and paste it from his own URL.
This may be true, but is beside the point. These are the relevant lines from eBay's policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/png-list.html [begin quote] The eBay Item page can contain no URLs or links to, or promotional information about, any off eBay web page, including web sites of the seller or any third party. There are 2 exceptions to this general rule - the eBay item page may contain a link to information related specifically to that item that: Gives acknowledgement to a company that provided services related to that listing (such as counters, auction management tools, or payment and mediation services). This acknowledgement may contain both a logo (88x33 pixels) and up to 10 words of text (HTML font size 3) but only one of those may be clickable. Points interested buyers to another Internet page that contains only more information (such as pictures, product specifications or detailed terms and conditions) about eBay items listed by that seller. [end quote] So, by eBay rules, what the seller did was wrong and against their policy. > Originally, Boz got free press for his site and another step up the > site authority ladder outside our own small, insular fraternity and > with nothing lost from his pocket. Now I'm sure he has added to his > reputation in another way. Sometimes we just have to consider what's > really in our best interests. Even though the seller was breaking eBay's rules and Boz was perfectly justified in doing what he did, this is still a good point. It might have proved beneficial to email the seller (possibly using a form letter for this), explaining why what they did was wrong, and telling to put a link after the photo saying something like, "This photo courtesy of Boz's K-Mount Page[link]. All rights reserved." It's still against eBay's rules, but at least you'd be getting some free publicity from it. chris - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
