Hi all. I recently was disturbed to see a whole list of 54mm models on eBay. All are "sculpted and produced in the Ukraine for commoisseurs".

The figures are in fact all rip offs of existing figures from Pegaso (mostly), Soldiers and Latorre. They unashamedly use the same titles for the figures!

I spoke to Luca who said he was virtually powerless to stop this from happening, and eBay would not cooperate in terminating the sales.

The only defence manufacturers have is if modellers Do NOT BUY these figures. Many manufacturers struggle to stay in business in any event, and it doesn't take much to sink them. If we want to continue to enjoy the enormous range of figures (of the quality we now have), we cannot support criminals stealing the hard work of truly talented sculptors.

Neil, ALL of us here at pF have and will continue to support all manufactures as there seems to be so little they can do. Anytime we can get the word out that a person or group of people are making money off someone else's hard work will not be tolerated here. Do you have a link so that we can e mail eBay ourselves and ask that this be removed? Maybe if more than one complaint comes in, they'll be more likely to listen. Speaking of which, did eBay give a reason for not removing the bid?

Thanks,
Jim Patrick

Neil, I'd like a link also.~Gary

I also would like a link so we can complain.

marc

me too

Hi,
I spoke to Luca about this in October last year. In my case, I saw some very crude, ready-painted figures (in some sort of ceramic) for sale in a Hallmark store in Montreal, Canada. They were blatant rip-offs of Pegaso figures. Even the Italian knight with Luca's own likeness!!

I raised it with him but he said there was little he could do. I wonder though if copyright law might be applied to this. I hate to see scumbags taking advantage of the creative talents and work of Pegaso and other figure producers.

I'd be interested to hear what others think about protecting their work.
Gerry

It cannot hurt for all of us to complain to Ebay every time we see this kind of rip-off. Please post the llink, and I, for one, will be glad to express my disappointment to Ebay for their lack of concern. I bet if you dig through their policies you will find something that says they will not allow sales of copyright infringing goods.

Here's a link to E-Bay's policy

Ebay copyright policy

There is a link below the policy to report counterfeit items.

Hi all. Here is a link to the available pirated figures;

http://search.ebay.ca/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25...ssZhshopQ5f1979



The seller is

" hshop_1979 "

here's what we can do

we all bit high say $100 so that he won't sell them and then we dont pay he will leave a negative feedback and then we leave ours and say that he is a pirate


David

Hi folks,

I tried several times to send an e-mail to ebay but it never works. I had the feeling that ebay make it so difficult, that people who want to complain give up.

This relates to the questionable reputation ebay had got in Germany in the last time.

I don't think that ebay is realy interested in stopping such piracy, as they make money with this pirates.

I can only call to all honourable figurine friends: dont by this copies, with every selld copy this criminals desetroy our hobby!

Best regards

Bruno

Been on ebay and reported 10 of this guy's posts as counterfeit. Scrolling through the stuff I noticed a figure sculpted by my brother, and he sure as hell didn't sculpt it for some bandit in Ukraine (with the greatest of respect for Ukranian Planeteers and Ukranians in general)

Not that I expect eBay to actually DO anything, which is ironic, considering the bottom line on the counterfeit reporting screen reads

Anyone else want to follow suit - the more the merrier :angry:

Phil

I've tried E-mailing ebay in regards to these listings and their steps for listing a violation is a JOKE to navigate. They even have specific items listed on the steps which leads me to believe those are the only items they seriously look into. So unless GUCCI makes figures you might as well forget it. About the only thing I could do was send the seller a message to let him know these are pirated and I'm not fooled.~Gary

At least by classing them as 'toy soldiers' he's limiting his market! I always search by the scale, and then by 'military'.

Some of them are in my collection as originals, so I'd spot them straight away as fakes and never buy them.

Very sorry to see this. I personally am sick and tired of Ebay's "casual" attitude about theft and piracy. Artists and kit producers have suffered while Ebay's "cottage industry" of recasters have gotten a green light.

This has been an insidious and ongoing problem with the larger scale figure producers for sometime now.....thanks to Ebay.

I agree with Bruno, we have to boycot such offence! Leave him to rot at least he is still in his starting and just less than 20 sales so we need to join forces and just let friends know what a damn bugger he is!

Ivan

I'll try to report all the items to ebay but it is not possible to send the message.
I'll give up with ebay.

Marc

I sent off an email to the seller, telling him of my thoughts of what he is doing. There is a great deal of volume on Ebay and they are really not too interested in going after the little guys.

Thanks for the heads up. I know the dedication of our artists and would never buy anything like this from eBay and I gladly support orginal manufacturers.

Thanks
Craig Baldwin

Here's what he has to say:

Gimme a break! I just tried to venture through eBay's not so user friendly way of reporting a scam. There must be something else that can be done! You just simply can't run rough shod over companies around the world.

Jim Patrick

Guys, you are taking the hard way, eBay will pass of you, the only way is to block his PayPal account. Just sent an email to PayPal customer service telling that the eBay hshop_1979 user (his email seems to be denis@email.dn.ua) is using a PayPal account for illegal traffics. They will suspend his account.

We should creat ebay accounts named :

- EbayPirateHunter,
- EbayPirateCOP,

or names likes this exemples,

and we"ll do our own police. We bid hundreds dollars, and never buy it. So we can leave negative feedback, everybody will read our feedbacks

JP