I have posted this in the merchants forums and as many of you won't have access I put it here too. ---------------------------------------------------------- Curious Practices - to sell or not to sell Many of you will know me, or at least of me. Many of you have purchased my products at Renderosity, my own website, even on Ebay. I have provided content for Poser for around five years now. I was one of Renderosity's first merchants in the Marketplace. As far as my products go, well some of you like them, some don't, such is life, but I feel confident that none of you think that any of them are illegal, and indeed they are not. That is why, a few weeks ago, I was shocked to be informed by Ebay that certain of the CD-ROMs of my Poser content were being removed from their listings. Of course I immediately queried this and was told to get in touch with the intellectual rights owner to sort it out. Now I was even more confused because the intellectual rights owner is actually me. Anyway, after reading through Ebay's emails again I discovered that my accuser was none other than Curious Labs. It seems that they use a third party company for their anti-piracy. It seems that this company, Internet Copyright Enforcement run by a Mike Watso, otherwise known as NukePirates.com, thought I was selling pirate copies of Poser. So I emailed them to let them know the disc only containes content for Poser, not Poser itself. True to most companies form they never replied. I tried Curious Labs instead, through their Contact Us form on their Website. In a matter of a few hours a person whom I only know as Fish had the whole mess sorted out. They said sorry, assured me it wouldn't happen again and that was an end to it. Fair enough. I relisted my discs, sold several and relisted them again. Sunday 17th April. Ebay email to say that they have again removed my sitings and this time locked my account. What had happened, yes you guessed. They assured me it would never happen again, but it had. Once again Mike Watso had dropped the ball and expected me to catch it. This time I didn't even bother emailing him first. This time I sent a rather bristly email, complete with completely understandable four letter rant, to my old friend Fish. Who immediately apologised. Sorry? Sorry wasn't good enough this time. Once can be forgiven, but this time my account was locked, my good name had been besmirched and I was losing sales at Ebay. Finally I appealed Ebay's decision and fired an email off to NukePirates.com Fish was very sympathetic, after hearing that I needed him to contact Ebay he straightaway set about the job. Infortunately in vain. What happened their I doubt I will ever know. Meanwhile Mike Watso sent me an email, claiming I had breached a copyright by using the words Poser and Store in my product description. Quote: We had originionally had your auction cancelled for a copyright infringement on using the POSER STORE name on your auction site. :End Quote I sent Fish a second email to query this, does Curious Labs own the copyright to those two particular words. For nearly five years I have called my website PoserStore, until recently I had the domain name PoserStore.com (now pdblake.com) registered. If I remember correctly even Daz3D use the name on their site, or at least used to. Fish never responded, I'm still waiting for a reply. It could be the fact that I mentioned the 'C' word, compensation for closing me down for four days (and counting), dragging my name through the mud and basically running me around in circles for the last few days, of it could be that he/she's busy checking on the legality of that copyright claim. Personally I think the claim is rubbish. If it's not then there are going to be an awful lot of locked websites and stores before long. Now, I could get my ebay account reinstated apparently, by admitting guilt and promising not to break the law again. As I have done nothing wrong, then I refuse to do this. Ebay can stick their account. I also doubt I will get very far with any compensation claim, I just don't have the money to fight with. What really worries me is this, if they can do this to me, someone who has supported their product for so long, then they can do it to you too, and not bat an eye lid about it.