The responses directed me to VeRO. I had already filled out the forms Thursday night, but couldn’t fax them in until I returned to work this morning.

I’ll report in if and when I get a response from VeRO.

On a side note to Ann, any well organized review site has an agreement of some sort in place. I have reviewed for several places and I know this for a fact.

She did in fact use the VERO program. — despite the fact that it is for listings, not reviews, AND ebay confirmed that…. but clearly ebay is an idiot so…

Here’s what she said:

At first I couldn’t get eBay to respond to me at all. I sent emails, no response and although JR was lucky enough to only have ONE review stolen, they still hadn’t removed it. And talking to their representative in live chat was no use. She actually looked at the review on our website and said…look at the bottom, he copied your copyright.

I said…uhhh…”that’s our webpage and our statement” DUH!

Talk about inept!!

So after getting no where, I went ahead and faxed them over a VeRO form informing them of our intellectual property rights. I faxed and then printed out a fax report stating fax date and how many pages sent to their number.

Then I got an email telling me they couldn’t find the review, could I link them to the correct review….*sigh* FINALLY after I did that I received a response about 30 minutes ago from them that the review has been removed.

It was worse than pulling teeth! But I wanted to post this so that anyone else who is trying to get their reviews removed and hasn’t received a response will know what worked for me.

Melissa
Joyfully Reviewed

There you have it folks… Edson’s book reviews have gone down from 224 to 223. So spread the word.

If you have a good faith belief that a listing on eBay infringes your copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights, all you need to do is download our Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI) form, fill it out, and fax it to eBay. Download eBay’s NOCI form

So if you have a good faith belief that the listing on eBay infringes on your copyright, you have fulfilled step one. It’s worth a shot. The DMCA protects only those hosting services that take expeditious action to remove infringing content but the hosting service has to be notified first.

The thing is, they just won’t respond to me. And when they finally did it was that VeRO thing, which isn’t relevant. Live help just continuously tells me that Trust&Safety are the ones that need to take care of it.

Thanks for posting about this.

First, Amazon does not have copyright in the reviews posted there. They are a host the same as eBay is in this case. Amazon has an implied license to display and use the work in the manner it was intended, but you are free to do with it as you please elsewhere with the work. Transfer of copyright requires a signed contract and/or an employment relationship that qualifies as a work for hire. Neither apply here.

Second, eBay does have a DMCA agent. They use the VeRO program for items and also use the VeRO address to receive DMCA notices, but they do have a DMCA process. You can read about it here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/registered-agent.html

If you want, I have stock letters on my site that you are free to use. However, do not expect any response until after the weekend since it is a holiday weekend in the U.S.

Hopefully those who are infringed can get this matter resolved. eBay actually has a decent reputaiton. However, I think that it is highly unfair to expect Amazon to do anything in this case as they have no rights to the work and can not file a DMCA notice on behalf of the rights holder under law. Their hands were and are tied.

Hope that this helps!

because once they are up at our home review site, that site owns the copyright.

Unless you explicitly sign your copyright away, this is bullshit – or are you a paid reviewer?

No one can take your copyright from you without your consent. That’s the essential principle behind the Berne Convention.