1st Woodgrain Auction
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:06 am 
 

What's going on with the woody auction?  Ebay member "acaeum" pulled out, after entering the wrong bid amount of $14,999.  Now there's "woodgraincollector" sitting on top of a bunch of bids by a legit buyer who's obviously trying to make a sincere run at it:



http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 8778118222



I'm just curious.  If woodgraincollector is a member, you can PM me in confidence.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:08 am 
 

bombadil wrote:What's going on with the woody auction?  Ebay member "acaeum" pulled out, after entering the wrong bid amount of $14,999.  Now there's "woodgraincollector" sitting on top of a bunch of bids by a legit buyer who's obviously trying to make a sincere run at it:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 8778118222

I'm just curious.  If woodgraincollector is a member, you can PM me in confidence.




I assume that bid retraction was a scheme to discover the maximum bid?

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:19 am 
 

I would really doubt that Nocstar was making anything but a push to see the limit of the "Acaeum" bid ( I mean I think we all could tell that was too coincidental to be legit ). I just think if somebody was going to pay 3K for something you would enter that bid as opposed to "pushing" it up in increments if they were seriously interested.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:29 am 
 

Lordan wrote:I would really doubt that Nocstar was making anything but a push to see the limit of the "Acaeum" bid ( I mean I think we all could tell that was too coincidental to be legit ). I just think if somebody was going to pay 3K for something you would enter that bid as opposed to "pushing" it up in increments if they were seriously interested.

Nocstar is a well known bidder, but I don't recall him having large amounts of cash.  He is quite tenacious, however.  I thought his budget was only slightly higher than mine, so it's a little surprising to see him bid in that range.  Maybe the tax refund came in...  :?:

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:18 pm 
 

bump

Any more thoughts?

  

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:23 pm 
 

How can this auction be taken seriously!  If it isn't a hoax the guy must be the worst seller of all time.  Use a stolen picture, stolen description.  For god's sake borrow a digital camera and take some pics already!!  This item is worth thousands!!


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:05 pm 
 

Blackmoor wrote:How can this auction be taken seriously!  If it isn't a hoax the guy must be the worst seller of all time.  Use a stolen picture, stolen description.  For god's sake borrow a digital camera and take some pics already!!  This item is worth thousands!!


This thing still reaks of being a scam.  I hope the winner of this auction doesn't  get taken to the cleaners  :?



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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:08 pm 
 

The paperwork was faxed into eBay yesterday, asking them to remove the auction.  They did not, obviously deciding instead that they'd e-mail the seller and ask him to attribute the source of the information (or something along that line).  The seller has revised his description to include a thank-you, which is still infringement because he does not have my permission to use the text or the scan.

Done about all we can do here.  I'm sure there's good grounds for a lawsuit against eBay on this, but since there's no financial loss to the copyright owner (me), the case wouldn't go anywhere.

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:14 pm 
 

I wonder if defrauding someone (the winner) out of $3000 qualifies as a felony in the U.S.

  

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:22 pm 
 

Small claims court handles up to $5k, minor stuff.

  

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:26 pm 
 

It may fall under mail fraud which is a federal crime.

  

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:30 pm 
 

That would be for a civil suit, though.  Should this auction indeed be fraudulent, the seller would be committing theft, mail fraud, and wire fraud (funds transferred electronically), as well as the really BIG hammer, copyright infringement (insert sarcasm).  He could be arrested and charged with any or all of those violations.  

The main problem would be getting a prosecution on it.  Federal law enforcement usually won't get involved unless the financial loss is MUCH higher, and local law enforcement is usually incapable / unwilling to deal with (white collar) crimes that cross state lines.  Which is unfortunately why many small time / low-dollar crooks over the Internet go unpunished (and things are actually much worse outside the United States).

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:57 pm 
 

FoulFoot wrote:The paperwork was faxed into eBay yesterday, asking them to remove the auction.  They did not, obviously deciding instead that they'd e-mail the seller and ask him to attribute the source of the information (or something along that line).  The seller has revised his description to include a thank-you, which is still infringement because he does not have my permission to use the text or the scan.

Done about all we can do here.  I'm sure there's good grounds for a lawsuit against eBay on this, but since there's no financial loss to the copyright owner (me), the case wouldn't go anywhere.

Foul


If you sent Ebay a properly worded DMCA notification, I doubt they'd have left the auction running.  Regardless of whether you suffered financial loss, if you notified Ebay properly and they did't act, you could sue them for contributory copyright infringement and they could be liable for up to $150,000 for each copyright infringed, plus any profits generated by the infringement, plus any actual damages.

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:11 pm 
 

NetRodent wrote:If you sent Ebay a properly worded DMCA notification, I doubt they'd have left the auction running.


Please, for brain's sake, don't invoke the DMCA. It's a contradiction with about any other law in existance with the possible (but not certain) exclusion of those about marriage.

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:46 pm 
 

Well as I tried to point out in the shady dealers thread, Nocstar's bid is quite interesting. It makes it more interesting when you look at what he has won in the last 30 days:



http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V ... 200&sort=3



Not exactly a high roller. I do not know for sure, but I get the sense that the seller & Nocstar are somehow possibly connected in some way. Considering the seller is located in Massilion, OH and Nocstar is listed as being in Indiana, for which depending on where you live can be less than 50 miles from Massilion.  I almost get the impression, especially when looking at the bidding pattern of Nocstar, that something is amiss outside of what is already plainly obvious.



Its not just the incremental bids that bother me, its also when those bids were placed. He incrementally bid on the 12th up to $600 and then stopped without ever taking the lead on the auction. Then and only after the "Acaeum" bidder came in over top of southwicksw's bid on the 13th, did he start incrementally bidding again. Also, its not like he is trying to find the high bidders top bid thus looking to set up a snipe because if he was doing that, he would be doing 2 things:



1) First he would be bidding in something other even increments with over $0.50 as that makes it easier to max out the high bidder's bid without taking the lead.  



2) And although this may seem obvious, but he would be in fact maxing out the high bidders bid, which until this point he has not done.



His bidding pattern is that of a shill, only looking to drive up the high bidders bid as much as possible that he feels comfortable about before giving way again. If you want to experiment with it, then whoever is using the fake User ID woodgraincollector retract your bid and being that you now know exactly what Nocstar's high bid currenly is, come in with another fake bid just to max him out at $3200 and lets just see how serious that $3200 bid is. I am betting that its not very serious at all............



*<edited for several spelling and grammatical errors.>*  


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:24 pm 
 

Hmmm, interesting.  Thanks for the nice investigative work, Brian.  

I guess I was wrong about Nocstar.  I thought they were a reputable ebayer, and a member of this forum, are they not?  Your argument sounds plausible, though.  Jesus, if that's the case, what a shitty turn of events.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:28 pm 
 

agree - sensible suggestions - this does look suspiciously shilly.  :roll:


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Post Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:57 pm 
 

NetRodent wrote:If you sent Ebay a properly worded DMCA notification, I doubt they'd have left the auction running.  Regardless of whether you suffered financial loss, if you notified Ebay properly and they did't act, you could sue them for contributory copyright infringement and they could be liable for up to $150,000 for each copyright infringed, plus any profits generated by the infringement, plus any actual damages.

The paperwork was sent, and properly filled out.  However, I'm somewhat pessimistic about the chances of successfully suing a large company like eBay (whom, I believe, has never been successfully sued), let alone trying to invoke clauses of the DMCA, which the courts haven't been upholding too well.

The buyer is in the best position to talk about lawsuits and prosecution.  For The Acaeum's part, it will be largely impossible to prove that any harm occurred to the web site due to this auction.  So you'd either be asking criminal courts to become involved based on a violation of the DMCA (criminal courts have better things to do), or civil courts based on no financial loss (ergo, no harm no Foul.  Heh).

Foul

  
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