We all know eBay can suck my balls. Well...your balls, too. Hell--all of our balls...and ovaries, as it were.

Well, here's a new reason for ya:
eBay now no longer tacitly approves image theft...they outright encourage it!

Read up on it here, then go to your My eBay page and lock these fuckers out.
http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/411410.html

Thanks.

Fuck those fucking fucks! I loathe ebay. They love to try to screw sellers as much as possible. I actually had an old CC on file and didn't pay them their 2 clams for some auction I had listed that didn't sell- within a day of it's due date. Now they say I can no longer list unless I go on the automatic cc billing. Which as we all know is the biggest mistake anyone can make because it also gives paypal (an ebay subsidiary) the right to go into your bank account when they need to. I told them to go fuck themselves and then they said "well you can also do identity verification" which is a huge hassle and never works. Yeah like I'm going to remember my phone number in NYC from 10 years ago?

Yeah this picture thing also blows....it's definitely going to lead to problems.

Thanks for posting this!
It seems they are going the path of Google to try and gobble up images belonging to others without compensation
as in the Orphan Acts Bill. Or at least making it near impossible for anyone to even find out or protect themselves from this bullshit
of imagery usage.

I followed the instructions but it seems I'm not affected. Can anyone confirm this?

The first thing that leaps to mind is buying records.
If someone nicks a pic from someone who is selling a minty mint mint pic for their shitty trashed LP, all hell will break loose.

Thanks for this - I can't seem to find an option for 'share your photos' in my prefs.
Maybe it's hidden deeper in the UK version of the site?!

This is bad news - they seems to be making things way too easy for the wrong people

ah, but then it becomes the buyers fault for trashing their minty minty mint new LP, and the seller will probably get compensation because the record they sold got broken!

i was affected. was able to change it.

Neither am I - for now... I've tried logging in on both ebay.com and .de couldn't find any option for (not) sharing photos, but I'll be sure to check weekly until the end of August. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Wow, that's a bunch of crap. I gave up on eBay years ago, but that just encourages even more asshattery than usual.

Thanks for the heads-up. I was affected and I was able to change it.

You're welcome, guys. It just grinds my gears that they'd do some shady shit like this...and not even announce it to unwary users.

As for the UI in other countries, sorry, guys...you're on your own. That blog I linked is obviously for the US, so I'm not sure how it works elsewhere...

you"d think ebay would have improved over years...everyone I talk to has given up on trying to use it.

Thank you for the heads up. I had to change mine.

if you are still having trouble with it,,,simply log in @ .com not .co.uk & you will get the USversion UI...

Excellent point.

Totally nas-tay of them to implement this without even advising users. I was pretty surprised to find my "share photos" preference set to "yes." Fixed that.

Big thanks to sanjeev for calling this to our attention!

I tried that yesterday thanks, but no sign of that option. May not affect me for some reason? Will keep checking tho in case...

Thanks for the heads up Sanjeev. I found my selling account set to Yes, so changed that quickly. For others who do not see the preference at all, neither do I on my bidding id - as I have never used it for selling so maybe that is why.

Many years ago, I had my images stolen for inclusion in various a-holes auctions. Hence I have been watermarking them for a long time and also registered my selling account with the eBay Vero intellectual property verification rights program.

I opted out as well. Just a heads up, you have till August 31st to "opt out" stateside. After that ebay considers you part of the program and has your pics readily available for anyone who wants them without your consent. Sneaky fucks, automatically signing everyone up for it. I guess legally they have to give everyone a month to opt out.

thanks, Sanjeev.

The solution to this after the 31st is to take really shitty pictures that eBay would never consider for their catalog shots.

Eeeps! Thank you so much! Just checked our store account, and lo and behold, there was a nice YES - go ahead and share! rrrrrr.....

I know this is naive to the point of probable stupidity, but I just don't understand utter sleaze in business. I've seen plenty of people and businesses get ahead by *not* being sleazy and plenty that earned bad reputations that were hard to shake by being sleazy.

I guess eBay has everyone by the balls like their evil twin PayPal because they're pretty much the only game in town.

Don't talk to me about paypal. I paid someone for some toys, then, that person said the shipping would be $60us(from Canada) so i pulled out. They went to refund my money, but hit the fucking e-cheque button, they say, by accident. It takes paypal 7 to 9 working days to pass the money back and i now may have to wait another 30 days for it to go into my bank account. All because paypal wo'nt pay the money into my pp account, they say it's got to go back to which ever card(credit or debit) you used.
This is my fucking money that they're holding onto. The dude already told me the money came out of his account a day after he sent the e-cheque, so it's been sitting with paypal, earning them interest. when i rang them and asked how is it i can make a payement instantly, while it takes them so fucking long, she just spouted a load of crap from a sheet of paper in front of her, in a robot fashion.
I know this is'nt kinda ebay related, i just needed a vent...........cunts

You're partially at fault for jumping feet first into that transaction. Why would anyone send money for something when they didn't know how much the entire transaction (including shipping) was going to cost?