Fellow Artist Paul Richmond Takes on eBay & Bootleggers

Thanks Paul for speaking out! I've been honored to be a featured subject of one of Paul Richmond's Cheesecake Boy paintings, and as an artist myself I've also been a victim of eBay and their role as a front for bootlegged artwork. It's frustrating dealing with a big corporation like eBay that has little regard for integrity or intellectual property when it might conflict with their profiteering.

While I used to sell my own work on eBay, I quit years ago due to ever increasing fees from eBay. They get you for listing an item, then selling an item, and then through PayPal which they also own, charge you another fee for collecting the payment. Ridiculous. But I digress. If you ever see my work offered on eBay it's more likely than not a cheap knock off (even though they often use an image of the original artists actual work in the auction listing). Another tip off is that 98% of the time the country of origin is China.

Whenever I encounter bootlegs of my work I immediately get eBay to shut it down.  Though it frustrates me when I see other artist work being ripped off because by eBay's rules ONLY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OF THE WORK CAN FILE A CLAIM OF INFRINGEMENT. Which makes no sense to me, that's like saying only the victim of a crime can report it.