Good God, man. You take ONE rhetorical question "Can I sue?" in my
opening post, and continue to characterize me as someone who "wants
to sue", "intends to sue", and now is "into lawsuits". Can you give
it up, please? I have stated repeatedly, ad nauseum, that I have no
intention to sue. I merely wanted to explore the issue. Gee
whiz.....
Didn't know your "can I sue" was rhetorical; I thought you were
serious.
I realize we've had a contentious discussion,
And, you have to admit it's been fun!
I have asked you several times where you really
stand on copyright issues, and specifically using others' images,
and whether or not you would follow these rules if they are
expressly stated. Do you care to answer that?
I believe in copyright. I'm a photographer and I copyright my
images. But, I also realize that not all of my images have value
(and a few people, like that Mark guy in New Yawk City, would say
that NONE of my images have value!). If someone wants to borrow
one of my silly little eBay images, they're more than welcome to do
so. I just don't care to fight those battles. Same thing with
images I sell customers. I know they're going to try to scan them,
so I sell images in packages to ensure I get paid and I texturize
many of my prints to make it harder to scan.
It's interesting to me to see you're a musician. I would think
you'd be way more concerned about people downloading your music for
free than you would be about an eBay photo of an S1 on a bathrobe.
It was a lovely shade of navy blue, though.
Finally, here is some official policy found on the eBay site:
"eBay members are not allowed to use another eBay user's pictures
or descriptions in their listings or About Me page without the
owner's permission. Listings that violate eBay's Picture and
Description Theft policy may be removed early. Multiple violations
of this policy can result in suspension.
The following examples are not allowed on eBay.
A seller doesn't know the best way to describe an item. The seller
copies a substantial amount of another's description and pastes it
into a listing.
A seller takes someone else's picture and includes it in a listing
since it looks very similar to the item the seller is offering.
A seller likes the way a competitor's About Me page looks. The
seller copies the look and feel and a substantial amount of the
text and creates an About Me page."
Well, there you have it. eBay does not condone this practice, and
"multiple violations" can result in suspension. No more conjecture
needed. I still haven't received a response from eBay customer
service in my case.
Funny you should mention the music downloading thing. I happen to
be in a sector of the music business that doesn't suffer much from
this sort of thing (I am a symphony musician), but I WOULD be
hopping mad about it if I were an emerging recording artist (of
whatever musical genre) and people were freely sharing and
distributing my stuff, and I was losing money as a result of it. I
don't practice this, and I think that others also should not. Real
people, trying to make a living like you and me, are hurt by this.
This is another example of people saying that since "everybody does
it" it must be OK. Well, it's not, and we should be able to see
that if we put ourselves in each others' shoes. Practice a little
empathy, the golden rule, that sort of thing. And those of us who
think we're just "socialist vigilantes" by doing this, and that the
only people we're affecting are ultra-rich rapacious capitalists,
are only fooling ourselves.
Well, I'm exhausted. It's been fun.
Or their text. 
