It appears to me that "Model-in", the infamous seller of recastings
on eBay, has been "dealt with" by eBay.

Another victorious episode against what's evil!

Yes only Wingpro886 "no more box" to go out of the long standing A holes I know of on ebay.

They're still there.... Just not in the US... I did a seller search for "model-in" and they all came up in Europe.

Ja,

for example the article description on ebay.de is in German!

Can you guys provide me with the links to Model-in's eBay auctions?
Maybe I can take an action against those as well.

I noticed his auctions are missing from eBay. Well done!

I think this could be a serious precedent against eBay pirates... there are still couple of scumbags making money out of other people's talent. I just wish other manufacturers would be more serious in practicing their copyrights on eBay... this shows you don't need expensive legal representatives to take action.

Mario

Why do you buy from him? people like him need to be dealt with not left alone so they can continue to rip others off and steal.

Indeed.

The scumbag is still plying his evil trade here in the Old World. I just checked (Friday 24th April 22:00 CET) and he has a whole cartload of auctions up on eBay.de

- Steve

Then you attack his new account you don't give up and you don't let the "new" one get away with it either it's as simple as that.

It's the wack-a-mole theory

I can take actions only against the Alpine recastings which I own the copyrights to.
And I do take actions whenever I see one. That's why Model-in rarely has Alpine knock-offs.
Other companies really need to do something now. It doesn't take much to report. But
you have to be the copyrights holder.

Taesung - do you think that other companies are even aware that these knock-offs are being sold?

Or is it that they just don't really care.

It seem that eBay don't care about them - afer all, they've been reported to eBay enough times and nothing ever seems to get done. And yet pirate DVDs and music DO get removed straight away - I've reported these myself and seen the auctions disappear very quickly. And I'm not even the copyright holder.

Which begs the question: Why do they insist on only accepting complaints from the copyright holder when it comes to knock-off kits?

- Steve

In the past I have emailed some producers when I saw their goods pirated on ebay, some thnked me, some said "Oh well there's nothing we can do" and others never replied at all

Hi

Yes I've done the same as Pat and have had the same set of responses.

Alan

Taesung

Good to see. That pest has been absent from the Australian Evilbay for a few weeks now.

His version of English was pretty bad - so I hate to think what he is doing with German.

Keep up the good work - and I hope the other manufactureres follow your lead.

Brian

Hi
He's still selling under the UK site at the moment he's got just under 200 items listed.
Some of the figure's I reconise some I dont.
item #120411700950 will link you to him.
Have noticed 1 thing by checking his feedback He's even got Dealers from Ebay buying from him.
Never have bought from him & never will.

i have seen more than a few posts and threads here that slammed hobby shops, aftermarket item manufacturers, eBay sellers, private sellers and others. while some had merit i think most of them did not. often it seemed the person with the complaint never followed up on the problem or it was just sour grapes. seeing how much can be made from little here, i can well understand why eBay is slow to react to charges of counterfeiting and other offenses against sellers. one of the few bad eBay experiences i had with a seller got pretty ugly. i'll skip the woeful tale, but let me say this. even though i was 100% in the right with my claim and had documentation to prove every bit of my being in the right, including every bit of correspondence between the seller and me, among them the threats of physical violence i received from the individual. in the end, it meant nothing to eBay. one of their final correspondences to me about the incident was that they didn't care about right or wrong or about evidence and ethics. as he didn't violate the letter of eBay's rules, nothing else mattered. eventually, the seller was booted for reasons i don't know. i did get my items eventually.

the point is that eBay ignores complaints outside of a very narrow scope. sadly, i can understand why as exemplified with the aforementioned charges that were leveled by folks here. it does seem that manufacturers have better luck getting them stopped. maybe instead of the people who buy the fakes complaining to eBay, inform the manufacturer who has been stolen from and offer to help them by giving a written statement or something that would give them ammunition to fight with. of course, certain parts of the world are safe havens for counterfeiters so some efforts will do little good.

meanwhile, as others have posted, tracking the rip-off sellers and posting their whereabouts, educating, and informing the consumer will help a little. but, as long as there is demand, it's never going to go away.

Please forgive my apparent ignorance as i am new to the modelling world..can someone explain what exactly this chap is doing..as far as i can grasp he is selling fake items?is this correct???...need more info as i am a regular ebay user when it comes to buying kits ect....

Andy,

Essentially yes, this guy is selling counterfeit goods. He's recasting (i.e. making a mould of a figure from one he's acquired and casting his own for sale) figures and probably other products. IIRC, in many, if not most, cases he's also been claiming they are his own original sculpts.

He knows full well that he's doing and what damage he's doing to the very small hobby industry. He is not a modeller. He is nothing more than an opportunist. He cannot be educated or converted back to the "light" as some posters above might suggest.

Rudi

I like the pictures of him getting cute with the Ebay CEOs
The only reason he loves Ebay is because thats the only place he can sell cheap crap to nieve customers
What a loser
My 2 cents
Evan

As I said, he's an opportunist. Right place, right time, grab a quick shot of you and the eBay CEO and suddenly people think you're an eBay VIP, legit and your sales start increasing. Of course I'm not sure how the eBay CEO would feel about being photographed with a known fraudster given she's about to (or may have already) enter US politics.

Andy - a good rule of thumb when buying models (especially figures) on eBay is to beware of sellers in the Far East. Many of them are pirates. There's also one in Poland and another in Argentina, though their eBay 'handles' escape me for the moment.

Clues to look out for include too-good-to-be-true prices, and a lack of original packaging. One Far East knock-off merchant for example always includes the words "no more box" in his descriptions. I think he calls himself "wingpro" or something like that.

Quite apart from stealing someone else's hard work and livelihood, the goods that these guys sell are usually very sub-standard and chances are you'll end up buying a pig in poke (note too that sometimes they'll post up a picture of the original box artwork to try and fool the unwary).

Once you know what to look out for, you'll soon get the 'feel' for spotting a fake when you see one.

- Steve