Stamp Auction Network Will No Longer Be Free For Bidding- Subscription Based Only

"JOE" must be a deep-pockets legacy customer to rate that kind of [unethical] favor. Any auction house that did that would forever lose my business (not that they'd care).

You must be thinkin of FDR!




Unfortunately they are a lot more important to me than I am to them. I get 80% of my material from them so I can't fuss too much.

What are the legalities of using another company's images & descriptions for your own profit, as Tom appears to be doing? If I started using someone else's images on my website to get business or sell a service, I'd expect a quick "demand" letter over the potential infringement. Doesn't image copyright typically reside with the creator (auction house) and commercial usage require an appropriate license/release? Does SAN pay auction houses a fee for this? Do they have the appropriate license/release to profit from someone else's work? Curious.

From their site (highlight mine)



Don

Don, I'm sure you know that TOS's don't tend to hold up in court, especially super broad claims like that ("I can do whatever I want with everything you say & do.") A commercial license agreement with each auction house, spelling out specific allowable usages & limitations/restrictions should be in place, and it should be Tom paying for that content, not the auction house. I'd guess that at least some of the auction houses are talking to their lawyers about what he's doing. I would be, if I had given content to SAN with one understanding when I provided it, only to see them flip their business model and try to profit from it with little or no benefit to me. That's a foul, IMO, and judges have a pretty predictable history of siding with the copyright holder in cases like those.

There are several 'levels' of website Terms of Service ranging from 'read them' (weakest enforceability) to a call to action such as users checking a box, pressing a button, making a purchase, etc. (strongest enforceability). This follows typical contract law where there must be an offer, a consideration, and an acceptance; making website Terms of Service as enforceable as most other contracts. Users who blindly accept or ignore website and software Terms of Service will not win in a court of law in many cases, especially if the user does not have deep pockets.

But no matter what the enforceability, SANS users have agreed to give up control and rights to their information (for perpetuity...LOL) when they use the service and will face having to dispute the contract in court including hiring legal resources on discovery and taking it into court.

This is why a previously posted a comment about SANS not being 'free'. For it to be considered a truly 'free' service then the data that is collected would have to be said to have no value. Users have agreed to give up control of their data in exchange for using the service and site; seems to me that all parties are agreeing the data has value.
Don

I suspect that the "in-perpetuity" part would never pass the GDPR, in Europe.

I seem to recall one of the requirements of that being that a business has to be able to delete a person's data upon request.

The problem is the definition of personal data. Photos or information about your stamps is not personal data. Your birth date is. It is mostly about what can be used to identify a "natural" person and build a profile. For the purpose of GDPR businesses are not "natural" persons.

rogdcam, I don't think it's a personal data issue, I think it's a potential copyright infringement issue. On a related note (back to Don's point about TOS) I wonder if the terms of service for a "vendor" (i.e. auction house that shares images & descriptions w/ SAN) are the same as the TOS for a "user" (i.e. bidder/browser). They shouldn't be.

Srail - I agree. I was responding to txstamp's GDPR comment. Two different animals.

I took a look at several recent auction catalogs and found no language regarding any type of protection/copyrighted work.

This is an excellent topic for Chris Palermo to weigh in if he so chooses. Interesting questions.

Much like ebay now SAN has build themself as a powerful part of the Philatelic Community . Everybody in the resell of stamps understand these two important parts of the retail market place . Stamp bourses and Linn's Stamp News had a lot of their importance down graded .Even the sales divison of the APS has suffered .

You look at what happen to the APS with the growth of ebay and the Stamp Chat Rooms I believe weaken all the Philatelic Socities. This is a major change from when I was starting my interest in stamps .

The era of having a local stamp shop was ending well before the advent of the internet. The economic model they were built on was not sustainable.

The internet has greatly increased the availability of material and a collector's ability to connect with folks of similar interests. The old more closed world of clubs, societies, and sellers is a thing of the past. Geographical separations between folks of shared interest no longer inhibit the flow of information and material.

While this evolution is upsetting the current models for the philatelic business the real problem facing the future of the commercial side of our hobby remains we are now at least two generations beyond folks having a real appreciation for private letters and the mail service carrying them.

BUT I must point out that while private letters are in decline, Parcels Post (original name per UPU) now called Package Services or other such names has grown with most if not all generations enjoying receiving a package. Now if folks could stamp mail as easily as they meter mail, especially anti-stamp ebay, then folks would be exposed to stamps still. [Note: This comment was required by the terms of use of my user name. ]

Ken, the copyright issues you raise are straightforward, but, frankly, in my opinion Tom's replies here have been sufficiently coy that I'm not going to post an analysis that would amount to free advice to SAN. He is running a business, he can hire his own lawyers to assess and address his risks, and this sort of advice is my livelihood. I wish him and his users every success but I limit my posts here to generalized questions rather than situations involving a specific, named business.

Chris

rogdcam - I think you might have missed this boxed comment in recent Siegel catalogs:

© 2022, Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, Inc. This catalogue in all versions, printed and electronic, is protected by copyright. The descriptions, format, illustrations and information used herein may not be reprinted, distributed or copied in any form without the express written consent of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries. Application for permission may be made in writing.

I notice that when one does an auction history search now at SAN, results from Siegel auctions appear, but only with an image and information about the sale. The full description from the catalog is not reprinted. There must be a reason Tom has done this. Perhaps he has been given advice that there is too little artistic originality in the scanned image of a stamp for it to be considered copyrightable.