eBay Convicted in Counterfeit Case

eBay Convicted in Counterfeit Case

Finally something is happening, it's a small fine but it sets the precedent maybe now we will see some action in other areas.

eBay- Convicted- in-Counterfeit- Case

...

In what has the makings of a landmark decision, a court in Reims, France,
has ruled that eBay is directly responsible for the sale of bogus Hermes
bags on its auction site, and ordered the e-commerce giant to pay 20,000
Euros, or approximately $30,000, in damages. The ruling, handed down
Wednesday, stated that eBay "failed to act within [its] powers" to prevent
counterfeiting activity within its online community, according to a news
report, which stated the verdict was the first of its kind in France.

In a statement issued following the ruling, eBay said: "eBay takes the issue
of counterfeiting very seriously and we condemn it outright. Today's court
ruling relates to past seller verification issues. The court acknowledged
that eBay subsequently addressed these issues with its enhanced
anti-counterfeiting measures through its VeRO initiative."

...

A handful of similar cases are pending against eBay in five European
countries, and at least one is under review in the U.S. How heavily the
Hermes decision will factor in the direction of the remaining lawsuits
depends largely on the locality of the individual cases, notes Aaron
Kessler, senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co. in East Palo Alto,
CA.

"The question is, who is the merchant of record, and how much is eBay
responsible for verifying the authenticity of the items sold on its site,"
Kessler says. "Each country might have its own interpretation of that. If
people don't trust what they're buying, that's a problem for eBay"

The material impact of the court fines will barely register at eBay-$30,000
is pocket change for the multibillion- dollar Internet goliath. However, eBay
has plenty to fear in terms of the psychological effect on buyers. While
it's probably close to impossible to completely eliminate illicit activity
on such an online venue, the company can and should take steps to increase
enforcement, Kessler says.

"There is continuing concern for buyers on issues of trust and safety. If
people don't trust what they're buying, that's a problem for eBay," he adds.
"We have been seeing slower buying activity on eBay the last couple of
years."

...

According to an Agence France-Presse report, lawyers for The Hermes Group
asserted eBay is "an active player in the transaction because, not only does
it offer a number of services to improve the sale, but when it does not work
well enough or fast enough, they intervene with the client. They are
perfectly informed of the transactions since they take a percentage cut."

Several other European designer brands, including Louis Vuitton, Dior
Couture and cosmetics company L'Oreal have separately sued eBay for doing
too little to thwart counterfeit activity. Unifab, a French industry lobby
group, has also taken eBay to court, seeking action by eBay to better police
its site.

In the United States, a counterfeiting lawsuit filed by Tiffany in 2004 is
now being considered by a New York federal judge.

Alexander The Great (336–323 BC) (Coinage And History)

I have not been posting as much as I would like with the coinage and history series, so I thought I would get one out for a change this is one of my newest additions to the collection below you find some info on the coin and some history as well.

AR Drachm 19mm. 3.88g. Colophon Mint 301-297 B.C.

Head of Herakles, r. wearing lion skin headdress.
Zeus enthroned left., holding eagle and sceptre; lion's head left. above crescent in left. field; pentagram below throne.
Price 1832

Alexander the Great (Greek: Αλέξανδρος ο Μέγας or Μέγας Aλέξανδρος, Megas Alexandros; July 20 356 BC – June 10 323 BC),also known as Alexander III and Alexander the Macedonian, was an ancient Greek king (basileus) of Macedon (336–323 BC). He was one of the most successful military commanders in history, and was undefeated in battle. By the time of his death, he had conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks.

Alexander assumed the kingship of Macedon following the death of his father Philip II of Macedon. Philip had united most of the city-states of mainland Greece under Macedonian rule (the so-called League of Corinth). After reconfirming Macedonian hegemony by quashing a rebellion of southern Greek city-states, and staging a short but bloody excursion against Macedon's northern neighbors, Alexander set out east against the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which he defeated and overthrew. His conquests including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria, and Mesopotamia, and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as Punjab, India.

Prior to his death, Alexander had already made plans for military and mercantile expansions into the Arabian peninsula, after which he was to turn his armies to the west (Carthage, Rome, and the Iberian Peninsula). His original vision had been to the east, though, to the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea, as described by his boyhood tutor Aristotle.

Alexander integrated many foreigners into his army, leading some scholars to credit him with a "policy of fusion." He also encouraged marriages between his soldiers and foreigners; he himself went on to marry two foreign princesses.

Alexander died after twelve years of constant military campaigning, possibly as a result of malaria, poisoning, typhoid fever, viral encephalitis or the consequences of alcoholism. His legacy and conquests lived on long after him, and ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and cultural influence over distant areas. This period is known as the Hellenistic Age, and featured a combination of Greek, Middle Eastern and Indian culture. Alexander himself was featured prominently in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appeared as a legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles.

CityScape

This is a bit different from some of my other posts hope you enjoy it.
If you would like to use my Photo's for Derivative Works or other use please contact me for permission. I can also provide Higher resolution photo's if needed.

If you would like to use my Photo's for Derivative Works or other use please contact me for permission. I can also provide Higher resolution photo's if needed.


This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Licence.

Microsoft, HP ready XP SP3 endless-reboot patches Help is ON the way for The Endless Reboot Monster

Well it looks like help might be on the way for those of us that got hit by The Endless Reboot Monster that owners of HP Computers with AMD chipsets were having.

Help is on its way for users affected by the Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3 endless-reboot problem that has plagued some users for the past week-plus.

Both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are readying patches that should remedy the glitch, which seems to affect primarily users of AMD-based systems.

Microsoft blamed OEMs who improperly placed a Windows XP image created for Intel-based machine on non-Intel-based systems.

HP is advising users running XP on AMD-based systems to delay deploying SP3 until the company releases a patch, which sounds like it is due out this week or next at the latest. From a May 15 report in Computerworld:

“HP is working diligently with Microsoft on a software update and will be proactively distributing a patch this week through HP Update that will prevent this error from occurring….The patch will be posted to this page of HP’s support site when it’s available.

“Microsoft is also developing a prerequisite fix that must be downloaded before SP3 will automatically install prior to its proactive distribution of SP3,” HP statement added.”

MICROSOFT Blames Users For security Holes

MICROSOFT Blames Users For security Holes

Well well well, This goes down as one of the cutest excuses of the year award. Microsoft says "The number of virus infections found by a virus vendor does not necessarily equal poor security," wrote Kleef in a blog post. "In many cases it equals poor user behavior. If I, despite all prompting and consent behavior, choose to go to a (probably dodgy) website, accept the ActiveX control prompts to download (probably dodgy) code and I actually choose to execute that code then I'm hosed."

Well is that not convenient as the church lady would say from Saturday night live, Hmmm Maybe Satan made you you do it? When I write I try and think of things from the point of view of the average user, as thats what I am. I'm not a techy, and I'm most definitely not a computer software developer, but this sure as hell sounds to me like the hopelessly useless account user interface on Vista is being used as a way to blame user's for Window's flawed code.

I would like to ask Microsoft how many user's can tell what is a good active X control and what is dodgy? I know I can't, but I do know many websites have them and I can tell you when I say yes using Microsoft's account control it give's me no useful information whatsoever to tell me if it's dodgy or not, it just let's me know something is going on, but I have no idea if thats a normal process or not. Microsoft stop blaming the customer. I want to know what do you think? Is Microsoft right is the User to Blame?

Microsoft has claimed user "complacency" is to blame for malware infections, and denied that its Vista operating system is less secure than Windows 2000.

The claim that Vista is less secure than Windows 2000 was made last week by security vendor PC Tools, which said that over the past six months Vista had suffered 639 unique threats, whereas Windows 2000 has suffered 586. PC Tools's research was conducted by collecting data from customers using its ThreatFire behavioral detection software.


"Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date," said Simon Clausen, the chief executive of PC Tools last week.


"However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight-year-old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37 percent more secure than Windows XP," Clausen said.


However, Microsoft strongly hit back at the claims, blaming users for executing malicious code on their machines. On Tuesday, Technet blogger and Microsoft evangelist Michael Kleef said the number of infections found by PC Tools was an indication of poor user behavior.


"The number of virus infections found by a virus vendor does not necessarily equal poor security," wrote Kleef in a blog post. "In many cases it equals poor user behavior. If I, despite all prompting and consent behavior, choose to go to a (probably dodgy) website, accept the ActiveX control prompts to download (probably dodgy) code and I actually choose to execute that code then I'm hosed."


Kleef claimed the number of infections was not purely the operating system's fault, but said that "in some cases it's the user and their lack of knowledge and their implicit 'it-won't-happen-to-me' complacency" that causes them to get infected.


Kleef's comments followed on from a blog post on Friday by Austin Wilson, the director of Windows Client Security Product Management, which also denied that Vista was less secure than Windows 2000. Wilson said results collected from over 450 million uses of Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) and published in Microsoft's most recent Security Intelligence Report show Vista is more secure than Windows 2000.


"Our results published in the April 2008 version of the Security Intelligence Report show that Windows Vista is significantly less susceptible to malware than older operating systems," wrote Wilson in the blog post. "Using proportionate numbers, MSRT found and cleaned malware from 44 percent fewer Windows Vista-based computers than Windows 2000 SP4 computers and 77 percent fewer than from computers running Windows 2000 SP3."