I own the copyright of my own music, having written, recorded, edited and produced it entirely myself. I listed a song on ebay.com who provide a category specifically for that purpose. Initially I ticked a box to verify that I am the copyright owner, and I sold a few copies, relisted it, sold some more, relisted it, sold some more, relisted it ... then ...

An email arrives from ebay to say my listing was removed due to violation of copyright. I email them back to inform them that I own the entire work and cannot be in violation of my own copyright.

Today I received a response from ebay telling me they have reviewed my listing and decided that their action was justified. They quoted me their rules which states that such items cannot be sold on ebay unless I am the owner of the copyright.

I've asked them if they actually read the content of emails, and repeated that I do own the entire copyright. I even offered to provide proof.

I've also asked them if some other person has made a claim of copyright as this is my main concern. I've no worries about being able to prove my ownership, but it's quite serious if someone else is pretending to be the owner.

I've yet to decide whether I'll bother listing my music on ebay in future. A lot depends on their next response. I've had Tunecore add my songs to Amazon digital, which is a much better and safer option.

However, ebay's actions have really annoyed me.

Less annoying but relevent, I was in a rush to get to a radio interview, and did not have a copy of my new album to hand and burnt a copy to cd from my Napster library on the way out.

You guessed it.
This lazy act cost me

Latest news on this is that Ebay have conceded that I own the copyright but now claim that they were justified in removing my song because I didn't tell them I owned the copyright. In fact, their own policy does not include a requirement to provide such a declaration. In a seperate guidlines section, below the actual policy, they advise sellers to include a statement of ownership in the item description, but this is clearly just advice.

When I first began listing songs on Ebay.com they provided a box to tick to declare my right to list items. Aside from this, since they make it clear that I can only sell items which I have rights to, by my listing my items I am declaring my ownership. It should then be up to them to prove otherwise.

It's only good business to treat clients with respect. This way they come back again. A simple email to me asking if I could confirm ownership would have avoided any dispute, but they chose to take a rigid line.

Other musicians should take note of this before listing their music in the digital media section on Ebay. They could have become a major part of the digital market, but they need to improve their attitude before that can happen. Ebay is the only site I've used which appears to assume, by default, that their clients are acting dishonestly. Bad practice!

I've had a similar problem when trying to load one of my own songs onto my myspace page!

The song just would not load and after contacting them they said it was because it was a cover version which is not allowed:-)

How strange then that hundreds of myspace pages play popular artists songs (illegally?) but I could not and still cannot get that particular original song onto my page!

Gary www.myspace.com/garykennon