Urban Art Association

Totally agree with you but ebay made it clear that they won't do anything proactive because it's impossible for them to monitor everything that is listed. It would mean that they would have to hire people for the listings to be checked manually (more especially it means that you need some kind of "expert" for every category (which is indeed impossible).

And I guess that's also not in their interest, because the more fakes or knock off there is the less people will buy on ebay (or the less they would buy for). So, I guess that if there were something to be done that would be economically sustainable they would have done it by now.

Especially, after the few big art forgeries scandal...

After, I guess it's not a waste of time to report the listings because not reporting them would be assuming that you agree with sellers acting like that (knowingly selling fakes). Moreover, there are people that don't really know anything about grafter or the pricing and that will buy it because they like the image...

I'm not really sure that ebay is always acting on the items being reported but at least it will cause the sellers some problems selling their stuff.

But that's just my 2 cents

If the grafter works have already sold out, this guy is hardly robbing him of money

EDIT: although the deceptive sigs are pretty naughty

An invader again...
Last time I asked Invader about it, I was replied it was a fake one for sale.
It could be originals, but I doubt Invader would ever admit it, not to encourage art speculators to break and remove them. Claiming they are fake gives them no value on the secondary art market, which is the most clever behavior to have.

cgi.ebay.com/ORIGINAL-SPACE-INVADER-Street-Art-MARS-INVADER-/220654865085?pt=Art_Sculpture

tiles bought off the shelf ? Well... What about the design of the invader ? Many are original designs and not just game rip-offs. But I get your point.
I would not buy an invader street piece for 2 reasons : it would take the piece out of its "natural environment" and would break the street art concept (depriving fans of seeing the piece) and it would have no COA...
If buying an original for such an expensive price, better buy an official unique mosaic from Invader or official gallery...

That's a big debate. I discussed this with artpartment in Vienna who collects street art. His main argument is that he collects them and doesn't sell them, so it's not a question of speculation. Besides, if he does not pick the street art, most of the pieces are destructed / removed. He's probably right and many of us are certainly tempted to take some pieces.

But if you observe the invader pieces, they are clearly not intended to be removed. Thus, removing them is really a bad idea. It is killing the will of the artist to have it permanent...

Totally agree with that and especially what Artpartment thinks. Never done it (yet) but I think that stuff that are picked out in the street shouldn't have any (secondary) market value. A little bit what invader is doing. You "can" take the piece but you can't sell it (because no one would vouch for it!).

Invader is really different in that sence than a lot of street artist because by nature most of piece are out of range and as you said made not to be removed.

I usually get replies of a generic variety, although recently, when reporting a "street piece" as stolen council property, I was told by Ebay that they will only act on legal listings if approached by the police directly. I was asked to report the member/listing to my local police in order that they might contact Ebay. Pretty farsical imo. Seems as if all their emails and safety protocol and the entuire reporting system are pure lip service and nothing more. They claim to take criminal activity seriously on the one hand, while on the other refusing to stop it unless asked to by the authorities directly. This has put me off ever reporting anything again in the future as it's clearly just a waste of time and as long as the commissions are paid, I doubt Ebay give a damn.

It's not that they don't care at all but 1 :

1) How to implement it? Because if there were acting on any report they wouldn't have anything. Because people are reporting stuff that are legit to eliminate the competition for example...
They can't do it as I said they would need to have experts in any fields checking manually the listings.

2) They kind of protected the buyers with paypal (most people using ebay are paying through paypal or in cash collection)

3) In the end, the just don't think that it's their job to do it. Ebay just provide a place for people to trade (legal explicit items). You can sell bootleg cds without saying they are copies.... But if you say they are bootlegs, they will remove your listings....