Ebay Pulled The Camera-Equipped 3rd-Gen iPod Touch


Apple fanboys, ebay just crashed your party as the auction site pulled the iPod touch camera listing. Why? Here’s part of Ebay’s statement.

Most items listed on eBay are legitimate, and there are many things we do to protect our members from buying items that aren’t. One thing we do is remove items reported to us as allegedly infringing through the eBay VeRO program.

In this case, we removed the listing because the copyright or trademark owner of this product reported that they believe the item may not be authentic.

Fun times.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just ebay that ruined the sellers’ days as Apple might have had something to do with it. You see, through ebay’s Verified Rights program, a product’s rights holder can stop the sale of items infringing on copyrights and trademarks. This policy is in place to, say, stop the sale of fake Louis Vuitton purses, but companies have been known to VeRO file claims in order to stop the sale of one-off or prototype items they do not want sold — like an iPod touch with rear-facing camera.

There’s really no way of knowing at this point if the item in question was in fact a legit, unreleased Apple product, or as ebay speculates, not authentic. The seller has an opportunity to counterfile, but from what I understand, that’s rarely successful. Guess that ultra-rare iPod is destined to live the rest of its days in the current owner’s junk drawer.