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Dave Yokenin the wrong here. It is not copyright infringement to employ the term "PSA" on your title in order to get more eyeballs on your auctions. The term "PSA" is as much copyrighted by Professional Sports Authenticators as the same acronym is copyrighted by many other companies and organizations. How would all of these companies and organizations feel if they knew PSA was brow-beating everyone over the use of three letters: the companies "Passenger Shipping Association" and "Production Services Associates", the organizations "Pro Snowboarders Association", "Pacific Science Association", or even the "Prostate Specific Antigen" test?? (I know, sorry to bring that last one up...hehe)
Just because PSA is the acronym used by these many different organizations and companies, should PSA send them a cease-and-decist order and shut down their websites?
Look, I understand why people would be upset about the confusion and the keyword spamming, but the anger is misplaced. I would be pretty miffed if someone posted an auction with false information about the product they were hawking, but that wasn't the case here. Mark did not describe this card as a PSA-graded card. If an honest seller is just trying to bring more attention to his auction (as is normal, and standard practice, in most businesses), then I don't see a problem with it.
Additionally, the way in which PSA acted in shutting down the auction sounds pretty fascist to me. Couldn't they have as easily contacted the seller and civilly requested he remove the listing with the warning that it would be shut down otherwise than to just kill it and remove any trace of the description, bidders, etc. without warning?
Honestly, PSA should have nothing to worry about because they've pretty much cornered the market for all post-war sports cards and memorabilia grading. I think they should be concentrating their efforts on fixing the PSA/DNA scandal rather than wasting their time attacking the little guy. If I were a shareholder, I'd get rid of all my P.S.A. holdings (Professional Sports Authenticators, that is)...