Posted By:
hankronI'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious about eBay's potenial liability for shill bidding where it has knowledge it is happening. It may be a sound eBay argument that they shouldn't be held responsible for feedback comments, eBay chat board comments and for authenticating everything offered for auction. But does the same lack of legal responsibility hold with obvious shill bidding?
For example, with Broadway R., he bid on his own auctions with his own name, NBC had an article about it in which Broadway admitted that he shilled his own auctions. I beleive the result was that Broadway simply changed his auctions to private and eBay never suspended his account (eBay intitially said their hands were tied because they didn't have enough proof-- even though he bid on his own auctions with his own name!). If Broadway continued to shill in his auctions (Now golly gee wiz, why would Broadway have suddenly changed his auctions to private?), what liability would eBay assume?