NY Times article today about Ebay counterfeiting problem

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Posted By: Joann

Bravo Cat! All good ideas, and all completely addressable by ebay without having any of the buy/sell communities involved.

To #5 I would add: If feedback by either party is negative, have the entire auction including photos, description, etc available for a much longer period of time. So if comment is "sold me a reprint" anyone could look at the original description and scans and see.

And they should change their policy on auction interference to allow bidders to be contacted by other ebayers for fraud alert. Even if some want to use it for retaliatory reasons, or it's all he said/she said, at least the buyer should be sufficiently alerted to decide to investigate a little bit. Just giving someone that bid $200 on a Cobb reprint a link to the board, some of the other net sites dealing w/reprints, etc would be enough.

I think ebay will survive too, and maybe the gloom and doom talk is just grandstanding and veiled threats to ebayers (live with it or we'll go away). But I do think that even vague threats to ebay's fundamental operations are serious enough to at least consider.

Joann