NY Times article today about Ebay counterfeiting problem

[Archive]

Posted By: Dennis W.

Some very good points have been made here concerning ebay and their policing (or lack of) auction ads for frauds. I'd like to throw my $.02 in on a few things.

First of all, I'd hate for ebay to put additional restrictions on the buyers or sellers as some have suggested. This just penalizes the honest folks and there's already enough of that going on in the world.

A question to some of the law professionals on the board. I'd compare ebays business model as similiar to a shopping mall owner with ebay's website being their "mall". They themselves declare that they are nothing more than a gathering place of buyers and sellers. If a shopping mall allowed one of their vendors to set up shop selling fake Coach handbags could they be held liable? I don't see the difference.

I don't think keeping completed auctions available indefinitely for feedback reference purposes as being feasible. Ebay has 10's of thousands of auctions active at any given time. Archiving all of those transactions long term would be a logistical nightmare. Also, many sellers don't use ebay's servers for hosting their images they use external servers. That's why sometimes the picture is gone when browsing completed auctions. It's doable but not without significant costs involved and guess who'd end up absorbing them?

The biggest problem I have with ebay concerning the card market is that they do not make people use the proper categories. The clowns that sell cut-outs in the card categories should be forced to use the cut-out category or have their auctions ended and/or NLRU'd. This would cut down on some of the fraud. Same goes for the reprint category. If you're "selling as a reprint" (that phrase is starting to make me ill) then list it in the reprint category. Ebay doesn't enforce this because they would make less money that way.

Lastly, I believe the ebay as we know it today is on the verge of major changes. Ebay is a monopoly whether most people believe it or not. Some could argue that there are other online auctions, but the reality is ebay essentially owns the market. Just ask Bill Gates. What these changes will be is anyones guess.