Interesting article:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/c … d=rss_null

If the suit is successful, it could shake the foundations of eBay's longstanding practice of letting buyers and sellers make deals on its site with minimal supervision by the company. "You can imagine what a change that would be to their business model," says Louis S. Ederer, an intellectual-property expert at the law firm of Torys in New York.

When it comes down to it, you could sue the bejeezus out of ANYTHING that allows a seller to promote fake goods. How about we sue all the ISPs for allowing people to go through their service to list goods? Or camera companies and scanner makers for allowing people to take or create photos of fake stuff? Or hey, how about we sue cities for allowing people to stop on the side of their roads and set up makeshift stands to sell counterfeits?

It really does have to be a joint effort between buyers, sellers, and trademark holders. I sure as heck wouldn't want to have to be forced to authenticate my Louis Vuitton bag before being able to sell it secondhand.

ebay was becoming notorious for being the black market that it is.  With ebay making the huge profits it is, it is irresponsible of them to claim to have no liability in any way, shape or form.  The fact that they ignore reportedly-bootleg items that are pointed out to them specifically is just icing on their crap-cake.  According to the article, the court decided they'd only be held unliable IF THEY REMOVE REPORTED BOOTLEG AUCTIONS IMMEDIATELY.  I have personal knowledge that they do nothing of the sort, so by court ruling, they are now liable.  I wouldn't hate ebay so much if they were an honest company.

I completely agree!  ebay is akin to politicians in that respect
I figured that eventually someone would take them to court over the fact that they turn a blind eye to bootlegs.  Very good!

-avatar!

"The company strives to remove offending listings quickly and says it proactively monitors its site in search of counterfeit and other illegal goods."

BULL.

My thoughts exactly.

that could set a dramatic traumatic irrecoverable ripple throughout the entire $5 sunglass kiosk industry, resulting in the empoverishment of entire countries...

also,,, i am guessing that ebay has already anticipated losing horribly in these lawsuites, that is why they raised the piss out of their ebay store insertion fees and final value fees 5 weeks ago.

for those of you who dont have stores, this is what happened aug 22nd

store insertion fees (per 30 days),,,     was $.02 >>> now  $.10
final value ($.01-$24.99),,,                  was 8% >>> now  10%
final value ($25.00-$1000.00),,,           was 5% >>> now   8%

can you imagine the increase for someone who sells,, say baseball cards,, and has several thousand store items at any given time

I was just searching for an appropriate "eBay / fakes" thread before making my own, and it turns out this particular case already had one, haha. Score one for the search function!

Anyway, this case has come to a close:

Anyone want to be optimistic and think this might spill over into the vgm scene? Heh.

That said, eBay was defiant to the end:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121483602906315901.html

I can't help but read this and be disgusted by eBay's stance.

Edit:

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that an "enabler" is trying to avoid any and all accountablity.

the consensus on the powerseller forum is that ebay's long-term goal is to become amazon-lite. where they slowly weed out all the part-time sellers and auctions until they just have full-time retailers where they can highly regulate them to keep their asses covered and increase fees and no one dares leave because ebay is THE online marketplace.

Ebay can eat **** and die.  They don't care about counterfeits as long as it pads their bottom line, they definitely have the ethic of corrupt big business.  They should be sued like one.

I'm glad I shop at Amazon instead.

They're also hypocritical to the end.

While eBay waxes lyrical about "consumer choice" and preventing "uncompetitive commercial practices", they themselves engage in those same activities.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200807.shtml … 7-03085521

eBay AU wanted to make PayPal (i.e. eBay owns PayPal) the one and ONLY allowable payment method on eBay (i.e. no consumer choice/removal of competition).

Now that eBay AU has decided to stop their proposed policy, non-PayPal payment methods are now allowed, although PayPal is still compulsory.

This sounds strange, coming from people who like to complain about bootlegs and counterfeits all the time.

Put too many regulatory devices in place, and what do you know, at one point, you're going to have trouble just selling legitimate goods. What do you expect?

The fact that garbage is sold also means that good stuff can still be sold.

Am I the only here who has any concept of free market trade, "Leave Business Alone" and "Buyer Beware?"