On eBay, It Isn't Always What It Says It Is
from the you-just-realized? dept
theodp writes "Selling knockoffs isn't just for Times Square anymore. The NY Times reports that smaller eBay buyers and sellers are grumbling about the abundance of counterfeit pieces, and Tiffany has filed a lawsuit accusing eBay of facilitating counterfeiting, finding that three out of four 'Tiffany' pieces they secretly purchased on eBay were fakes. The Tiffany case threatens eBay's very business model, since it would be nearly impossible to police a site with 180M members and 60M items for sale." The article is actually really one-sided. There's a serious legal question concerning whether or not eBay has legal responsibility -- and, so far, the law is pretty clear that they don't. They're just the service provider and shouldn't have responsibility. The responsibility should fall on the sellers who are falsely advertising products. The law is pretty clear on that. However, from a PR standpoint, it would make sense for eBay to come up with a better solution for policing their own sellers. Another thought is that this should open up more opportunities for others to provide certification services for certain products. Either way, the idea that this is eBay's fault is simply shifting the blame to the easier, but not accurate, target.
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No Subject Given
It would be like buying a fake rolex at a flea market and then sueing the owners of the property that the flea market was held on.
Or buying a fake rolex from a shady looking guy on the street, then sueing the city of New York for allowing this man to sell fake rolexes on city property.
What a company like Tiffany might be able to do is get Ebay to dissalow all auctions containing their products via word filters.
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Re: No Subject Given
Yeah, and you'd think they'd just have the decency to ask first, sue later, wouldn't you?
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Re: No Subject Given
When one goes to a sit-down auction (say at Butterfield and Butterfield, an Ebay subsidiary), the price includes a commission to the auction house. The auction house earns it commission by not only providing the physical auction, but by attesting to the provenance of the item being sold (i.e. authenticity and legitimacy of title). This has long been the case in the auction business -- few would buy anything at auction if the auction house didn't sign off on the goods.
In the case of an eBay auction, eBay accepts a nice commission, but does not attest to the objects being sold.
Admittedly, it would be impossible for eBay to study each item it auctions, but this is the issue -- is eBay an auction house? Or is it a flea market?
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Re: No Subject Given
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Shouldn't some of it rest on the buyer?
Sure, my ebay status is in the low 30's, which means I haven't doen a whole lot of transactions. But I do have the common sense that buying something from someone I've never met, from whom I can't get that face-to-face feel, and who doesn't offer any kind of certification for thier items... yeah, i'm going to be just a bit hesitant about that.
As far as ebay's responsibility... I think we're mostly on the right track here. They're not really an auction house... and even if they were, it's not the auction house's responsibility to guarantee the authenticy of the items that are sold through them. They usually do authenticate items, but it's a service they do for PR purposes and for reputation.
Let's face it, ebay isn't supposed to be the place to procure original runs of fine art or first prints of rare books... it's more of a seller's tool than a buyer's. I'v always been of the impression that ebay is the place to go sell things; not a place to go find those rare things to buy.
Ebay: where "Caveat Emptor" is alive and well.
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Re: Shouldn't some of it rest on the buyer?
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Re: Shouldn't some of it rest on the buyer?
Sorry, had to run with a lyrical stab. Can't help it.
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No Subject Given
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A serious legal question?
How is it a "serious legal question" if "the law is pretty clear"? This is obviously an obscure definition of "legal question" about which I was previously unaware.
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No Subject Given
We cater too much today to ignorance. What we really need is an educated population capable of intelligent evaluation of a commercial service and capable of basic common sense and reason.
Yes, people will always try to break the law, and yes, we need a government capable of doing something about it, less we crumble into anarchy. Lawsuits exist for a reason, and I'm not saying everyone should be without government aid in such situations, but with the aforementioned properly educated populace, we could restrict the kind of lawsuits that seem only possible because of our need to protet the ignorant, and simply laugh at the dumbasses buying Tiffany products at a pseudo-anonymous online auction site with no means of physically inspecting the item, for that's what they are.
Cater to the weak, and that is exactly what you become. Strengthen the weak into educated, self-enabling, rational citizens of a nation of power, and such rediculousness will become just that... rediculous.
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Re: No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
But it's a good point. One could argue that it's for the additional liability placed on ebay for hosting such items. That could be true. And that would tie into the Tiffany case in a round-about way.
But I think it's mostly just because there are people who will pay it.
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It's even worse...
The seller had a lot of feedback (over 300) with a lot of positives. People in the forum figured out it was a fake auction because the description didn't match the car shown (you would have had to have known the model in depth to know that it was wrong), and the seller wasn't responding to questions or correcting the description. Apparently the account had been hacked, probably through phishing.
If eBay doesn't do something to stop both fake auctions and fake merchandise, it's going to be more and more difficult for anyone to trust anything on their site. Hopefully that will actually open up a space for a competitor to slip into.
Chris.
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