Finding A Good Deal On eBay No Longer A Crime In Germany
from the phew dept
A German court has thankfully overturned an earlier ruling where a man was found guilty of buying stolen goods on eBay after he bought a GPS navigation system cheaply via auction. The guy had no clue it was stolen, but a lower court said he should have known since it was so cheap. That seems like an odd ruling, since eBay, as an auction site, has a huge range of prices -- and sometimes you really can find quite cheap items. Luckily, the higher court has overturned the ruling, finding that the man couldn't have known the GPS device was stolen. If the ruling had been upheld, just imagine the liability for finding a good deal on eBay?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: auctions, stolen goods
Companies: ebay
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
LOL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Heart in the right place?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Heart in the right place?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Heart in the right place?
wow! its amazing to see that someone can read the same thing and come away with a totally different (and wrong) opinion. the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and its this same "well something must be done, so we'll do something, no matter how useless and damaging" attitude that gets terrible laws passed. Do you think this poor german schmuck who was convicted for getting a good deal on e-bay thinks this is "nice"???
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Heart in the right place?
I'm sure the guy that was convicted did not think it was nice but at the same time expecting courts to put down a perfect ruling each and evertime is a pipe dream, for now.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions but that does not mean that every good intention will take you to hell.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Heart in the right place?
sorry, not good enough, in this case, those willing to risk collateral damage such as this are as bad as the problem they want to solve
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
low price is not an indicator for stolen goods
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: low price is not an indicator for stolen goods
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Question
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Where
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Where
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Where
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Certainly... at least from a Moral standpoint... If you don't know the goods are stolen, what can you do? If you do know they are stolen, then yeah - it's the same as stealing, IMO.
But heck - anyone who has bought good from E-bay, Pawn Shop, Flea Market... you just never know, could have been stolen goods.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not a moral issue
This is another one of those assume the person is guilty sort of things. If he was given the option to buy a legit GPS, buy a stolen GPS for an extremely low price, or steal one himself I bet he would buy a legit one. One the other hand, the lower court probably had a pretty good reason to convict him in the first place other than he might have known this GPS was stolen.
All in all, he who stole the item in the first place should be punished, not the victims of fraud afterwards.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
why?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: cheap?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: cheap?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]