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eBay Fined $61 Million For Allowing Counterfeit Goods Sales
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | June 30, 2008
The Associated Press is reporting that eBay has been fined $61 Million by a French court for not stopping the listing and sale of fake knockoff products of high-end brands effectively enough.
eBay claims that they pull down fraudulent listings as soon as they’re notified of them. From my personal experience and observation, they could easily do more than they do… But doing more costs them in revenue.
From what I’ve seen, they only pull down individual auction listings when they’re flagged as selling an illegal product, whether its a knockoff of a brand name, or a copyright infringement of some sort…
What they DON’T do is automatically review the similar listings of the seller.
(News Flash: If someone is selling 10 Rolex Watches on eBay and one of them turns out to be a counterfeit… most likely they’re all fake. However, when I’ve reported a seller’s listing for copyright infringement, only THAT listing is removed, not all of their listings (even when it appears that all their listings are similar, IE, all copyright infringements)
Bottom Line: eBay profits from copyright infringement sales and from illegal sales of knockoff products. They make a profit from every sale, so how motivated are they to REALLY catch every infringement?
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