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Scott-A wrote:
>
> Looks like ebay may have been up to no good - trying to cut off smaller
> auction sites. Here's the 1st and 2nd paras:
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department is investigating whether eBay Inc.,
> the world's largest online auction site, violated federal antitrust laws in
> its actions toward smaller Internet rivals.
>
> The probe, which has been underway since December but still is in its early
> stages, is focused on eBay's attempts - including a federal lawsuit against
> one competitor and threats to sue another - to prevent smaller Web companies
> from listing on their own sites items being auctioned by eBay's customers.
>
> See the story:
>
> http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000204/17/ebay-investigation
I don't have all the details but this strikes me as typical DOJ
meddling/jackbootedness. I am not sure they have a case.
Material hosted on eBay servers isn't free for the taking, is it? Does
eBay have an obligation to make information which it has spent money
gathering (the auction listings themselves) available to its competition
in any specific format?
eBay can change the format of presentation of auction listings however,
and whenever, it wants to. Further, eBay does not have an obligation to
allow anyone, or anything (a crawler bot) unrestricted access to
listings. eBay can choose to make listings available only to humans who
have agreed to comply with the TOS if it wanted to, by requiring a login
first before one can view listings...
The DOJ antitrust unit needs to have its budget cut, it's getting
increasingly meddlesome under the direction of the Butcher from Miami.
Heck, the whole DOJ needs its budget cut.
--
Larry Pieniazek - larryp@novera.com - http://my.voyager.net/lar
http://www.mercator.com. Mercator, the e-business transformation company
fund Lugnet(tm): http://www.ebates.com/ ref: lar, 1/2 $$ to lugnet.
Note: this is a family forum!
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 | | "Justice Probes eBay for Antitrust"
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| Looks like ebay may have been up to no good - trying to cut off smaller auction sites. Here's the 1st and 2nd paras: WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department is investigating whether eBay Inc., the world's largest online auction site, violated (...) (24 years ago, 5-Feb-00, to lugnet.market.theory)
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