Into Tech

Just last week we were talking about baby stroller companies in the UK trying to prevent retailers from selling their goods on eBay, and now Eric Goldman points us to news of a case in the US on this very issue. Here we have a “dietary supplement” seller, Standard Process, who sued an online e-commerce site, Total Health, for selling its supplements despite not being an “authorized reseller.” Basically, Total Health would buy products from Standard Process through other means and then resell them online — which seems like it should be perfectly legal.

Not so far, claims the judge. The court refused to grant a summary judgment, claiming that, even though Total Health makes it abundantly clear that it is not an authorized reseller, because Total Health uses the pronouns “we” and “our” in describing Standard Process’ products that it somehow (how? who knows?) implies evidence of an affiliation. That seems like quite a stretch. The judge also notes that since Total Health shows up as the top ad result in a search for Standard Process, there’s an implied association (why? again… that’s not explained at all). There are a few other questionable bits of reasoning by the judge, highlighted at the link above. The judge did rule in Total Health’s favor on the question of whether or not it interfered with the “contract” between Standard Process and its authorized resellers, by noting that there’s no actual contract if Standard Process just tells the resellers the terms without any actual agreement or exchange taking place. It has the right to stop selling to those resellers, but not to claim that they broke an existing contract.

Still the first part of this ruling does seem quite questionable. It seems like a stretch to think that any moron in a hurry would be confused by Total Health’s marketing claims — when it quite clearly states that it’s not an official reseller of Standard Process’ goods. It seems like the court twisted itself over backwards to try to come up with any loose link to try to make that connection.

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Right on the heels of the awful court decision in France saying that eBay can be barred from selling even legitimate products, it appears some companies in England are shooting for a similar ruling. Jon Pyser writes in to let us know that a bunch of baby stroller companies in the UK are pushing hard to stop retailers from selling their legitimately purchased products on eBay. Effectively, they’re trying to put EULAs on baby strollers suggesting that the retailer buyers don’t actually have the right to resell what they’ve legally purchased. Not only is this questionable from a legal standpoint, it’s dumb from a business standpoint. A healthy secondary market for products increases the value of the product itself, since buyers intrinsically recognize the potential resale market in determining the value of purchasing the original. In fact, one retailer notes that in taking away eBay sales, it’s made selling that brand of stroller unprofitable. You would think, after 200+ years of economists explaining how protectionism hurts your own market, that people would understand this concept by now.

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Here’s a bizarre one sent in by Syborg1404. It turns out that it’s against the law in Texas to repair a computer without a private investigator’s license. Specifically, the law forbids anyone who is repairing a customer’s computer by analyzing data on the computer to get a private eye’s license — which only takes three years as an apprentice or to earn a criminal justice degree. This isn’t just an out-of-date law still on the books either. It was passed last year, though it’s now being contested as unconstitutional. While it does not appear that anyone’s been charged under the law, computer repair technicians used to cleaning spyware and viruses off of computers in Texas are reasonably worried.

To be honest, this whole thing sounds like garden variety protectionism, similar to state laws that required people selling goods on eBay to spend a year or more to get an auctioneer’s license. These laws aren’t about protecting consumers, but about limiting the number of competitors in the market itself. Hopefully Texas gets rid of it before someone is fined and tossed in jail for cleaning spyware out of someone’s computer.

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You may recall that eBay execs were trying to require the use of subsidiary PayPal for payments in Australia — which resulted in a bunch of protests. That, in turn, resulted in the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) saying that this probably broke the law. Not surprisingly, eBay has now agreed to indefinitely delay the plans to require PayPal, saying that it would wait for a final ruling from the ACCC. Of course, it still seems like a situation where this would present another opportunity for eBay competitors to try to steal customers away from eBay.

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A few weeks ago, we pointed out that a French court had made a very bad ruling, blaming eBay for actions of its users. The case involved the sale of counterfeit goods from LVMH. Rather than recognizing that eBay is just a platform and has no way of knowing whether products put up for sale by its users are legit or counterfeit, the court somehow ruled that eBay should know. Now the court has ruled on the fine, making eBay pay up $63 million for this exceptionally bad ruling. If you provide any sort of platform, a ruling like this should make you very, very afraid of doing any business in France. You can now be blamed and fined for the actions of your users.

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It’s been really disappointing watching how Prince has squandered what had been seen as a enlightened view of how music works in this day and age. Instead of continuing to embrace that, and use it to his advantage, Prince has become fantastically anti-fan, and day-by-day seems to be destroying his reputation. It started with threatening fan sites, quickly followed up by lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and the Pirate Bay, and more recently has involved a bizarre and ill-advised strategy of taking down YouTube videos that he probably had no right to take down.

The latest case involves fifty Norwegian musicians, who teamed up with a Norwegian record label to create what they thought was a nice 50th birthday present for Prince: a “tribute” album with 81 covers of Prince songs. They figured that it would be a nice gesture to send Prince a copy, and contacted his representatives to figure out where to send a copy. What they didn’t expect was for Prince, instead, to turn around and sue the label and all fifty musicians. He’s also demanding that all copies of the album be destroyed.

There is a question of compulsory licenses here — as Norway requires about $0.10/song, and with 81 songs, that’s about $8 per album. The label (potentially incorrectly) believed that since it wasn’t making any money on the album, it didn’t need to pay. Even if the album ran afoul of copyright laws, this response from Prince is just dumb. Here are a group of musicians who are paying tribute to him, and he sues them. What better way to piss off a group of truly devoted fans?

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First off, before we get into the details here, I’ll state upfront that I have not yet decided who to support in this year’s Presidential election. I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I’ve seen plans from both sides that I find problematic. Still, it bugs me when I see plans from either side mischaracterized, and I believe that’s the case with this somewhat mocking criticism of McCain’s “jobs plan” as being “the eBay model” (sent in by reader Rose M. Welch). At issue, is the fact that McCain has repeatedly referred to the 1.3 million people around the globe who “make a living off EBay.”

As the article notes, the figure is clearly exaggerated. However, many of the other criticisms of what McCain says seems misguided. It seems like a stretch for anyone to think that McCain is suggesting that people will find jobs selling on eBay. Rather, he’s using the example of eBay to note that innovation leads to new ways for people to make money — using the rise of the ecosystem around eBay as an example — not as the definitive method for creating jobs. And, on that, he’s correct. Continued innovation does tend to lead to job growth.

The second part of the criticism that seems incredibly unfounded, is the assertion by a few economists that eBay is just a business model for moving junk around, and that it doesn’t add anything to the GDP. This is simply incorrect, and it’s really strange that prominent economists would make such an assertion. eBay is about making an efficient market. Plenty of people use it to sell new products, rather than just “junk.” And, many of the people who use eBay to “make a living” do so by adding value to products which they then resell. That does add to GDP. eBay is about a lot more than just moving around junk. In fact, a rather large percentage of our GDP is based on taking already built goods, adding value to them and reselling them. To pretend this doesn’t happen on eBay is simply incorrect.

Now, before anyone thinks that this means I support McCain’s economic positions, I don’t. I think his continued disdain for basic economics, and his seeming assumption that economics can be handled by someone else is problematic. And, of course, his proposed gas tax holiday is just downright nutty.

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Not many websites have kept their pre-eminence for more than a decade, but Expedia has managed it. The design is showing its age but it’s often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel. Even if you eventually book through a travel agent, Expedia is a great source of information.

The cheapest long-haul flights usually involve a change of planes, and I’ve found that Expedia UK often comes up with options the travel agent can’t see. Most importantly, you can instantly see how long the flight will take, and you can sort flights by duration to juggle price and time. You can - and I do - save money by booking flights to Las Vegas via Phoenix, or Vancouver via Seattle. But you don’t want to spend more than 20 hours getting somewhere that’s 10 hours away, and that’s an easy mistake to make.

Because Expedia pulls up lots of options quickly, you can also save money by trying different travel dates, especially if you can include a Saturday night. If you can travel midweek, it may be cheaper to stay for six or seven days than for a weekend.

But the biggest savings usually come by constructing a package with a flight and a hotel where Expedia has special prices. These aren’t as good as they used to be, but Expedia’s deals can still come out cheaper than making separate bookings on discount sites. And by using Expedia’s hotel area maps, you can also balance convenience (eg close to the beach or conference centre) and price.

Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, which is a good place to stay if you’re visiting Microsoft. This isn’t a coincidence: Microsoft launched the website in 1996, before spinning it off as a separate business. Expedia has had no connection with the software giant since 2001, and it is now part of a group that includes Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and the excellent TripAdvisor.

But the site still carries Microsoft’s fingerprints: you can sign in using a Microsoft Live ID (your Hotmail or Passport address), and Expedia still uses Microsoft’s MapPoint. However, you can’t move its maps around easily, as you can in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps.

Unlike some of its rivals, Expedia also has a reasonable global network, with sites in 15 countries. These now include Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as the major European countries.

And although Expedia has its detractors, when Fortune magazine published its annual list of America’s Most Admired Companies in March 2008, Expedia was placed third in its category, between Google and Amazon.

Like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and a few other giants from the 1990s, Expedia’s site is showing its age. However, it’s so big, and has so much traffic, it is increasingly hard to change.

If you’re prepared to shop around using some of the newer, more focused travel sites, you may get a better deal. But as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job.

Not many websites have kept their pre-eminence for more than a decade, but Expedia has managed it. The design is showing its age but it’s often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel. Even if you eventually book through a travel agent, Expedia is a great source of information.

The cheapest long-haul flights usually involve a change of planes, and I’ve found that Expedia UK often comes up with options the travel agent can’t see. Most importantly, you can instantly see how long the flight will take, and you can sort flights by duration to juggle price and time. You can - and I do - save money by booking flights to Las Vegas via Phoenix, or Vancouver via Seattle. But you don’t want to spend more than 20 hours getting somewhere that’s 10 hours away, and that’s an easy mistake to make.

Because Expedia pulls up lots of options quickly, you can also save money by trying different travel dates, especially if you can include a Saturday night. If you can travel midweek, it may be cheaper to stay for six or seven days than for a weekend.

But the biggest savings usually come by constructing a package with a flight and a hotel where Expedia has special prices. These aren’t as good as they used to be, but Expedia’s deals can still come out cheaper than making separate bookings on discount sites. And by using Expedia’s hotel area maps, you can also balance convenience (eg close to the beach or conference centre) and price.

Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, which is a good place to stay if you’re visiting Microsoft. This isn’t a coincidence: Microsoft launched the website in 1996, before spinning it off as a separate business. Expedia has had no connection with the software giant since 2001, and it is now part of a group that includes Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and the excellent TripAdvisor.

But the site still carries Microsoft’s fingerprints: you can sign in using a Microsoft Live ID (your Hotmail or Passport address), and Expedia still uses Microsoft’s MapPoint. However, you can’t move its maps around easily, as you can in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps.

Unlike some of its rivals, Expedia also has a reasonable global network, with sites in 15 countries. These now include Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as the major European countries.

And although Expedia has its detractors, when Fortune magazine published its annual list of America’s Most Admired Companies in March 2008, Expedia was placed third in its category, between Google and Amazon.

Like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and a few other giants from the 1990s, Expedia’s site is showing its age. However, it’s so big, and has so much traffic, it is increasingly hard to change.

If you’re prepared to shop around using some of the newer, more focused travel sites, you may get a better deal. But as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job.

We’ve seen so many industries freak out as the market changed around them thanks to the internet, that it really shouldn’t be surprising when those “old school” players pull out the bag of sneaky tricks. However, in the case of retail stores, the tricks seem especially bad. Specifically, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a lobbying group that represent the biggest retail chains in the US is asking Congress to start regulating what can be sold on online auction sites. The sneaky part is in how this is positioned. Since just complaining about the competition isn’t likely to win over many politicians, these retail stores are claiming that online auction sites are creating a huge crime wave, as organized groups of individuals rob stores and sell off the results online. Of course, if that were the case, rather than blaming the internet, why not focus on better theft prevention techniques?

However, the really sneaky part of this push to get Congress involved is that the reasoning isn’t even accurate. I’m sure there may be some groups of shoplifters out there who have been going around stealing goods out of stores and reselling them on eBay, but the details suggest it’s barely a blip on the radar. A study by the National Retail Federation (who also represents large retailers) found that most store theft comes from employees or vendors. Only 1/3 comes from shoplifting. Stores themselves are partly to blame, as they’ve cut back on prosecuting shoplifters. And, most importantly, retail theft appears to be dropping rather consistently over the past few years.

So, basically, retailers get to push for the idea that they need to ban online auctions from selling certain products — when it turns out what they really want is to get rid of the competition. There’s no real evidence of an epidemic of thefts due to online auctions, and even if there were, the problem should be dealt with via the retailers’ own loss management efforts.

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