Re: Kind of an irony about it too Gary...

Jim,

You right - I think many of eBay's policies are confusing and open to interpretation. I also think eBay realizes this because if you start looking at many of their policy pages many of them contain a paragraph similar to this:

"eBay reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to remove any item listed on its site and refund the associated listing fee, if eBay believes that the listing of the item is inconsistent with eBay's goal of providing a safe trading environment, or if in its sole discretion eBay believes that the sale of the item might create liability for the buyer, the seller, or any third party."

My take is that someone could sell an old copy of MS FP 2000 they no longer used.

But what about if I come across a dozen unopened copies of MS FP 2000 somewhere? I could probably buy them and sell them on eBay, but would I be doing it in violation of their policies? Or of copyright law?

To me there are a lot of grey areas within eBay's policies (but then I never claimed to be smart either).

I think the important thing is that if someone is going to sell something that falls into one of these grey areas they should be aware that they are walking a narrow line, be aware their auctions may be pulled, and be willing to face any consequences.

Usually the first time you will get by with a warning. But, as your story in the post above relates, at times it can create a lot of headaches even when you are in the right.

I sell a lot of old magazines on eBay and I normally get a lot more money for them than other sellers do. The reason I do is because I list every article, author, illustrator, and full page advertisement in my auction description.

It used to be that doing that was perfectly okay. A short time ago eBay changed their keyword spamming policies (another grey area) and those lengthy listings are now probably in violation of their policies.

I'm aware of this, but have made a decision to keep listing that way until the time when they end some of my auctions and warn me. I know that will probably eventually happen and when it does I'll accept it and move on.

In the end life goes on.

Gary Hendrickson