Peter Griffin: eBay's backdown undermines virtual marketplace

Don't mess with fiery Irishmen. That's the lesson eBay learned this week as it was labelled an "electronic pimp" by rocker Sir Bob Geldof.

The world's most successful auction website made a controversial judgment call by banning the sale on its site of tickets to the July 2 Live8 (see link below) concert in London's Hyde Park after Sir Bob intervened.

Around 150,000 tickets to the show were given away for free in a massive text-messaging lottery that attracted more than two million entries.

That raised more than 3 million ($7.6 million) for charity and made the Guinness Book of Records for the record number of text messages sent.

But some winners attempted to sell the tickets online.

Coldplay and U2 are on the same Live8 bill. A reformed Pink Floyd will take to a stage together for the first time in 24 years. Did Geldof really think there wouldn't be a massive reselling of tickets?

Regardless of what you think of the ageing rockers leading Live8, their cause is a just one.

But it was perfectly legal for people to sell their tickets on eBay and within the site's own guidelines.

Ebay offered to donate its commission on the sales of the tickets to charity. Geldof told them to "stick it," saying the ticket sellers were exploiting the misery of the poor Africans Live8 has been set up to aid.

Everything has its price, everything is for sale - that's been the philosophy of the eBays and Trademes of this world, which represent the free market in its purest form.

If you have something to sell, it's possible there is someone out there who wants to buy it. All you need is a Paypal account.

There is obviously regulation, guided by the laws of the countries in which internet auction websites operate. You won't find Nazi memorabilia or illegal pornography on eBay. Auctioning off your unborn baby or flogging a kidney is out. Slave trading, the on-selling of stolen property and dealing in nuclear weapons are also outlawed.

All of those things have cropped up on internet auction sites over the years and made for scandalous headlines, so naturally you'd expect eBay to ban them and report those attempting the sales.

But auctioning off a concert ticket you won fairly and squarely in a competition? What's wrong with that? The issue has divided internet users.

"I don't see what the problem is here. If I enter a charity raffle, win a car, then sell it, am I morally bankrupt? I can understand eBay backing down under the pressure, but it's a bit worrying when companies give way to the self-appointed 'morality police'," wrote one comment poster on the BBC's website.

On the other hand, just as many people condone eBay's move to stop the ticket-selling frenzy.

"It's profiteering off of other people's suffering. If people were not dying in Africa there would be no concert, therefore no tickets to sell. Ebay did the right thing pulling these auctions," wrote another poster.

The multi-million-pound bogus bids suggested by Geldof for the Live8 tickets on Ebay.co.uk quickly reduced the auction to farce anyway.

Still, it's amazing what actually does sell online.

There was the half-eaten piece of toast showing the image of the Virgin Mary. It was posted on eBay and sold for US$28,000 ($39,000). Now there's a scam! But it epitomises what eBay is about - everything has its price, even a dried-up piece of burnt toast.

Locally, Trademe has done its best to honour the free market spirit, but it hasn't yet faced the ethical dilemma of the Live8 ticket sales.

It too has had its unusual sale items. In April, the butt of the last cigarette smoked inside Auckland's Malt restaurant before the law changed banning smoking in bars sold at auction for $7475 (see link below).

Geldof's pleas for hackers to "mess up the system" at eBay was likely the final straw.

The last thing an e-commerce provider needs is a celebrity urging every hacker in the world to have a go at bringing down its operation. A couple of hours offline for eBay would result in a fair wedge of dollars being lost in revenue.

The decision came down to the desire to avoid a nasty PR disaster, a technical meltdown and a legion of eBay users deleting their accounts in protest.

I can understand why eBay buckled, but the bad news for users is that the decision sets a precedent - that the site will make a judgement call on items legally for sale based on the potential public reaction to them.

That's not really the philosophy that made eBay the online force it is. Live8 tickets and huge sums of money will no doubt still change hands on other parts of the web, in pubs and outside the gates of Hyde Park. Scalpers will buy them and on-sell them for huge markups in the runup to the concert.

Geldof got what he wanted - more publicity for Live8, which has a noble cause, which is to wipe the slate clean of Third World debt.

But in the burgeoning internet marketplace there is, ironically, something to be learned.

It is, after all, where buyers and sellers meet with the minimum of interference that there is the greatest efficiency.

Maybe it's this principle of free trade that will ultimately get Africa out of the quagmire of debt and corruption that continues to hold it back.