Stilgherrian » roger clarke

eBay: Not Australia? Let’s try the US!

Stilgherrian — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:45:48 +0000

eBay couldn’t force its Australian sellers to use its wholly-owned PayPal payment service, but that’s not stopping them from trying the same trick in the US.

I wrote about this previously, though I didn’t mention that eBay gave up in face of such clear opposition — the 700+ submitters and the ACCC, that is, not me! However Lauren Weinstein writes that in the US eBay has announced that PayPal (or credit cards) are to be the required mechanism for all transactions.

He says:

eBay is also making other changes to de-emphasize auctions entirely by making fixed-price sales more attractive — essentially undermining the basic auction model on which they built their business, and turning eBay even more into Just Another Online Store in many respects.

There are numerous alternatives to selling on eBay. I’ve wondered why so many eBay auction sellers have been willing to be fleeced for so long by eBay’s increasingly callous practices toward this bedrock group.

However as Scott Howard observes:

The difference is that in the US people probably won’t notice or care if this goes ahead.

Banking in the US is for the most part years behind where it is in Australia — and the concept of transferring money into someone else’s account is completely foreign to almost all Americans, and Cheques (err… checks!) still rule as the primary form of payment for anything other than small payments.

Even EFTPOS is only just starting to take off — and then only by banks marketing the cards as “check cards” (which are generally actually just Debit Visa or occasionally Mastercard cards).

The nett result of this is that the vast majority of sales on eBay in the US are already either PayPal, COD or occasionally (non-PayPal) credit card. Without the additional option of a fast/free/easy payment method like direct deposit, PayPal has already won here.

Hat-tip to Professor Roger Clarke.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Stupid email disclaimers: don’t use them!

Stilgherrian — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:23:30 +0000

Over on the Link mailing list, there’s been a brief discussion on those legal disclaimers people put into email signatures. Brief summary: they’re stupid.

These disclaimers have never been tested in a courtroom, and in some circumstances they could even reduce your legal protection. However, I reckon the key issue for a business is “branding”.

Do you really want your communication with clients, suppliers and associates to look like your relationship will be defined by lawyers? That you routinely send “confidential” email to the wrong people and have to ask for it to be deleted? That you or your staff won’t actually stand behind what you say in an email because it’s not “confirmed in writing”? That your reaction when things go wrong is to sue someone?

Please, empower your staff to speak with authority. Get your act together so you don’t make lame mistakes to begin with. And have the confidence and honesty to stand behind what you say, wherever and however you say it.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0

Stilgherrian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:57:54 +0000

First Monday is a peer-reviewed journal about the Internet. Almost always good reading — but this month’s special feature Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 is double-plus good.

The Preface gives the flavour:

Web 2.0 represents a blurring of the boundaries between Web users and producers, consumption and participation, authority and amateurism, play and work, data and the network, reality and virtuality. The rhetoric surrounding Web 2.0 infrastructures presents certain cultural claims about media, identity, and technology. It suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks.

But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labor for commercial gain, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs…

Much, much food for thought in the essays. Expect to see it reflected — somehow — in my writing over the coming week.

Hat-tip to Professor Roger Clarke, who says, “I thought my paper was reasonably critical of the phenomenon, but these make me seem like a pussycat (or maybe a respectable academic?).”

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Sensis’ legal bullying revisited

Stilgherrian — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:55:59 +0000

On 19 January I wrote about Sensis’ lawyers sending legal “nastygrams” to small website owners. Professor Roger Clarke has received a response [PDF file], which we can’t copy and paste because it’s a scan of a printed letter.

Professor Clarke reckons the response is “reasonable enough (as far as it goes)”, and he won’t be taking the matter any further. His article on Lawyers’ ‘Nastygrams’ re Trademarks reminds us that lawyers’ letters often make inappropriate demands on behalf of trademark-owners.

It’s vital that people stand up for their rights, and resist corporations getting away with claims that go beyond the already excessive rights that corporate welfare laws in the ‘intellectual property’ arena grant them.

So, we all should say “the Yellow Pages® directory” to help Sensis prevent their trademark turning into a generic word. Sensis is our friend.

The funniest bit, I think, is that the lawyer’s response reckons the original letter was intended to “encourage the proper use of Sensis trademarks”. Lawyers must have a funny idea about “encouragement”: their “nastygram” was a three-page letter in pompous legalese containing veiled threats [PDF file].

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Web 2.0: Tsunami or Mirage?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:15:24 +0000

With all the excitement over “Web 2.0″, there’s still an almost complete lack of formal literature. “It is important that movements with such energy and potential be subjected to critical attention,” says Roger Clarke. His working paper Web 2.0 - Tsunami or Mirage? is an interesting start — and he’s presenting a seminar this afternoon at ANU in Canberra.