Ebay vs. Musician

evenprime writes "Ebay's Verified Rights Owner Program was designed to make sure the auction site doesn't let people sell things that violate copyright laws. Unfortunately, over-zealous ebay employees have been causing problems for independent musicians. George Ziemann has a detailed account of the difficulties he's faced when trying to sell copies of his CD on the auction site. Apparently ebay kept pulling his ads simply because he was selling a product recorded to CD-R! Ebay employees assume that all audio recordings on CD-R are the result of piracy, despite the fact that many indie bands burn their own music to CD-R to sell it. Wired has a nice summary of this story."

ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

any place you cant sell body parts you should already know is going to give you hell for music on cd-r's...

Suprised?

[looseBits]

When in doubt, err on the side with the most lawyers.

Come on people...

[Spazholio]

Does eBay automatically cancel auctions that contain "CDR" or "CDRW" on principle? Because if not, and an employee actually READ the bid description, I'm sure (ok, relatively sure) Ziemann put on there that this was his own music. If so, why didn't they just email him and ask to clear up any confusion?

Just becuase he only anticipated selling 20 CDs doesn't mean he should be cheated that opportunity simply because eBay employees are tools.

Ebay Records, INC

[babylon93]

Maybe they just want their piece of the pie.

Re:Cry me a river

[spatrick_123]

If these quote-unquote artists...

The funny thing about writing as opposed to speaking is that you don't have to actually say "quote-unquote". Due to the magic of the "quote" key, you can simply enclose the appropriate phrase in what I like to call "quote marks". For future reference, it is also unecessary to use "finger quotes" while typing.

:-)

Re:CD-R?

[silicon_synapse]

Wouldn't it be a CD-W? (CD-Written) The only difference I know of between CDs and CD-Rs is that CDs use pits of some sort to form sounds while CD-R/RWs use dyes. I don't think it'd be inaccurate to call it a CD. Just don't specify pressed.

The real deal ..

[mustangdavis]

despite the fact that many indie bands burn their own music to CD-R to sell it

Don't get me wrong ... I think that people should be allowed to sell their music recoreded on a CD-R on Ebay if they want to, but don't the people selling this music owe it to their customers to do a little better??

Seriously, if I'm going to pay for music, I want a real CD ... and maybe a nice jewel case and cover. IF musicians want to sell their product on Ebay in order to make some money, would it really hurt them to invest a little money into their product? It doesn't cost that much to have real CDs produced ... and since we live in a world that revolves around marketing, wouldn't it help these small bands to produce a product that people will be able to remember (not just the music, but the CD cover as well??)

Just my two cents ...

Re:Cry me a river

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Dear eBayXXXX Slashdot customer spatrick_123,

Your recent post contains infringing copyrighted material, namely the use of "finger quotes", and has been removed.

Please contact the copyright holder, Doctor Evil ([e-mail]) in order to resolve this issue.

NOTE: this post was generated by a clueless robot. Please do not reply.

Re:CD-R?

[shepd]

You wouldn't be saying this if you had a first gen DVD drive that had destroyed your CD-Rs, would you?

The Problem with CYA at eBay

[ackthpt]

Ebay, like many presences on the web, as George noted, are increasingly hostile to the public.

Let me explain 'hostile'. Automated responses, canned responses, lack of contact information for a real person or even having to dig through layers of pages to find email or phone numbers.

I've been a buyer and seller on eBay since late 1999 and their increasing distance between their people and customers is worrying. It's infuriating to an extreme when you find that Obvious things are hard to locate on their site and usually the novice only has volunteers on forums to go to, which are usually a complete waste, because most of the time it's social activity in the forums, rather than any real help.

Needing and seeking help on eBay is almost like going to large Builder's Square-type store, finding a box of nails you want, but on a shelf you can't reach, and having to find the employees break room to get someone to get them down for you, then having to wait for a cashier to finish a cigarette break before ringing up your order and then informing you they can only accept payment entered through a secretly hidden card scanner, somewhere in the store which you must find and your only help is from a band of gypsies which has been trapped in the store since 1994 and would rather ignore you unless you have a spare chicken. Effectively, like some of those weird chase dreams where you can't run and wake up tangled in bedsheets.

Maybe they model themselves on the Prisoner.

Re:It's Ironic

[dnoyeb]

"(because the bootleggers probably don't use the term "cd-r", but the honest musicians do)."

And that my friend leads us back to irony...

On the plus side

[Anonymous Coward]

On the plus side:

The vapours, if inhaled, can cause hallucinations.

On the minus side:

The vapours, if inhaled, can cease respirations.

Re:The Problem with CYA at eBay

[elmegil]

"beware the leopard"

Re:Uh what?

[Zathruss]

[conspiracy] Easy.. He wasn't going through a recording company.. [/conspiracy]

[sarcasm] Ofcourse, we all know that legitimate music only comes from the recording industry. Everything else is just damn piracy, arg. [/sarcasm]

Re:Uh what?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an assumption that because the company is Ebay, and its workings are impressive, that somehow, this means that the majority of people who work there are intelligent.

This is completely wrong.

Most of the people who work there are completly ordinary drones, who dont know the difference between a CDR and an apple; in fact, they have all the common sense of an apple.

The small number of programmers that work there are the smart people, the ones that make Ebay so very impressive. No one should be surprised by this. You wouldnt be surprised by the idiocy of a drone that works in the CD section at wall-mart would you? Same thing.

Re:Cry me a river

[Chiasmus_]

However, in a free market, one person can't pressure a company. Pressure exerted by many consumerS is the only thing that will work to change company policy or product.

Well, you're missing the incredibly obvious remedy for a single customer facing unfair policies:

Submit them to Slashdot.

I mean, some of us tend to overestimate our leverage from this site, but look what this guy's done: a few thousand of eBay's target market are even more annoyed with them than before, and there's a visible record of this idiocy that's going to be picked up by probably hundreds of thousands of Google searches over the next few months.

That's legally and fairly leveraging the free market to your advantage.

Hey, can't the RIAA help?

[Rogerborg]

I mean, they've told us again and again that they're only litigating against everthing that moves to protect the artists, right? Right?

A quick summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I know all of you are busy, and so I'll summarize this lengthy, pointless diatribe:

1) Our band sucks. It sucks so hard that we say we sound like Uriah Heep. Uriah Heep ferchrissakes. Might as well say we sound like an old stinky bnd.

2) Ebay isn't terribly responsive to email

3) Our band sucks.

4) I'm so PO'd at ebay because the robots that catch copyright violations keeps "catching me".

5) Ebay isn't terribly responsive to email.

6) So instead of being contructive and figuring out a way around he 'bots, I'll spend my life writing a blog about:
a) Our band sucks
b) I hate ebay

That is scary

[Mr. Arbusto]

The feeling eBay Safeharbor gives me is the same eerie feeling I get when I hear William Shatner sing.

Re:Entirely intentional

[rschwa]

-- who runs a website and retail service from his home --

He thinks he's having troubles now, wait until those PanIP [slashdot.org] guys get through with him!