French Firms Target EBay in Anti-Counterfeit Drive, page 1

French firms are holding EBAY and other auction websites accountable for counterfeits of their products being sold on their websites. They claim that EBay has the means to stop the illegal sales by tracking bank accounts and such of people selling counterfeit products and closing their accounts, but EBay chooses to do nothing proactive to stop the sales and has only offered to take action after the fact.

news.yahoo.com
PARIS (Reuters) - A French industry group plans to file a complaint with prosecutors seeking damages from eBay Inc. and other Internet auction sites for the sale of counterfeit products on their Web pages, the group's chairman said.

Ebay "makes it easy," he said, for any copyright owner to contact eBay to report infringing products in order to have eBay remove them.

Jamet said, however, that the firm had refused Unifab's request to pro-actively shut down merchants of counterfeit goods in the same way it agreed in 2001 to ban listings of Nazi memorabilia and from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

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The sale of counterfeit products that infringe on copyrights are, of course, illegal. That being said, the sale of counterfeit items on anybodies website would be illegal and they should be held responsible for the illegal act.

So, why shouldn't EBay be held responsible?

Then again, it is not exactly EBay selling the merchandise either, or is it? These are second parties selling merchandise on EBay, SO, a) should EBay just be fined for not policing their site well enough, OR, b)for copyright infringements because it WAS sold on their site and they do get a commission, OR, c) not be held responsible at all because they aren't the ones selling the illegal item?
The lawyers will have fun with this one!

[edit on 18/8/06 by Keyhole]

[edit on 18/8/06 by Keyhole]

[edit on 18/8/2006 by Mirthful Me]

[edit on 24-8-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]