Creative Compulsion

Due to state regulations (most notably in New Hampshire), eBay is in the process of making changes not only to advertising, but also to their current user agreement. They will be removing the term “auction” and no longer referring to themselves as an auction company or auction site. This is in order to avoid legal issues with the current New Hampshire law that requires auction sellers to hold a current state auctioneer’s license.

One of the speakers, Clougherty said, was an attorney representing eBay. Clougherty told the ED & A committee: “According to this attorney, eBay is in the process of changing their agreements with all of their 212,000,000 registered users. eBay will no longer advertise themselves as an auction or auction company and will discontinue the use of the word “auction” from their online and paper advertising.

… by Kathy Greer at AuctionBytes

Personally, I think the whole thing is ridiculous. You simply can’t equate running a live auction with running a 7 day online auction. They’re entirely 2 different beasts. It will be interesting to see if other online auction venues follow suit once these changes are made.

Read the whole Auctionbytes article here.