eBay Prevents Musician from Selling Own CD-Rs

October 31, 2002 7:43 AM

eBay Prevents Musician from Selling Own CD-Rs
posted by entrustNoOne (17 comments total)

Ironically, this is fantastic publicity for the artist.
posted by saintsguy at 7:53 AM on October 31, 2002

eBay seems to be very random at best in their policing efforts. I bought a "DVD" from an eBay seller that turned out to be a bootleg VCD that he burned on his computer with a crapy ink-jet printed cover. His defense was, "Its not a bootleg, its an import!" Once I stopped laughing at that one, I tried to turn him in to eBay. 3 months later, he's still selling.
posted by spilon at 8:06 AM on October 31, 2002

This is exactly what the RIAA's game has been about from day one. Piracy is not the real threat for them - witness all the people who say that they bought more CDs because of Napster.

On the other hand, shutting down or marginalizing any non-RIAA-controlled avenues for independent musicians to distribute their work is critical to the RIAA's survival.
posted by fuzz at 8:12 AM on October 31, 2002

eBay is very haphazard about enforcing all of their policies and rules. They lost any credibility with me a long time ago over a dispute that I had with them.

I still use the site, but with a very wary eye.
posted by rushmc at 8:14 AM on October 31, 2002

Stinking "droids".
posted by tomplus2 at 8:19 AM on October 31, 2002

"These aren't the droids you're looking for...."
posted by blade at 8:24 AM on October 31, 2002

You beat me to it, blade.
posted by yhbc at 8:25 AM on October 31, 2002

I wouldn't suprised if the RIAA is indeed putting pressure on EBay to curtail sales of independent product, directly or otherwise. It's a two-birds-one-stone solution. Auction site too unwieldy and cumbersome to effectively track down pirated items? A blanket ban on CDRs would do the job...
posted by scottandrew at 8:41 AM on October 31, 2002

As much as I hate the RIAA, I can't blame eBay. If the RIAA sues eBay for selling copyrighted stuff, eBay has something to lean on to say, "Hey, look, we're doing what we can" (that doesn't mean it'll help). And I don't really care since eBay can do whatever the heck they want. I could care less if they sell burned CDs or not and I wouldn't even give a hoot if the RIAA owned them. I'm not worried about eBay- there will always be companies out there to spit in the RIAA's face. Its the RIAA that I'm worried about screwing with artists and consumers (one could make the argument RIAA is screwing over the customer in this case, but i don't buy that).
posted by jmd82 at 8:54 AM on October 31, 2002

This was on Wired News and Slashdotted a while ago. Read this and this.
posted by timothompson at 9:09 AM on October 31, 2002

Seems like the anti-RIAA brigade got to this one pretty quick. Bit odd considering there is NOTHING to suggest they had anything to do with this at all.

Anyway, people selling second-hand legit media would be MUCH more harmful to the RIAA that distributing self-produced work ever could be, but you don't see them trying to curb that. "But that would be restriction of fair trade!" No, it wouldn't because they are leaning on ebay to pull the auctions, not actually stopping a sale. Even if it were RoFT, it would only be AS illegal as pulling auctions of legit cd-r recordings.

But that said, ebay do bow to pressure from the big boys and yes I DO blame them for that. For instance I was selling an OEM copy of some MS software, which while frowned upon by MS there is nothing out and out illegal about, and that auction got pulled.
posted by ed\26h at 9:11 AM on October 31, 2002

people selling second-hand legit media would be MUCH more harmful to the RIAA that distributing self-produced work ever could be, but you don't see them trying to curb that.

Actually, last year the RIAA tried to institute a $1 service charge on all used CD sales, so they are fully aware of the problem.
posted by mathowie at 10:12 AM on October 31, 2002

I'm going to stay out of the RIAA debate, but I think the general argument here is still valid: inexpensive distribution channels such as ebay (with broad market reach) demonstrate a very direct medium term threat to the establishment that the RIAA represents.

I believe that this whole issue coming to the fore demonstrates not so much the involvement of the RIAA per se, but the threat posed to their dominant position.
posted by tgrundke at 11:20 AM on October 31, 2002

Actually, last year the RIAA tried to institute a $1 service charge on all used CD sales, so they are fully aware of the problem.

Only for records sold in second hand music shops. Not private sales. Outrageous though, yeah.
posted by ed\26h at 11:21 AM on October 31, 2002

There was a good chunk of a thread several months ago about the whole used-CD's deal and the lowdown on how its still legal (as mathowie pointed out, the RIAA if well aware of CDs and would love nothing more than to make some more money off of them)...I would link it, but I can't find the thread.
posted by jmd82 at 11:21 AM on October 31, 2002

Yet, eBay's "droids" unilaterally removed all of his auctions merely because the item descriptions stated that the recordings were on CD-R media.

huh, funny, there are still tons of Ebay people selling $10 "CD"s that turn out to be cheap CDRs when they arrive...

But of course, that's fraud, and Ebay is certainly not known for having any interest in stopping that.
posted by vorfeed at 4:09 PM on October 31, 2002

Or not.
posted by delmoi at 9:35 PM on October 31, 2002