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."

Comments

CYA

[tanveer1979]

Its called Cover You Ass.
EBAY knows doing such a thing will just bring it some bad reviews... OTOH, not doing this can bring in the RIAA hounds... what would you choose?

Ridiculous

[spatrick_123]

The truly ridiculous thing is that this system doesn't work anyway. The most common thing I've seen from people selling bootlegs or other illicit music is for the auction description to say "You are bidding on a pencil (or other random object). The winner will also receive..." The sad thing is that this usually happens with bands that don't mind their music being traded (Pearl Jam, Phish, etc.), but newbies get scammed into buying copies of stuff they could get basically free for trade. EBay has done very little to prevent abuses like this, yet they'll prevent a musician from selling his own work?!

Is eBay the most appropriate venue for indies?

[Sheetrock]

Given that eBay is an auction site, that indies are by nature not likely to have the kind of demand that would make auctioning their music worthwhile, and that CD-Rs of their music being pressed by them isn't something that is likely to be in a strictly limited supply, what's the advantage of selling your own music on eBay over setting up your own website or using one designed to push independent music that already exists?

Vigilante Corporations

[bay43270]

More and more modern law is allowing (and sometimes encouraging) any corporation to be come a vigilante. In this case, it's obvious that Ebay has the right to deny service to any customer they please. What's disturbing is that the government is encouraging companies to adopt policies that turn that right of denial of service into the noose used to hang the guilty (as well as the 'likely guilty'). We can blame the RIAA all we want, but ultimately, the government (through action or inaction) is allowing these types of things to happen every day now.

Odd, really.

[AugstWest]

I've vontacted them many times about people selling pirated MST3K videos ("Keep Circulating the Tapes" doesn't mean you can charge for them), even of episodes that Rhino and BBI has for sale.

Their answer is always "The copyright owner must contact us. Please alert them and have them get in touch with us."

I guess the same thing doesn't apply to music for some reason.

Re:It's not just individuals...

[kin_korn_karn]

and then there's that stupid PLAYING OF INSTRUMENTS that all of us luddites engage in... perish the thought that a computer doesn't make an appearance in part of our life

Re:CD-R? Because it is.

[Lumpy]

and many artists dont research it first befoer they put out their first CD's..

you can get 100 of your cd pressed in a jewel case with 4 color printing on the cd and the insert and the case spine PLUS cello wrapped for less than $3.00 a cd. that $300.00 for a first run of your CD so they look professional.. hell most musicians blow that much on booze in 2 nights of practice (ok Joking there... by my buddies and I certianly do)

there is no excuse as a musician if you have an album to sell, for you to have them pressed and looking 100% identical to that which you buy from the sellouts(Read that as RIAA members)

Entirely intentional

[drew_kime]

There's already a reply sarcastically calling it a conspriacy theory, but consider this:

Over the next month, he tried to find out who had fingered him and what he could do to get his auction back up. The constant back and forth eventually soured Ziemann -- who runs a website and retail service from his home -- on eBay altogether.

Only two people should have standing to send a take-down request: the copyright holder, and an agent for the copyright holder. In most cases that will be the RIAA. Since in this case it's clear the copyright holder didn't send the take-down notice, that leaves ...

Right, the RIAA. The same way the MPAA sent a take-down order for a fourth-grader's book report about Harry Potter. They don't care if the claim has any merit. All they care about is that no one distributes music except through their channels.