Ebay Negative Feedback Lawsuit Dismissed

ccnull writes "Slashdot readers may recall the Ebay user who was suing Ebay over allegedly libellous feedback. That case has now been dismissed under the CDA, essentially giving Ebay 'common carrier' immunity, much like an ISP. Victory for free speech or perversion of justice? You decide."

Comments

Well

[Raven42rac]

Gee, tripe like this clogs the legal system, while hundreds of more relevant cases go unheard, god bless america. That would be like me suing a person's parents when he calls me an "asshole", does not make any sense, does it? An alternate route would have been to get a court order to make eBay disclose the identity of the alleged libeler (is that a word?, yes according to dictionary.com) then go after him directly, seems like a no-brainer, if I have learned one thing from this country, it is that it is much easier to sue the shit out of a person than a "big, evil corporation".

Re:Of course ebay is not liable.

[dmoynihan]

Actually, it gets weirder.

Ebay's got this partnership/close-connection/they spam you with a group called SquareTrade that you can sign up for (I think you have to have certain number of feedbacks/powerseller status).

SquareTrade lets you do feedback resolution--though of course you have to send them an extra couple of dollars each month.

I guess ebay uses a third party to keep from being considered in any way responsible for comments... but I don't think it's that hard to remove negative feedback (never done it myself.)

Re:Horse puckey

[jms]

I've seen at least one case where eBay altered the scoring of comments. It was an account used by Microsoft, and contained comment after comment still smouldering from the fifth circle of Hell, and yet they all had a 'neutral' rating. Tell me eBay wasn't tampering with those.

I emailed ebay at the time and got this response:

On Wed, 31 May 2000 12:57:51 eBay Customer Support wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to write us with your concern about our
> feedback policy. I will be happy to address your concerns. First the
> feedback for msoft@buddy.ebay.com hasn't been altered and our policies
> haven't been changed for this member.
>
> About three months ago we changed our feedback policy. Before members
> could leave neutral comments to any other member at any time. Negative
> comments had to be transaction related, so when members were upset with
> another member even if it wasn't in regards to a transaction they had
> completed with that member they could leave neutral comments.
>
> To answer your first question the feedback wasn't altered from negative
> to neutral. All of the comments that are neutral were originally left as
> neutral comments.
>
> Many alternatives to curb misuse of the Feedback Forum while still
> maintaining a non-transactional feedback option were considered.
> However, the input that we received from the community was
> overwhelmingly in favor of linking every comment to an actual
> transaction on the site.
>
> Based on that, we decided to change the past system to make all feedback
> transaction related. I hope that this information helps explain why this
> member has so many neutral comments. If you have any other questions or
> concerns feel free to contact us.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Dale H. D.
> eBay Customer Support

I just checked, and it appears that all of the feedback for msoft has completely disappeared at some point in the last three years.

Re:Well Duh...

[rifter]

Well regardless I am pretty sick of hearing of lawyers who seem to define libel as "anything negative however true." I should also point out that opinions are not libel. If I think Ebay sucks, and say so, then I am stating an opinion. Libel is when someone knowingly and maliciously tells lies in order to harm someone's reputation.

If I think GWB blows goats, and it's not true, but I say he does, I am just a looney. But if I know for a fact he does not blow goats, and say he does, that is libel. If we stripped lawyers of their licenses and made them go back to school when they came up with bullshit like this, taht even a layman can see is a spurious legal argument, maybe we would see less of it.