Slashdot Mirror
eBay Shuts Down Ultima Online Charity Auctions
An Anonymous Reader writes "Numerous players in Ultima Online are donating vitual gold to "Crazy" Joe Harden. Harden started some eBay auctions with the best of intentions, giving all the proceeds to the Red Cross for the tsunami disaster relief. Unfortunately, Ebay has decided to shut him down. Here's a quote from the article over on FileFront: "The auctions were for in-game gold in Ultima Online. What Harden did was set up places within Ultima Online where players could come and either buy 'junk,' as he called it, or simply donate gold to be auctioned off on eBay. After setting up 43 auctions, things were running smoothly until eBay pulled every single one of them off of their site." We reported on this effort yesterday.
Some important points the Slashdot summary didn't mention:
1) This is because E-bay forbids auctions in the name of a charity as
there have been people in the past who have used this as a con.
2) According to the article, Crazy Joe is in agreement with this
policy and is not upset that the auctions were pulled.
3) He's putting the auctions back up without mention of the Red Cross
or his website so everything should still go smoothly for those who
have donated.
Of course if everybody reads TFA there's no problem, but the way the
write-up puts it makes things seem as though things are a lot more
outrageous than they are. Besides, on slashdot "if everybody reads
TFA" is a pretty laughable suggestion...