Ohio Wants eBayers to Post $50k Bond

MacDork writes "CNNMoney posted a short article this morning about new Ohio regulations set to become effective May 2 this year. If you are in the state and selling on eBay, you will need to pay $200 for a license and post a $50,000 bond or face possible fines and jail time. Getting the license also requires a one-year apprenticeship. When asked to which eBay users this bill applied, the bill's author, Larry Mumper responded with these very specific guidelines.... "It certainly will not apply to the casual seller on eBay, but might apply to anyone who sells a lot.""

Comments

calm down

[the_mighty_$]

Read the article:

...The primary author of the legislation, State Sen. Larry Mumper, told the paper the legislature never intended it to apply to individuals selling items over eBay....

In other words, the lawmakers are NOT attempting to target eBay/eBay users with this law. The law is there only to make sure auctioneers are obeying other Ohio laws regarding auctions. eBay already attempts to enforce the law by shutting down illegal auctions or whatever, so it is VERY unlikely that Ohio lawmakers will need to empose this law onto eBay sellers.

Another Deceptive headline....

[RaZ0r]

The headline is an outright lie. Ebay was not even considered when this law drafted. It is not designed to affect ebay or ebay users. In fact, this law couldn't affect ebay users, as they are not the ones doing the actual auctioning; that is left to ebay.

Would this law make it illegal to have an auctioneer auction off some of your property for you? NO! This would only affect someone acting as an auctioneer.

It will, however, be interesting to see if they try to apply this law to ebay, as they (their software) does act as an auctioneer. A $50,000 bond would be a drop in the bucket for ebay, but I'm not sure if the $200 is per auction or a one-time fee for the license.... That could be interesting.

It already passed

[voidptr]

But all is not despair. Do you smell that? I do, it's the smell of legislation that will never be passed. This is just another one of those bills we keep seeing that has absolutely no chance of ever becoming law, serving the sole purpose of allowing the senator to say "LOOK I WAS AGAINST EBAY SCAMMING!!!!111" Honestly, it's sad that this is what our "representatives" spend most of their time doing, but hey, at least they have the sense not to actually pass it, right?

FTFA:
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the law, signed by Gov. Robert Taft on Feb. 1