If you look at the actual text of the law, as signed, it seems clear there was a deliberate attempt to 1) exempt Ebay and similar online sites, 2) exempt individual (and dare I say low-volume) sellers.
But it is also clear, as I read it, that people that buy items for the intent to resell were specifically not exempted. Now, how this interfaces with the exemptions for auction mediation company (Ebay.) They way I read it, Ebay's role changes depending on the intent of the seller. Which is screwy, and probably unenforcable. Especially if Ebay doesn't have a business presence in Ohio, which of course brings in the whole interstate commerce issue.
Ultimately, it's a messy law if someone wants to make an issue out of it. If the Ohio Dept of Ag clearly makes good rules from a poorly written & thought-out law, it might work as intended.
Sec. 4707.01. As used in sections 4707.01 to 4707.22 and 4707.99 of the Revised Code this chapter:
(A) "Auction" means a method of sale of real or personal property, goods, or chattels, at a predetermined date and time, by means of a verbal exchange, regular mail, telecommunications, the internet, an electronic transmission, or a physical gesture between an auctioneer or apprentice auctioneer and members of the audience or prospective purchasers, the exchanges and gestures consisting of a series of invitations for offers made by the auctioneer and offers by members of the audience or prospective purchasers, with the right to acceptance of offers with the auctioneer or apprentice auctioneer. "Auction" includes a sale of real or personal property, goods, or chattels in which there has been a solicitation or invitation by advertisement to the public for an advance in bidding using sealed bidding, provided that the bids are opened and there is a call for an advancement of the bids.
(G) "Auction mediation company" means a company that provides a forum through the internet for a person to sell the person's real or personal property that was not originally acquired for the purpose of resale via the submission of silent bids using a computer or other electronic device.
Sec. 4707.02. No person shall act as an auction firm, auctioneer, apprentice auctioneer, or special auctioneer within this state without a license issued by the department of agriculture. No auction shall be conducted in this state except by an auctioneer licensed by the department.
I have no evidence to refute your last statement.:)
Nor do I disagree. The 3yr+ budget problems are forcing a lot of bad decisions. No one wants to pony up and admit that Ohio can't afford to offer services like it has in the past. And of course, very few using those services will let them be cut without opposition. Something has to give.
As I see it, this is one of many end-runs around US Congress' ban on 'net taxes. I'm sure there will be more.
The way it works here, the Ohio legislatures pass the laws. The adminstrative agencies interpret those laws and write rules. The rules are enforced by the agency. Every 5 years, agencies are req'd to review their rules. There are public hearings, etc.
There is a lot of room for change if it is believe that agency is not following the intent of the law.
I never stated it was a good law as written, or even as modified. Just that the authors said the interpretation, as presented here on/., was not what they intended; that they themselves would be negatively impacted, and would be changing it before it was signed./shrug
And if you have read any US SC desicions I believe you will see "congress' intent" used a lot when it comes to deciding whether or not an agency's actions are legal or not. Therefore, I would believe that intent does matter in law & in courts assuming this extends to state courts.
I live in Ohio and this was covered on local NPR or some other newsource a few days ago. As written, it can be interpreted to apply to casual sellers on Ebay. But the authors state that it is not the intent, and that it will be modified to exclude casual sellers before it goes into affect.
Workaround
This can be worked around by disabling IDN support. To do this, you will have to edit compreg.dat, which is located in your Firefox profile directory (Common profile locations).
Open this file with a text editor which understands the line endings in it, such as Wordpad (or your favourite text editor on other platforms), and comment out all lines containing IDN by adding # at the start of the line.
Note that you will have to repeat this edit if you install any themes or extensions, as compreg.dat gets regenerated.
Happy to help. I only scanned the links before posting (forgot to sign-in), so I'm not positive they apply to the original article. But, it should give you a trend of adult Americans...the high school specific parts may be in there somewhere.
I've read a number of these "Wikipedia is dangerous" articles in the last few weeks and one thing that is overlooked is that the user has the responsibility to evaulate the source. Labeling Wikipedia unreliable is not fair. I would tend to blame the lack of critical thinking skills among the users--those who read the articles--as the major problem. I use Wikipedia all the time, and I appreciate the bias in many of the articles. To me, bias is flavor...much like the opinions expressed on/. All fact would be boring. But perhaps I've aligned my expectations with what Wikipedia can offer, and thus it perfectly fulfills my needs.
If I had a soapbox, I would use it to point out the education system in US is failing to teach critical-thinking skills. I'm not sure it was ever part of the standard curriculum, but I would be suprised if it exists at all today with focus on test scores and benchmarks. And that is trouble. Being able to aggregate information from a variety of sources is such an important skill. Our lives are inundated with scams, advertisements, and "news" that all has a hidden agenda. Society wouldn't have to be so skeptical and untrusting if we had more confidence in or an accurate measure of our ability to evaluate information & sources.
I found Adobe Reader SpeedUp located at http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/ to help with the slow PDF load issue. It's a bridge until FireFox is fixed; I didn't have a problem with 0.8 loading PDFs.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is also clear, as I read it, that people that buy items for the intent to resell were specifically not exempted. Now, how this interfaces with the exemptions for auction mediation company (Ebay.) They way I read it, Ebay's role changes depending on the intent of the seller. Which is screwy, and probably unenforcable. Especially if Ebay doesn't have a business presence in Ohio, which of course brings in the whole interstate commerce issue.
Ultimately, it's a messy law if someone wants to make an issue out of it. If the Ohio Dept of Ag clearly makes good rules from a poorly written & thought-out law, it might work as intended.
Sec. 4707.01. As used in sections 4707.01 to 4707.22 and 4707.99 of the Revised Code this chapter:
(A) "Auction" means a method of sale of real or personal property, goods, or chattels, at a predetermined date and time, by means of a verbal exchange, regular mail, telecommunications, the internet, an electronic transmission, or a physical gesture between an auctioneer or apprentice auctioneer and members of the audience or prospective purchasers, the exchanges and gestures consisting of a series of invitations for offers made by the auctioneer and offers by members of the audience or prospective purchasers, with the right to acceptance of offers with the auctioneer or apprentice auctioneer. "Auction" includes a sale of real or personal property, goods, or chattels in which there has been a solicitation or invitation by advertisement to the public for an advance in bidding using sealed bidding, provided that the bids are opened and there is a call for an advancement of the bids.
(G) "Auction mediation company" means a company that provides a forum through the internet for a person to sell the person's real or personal property that was not originally acquired for the purpose of resale via the submission of silent bids using a computer or other electronic device.
Sec. 4707.02. No person shall act as an auction firm, auctioneer, apprentice auctioneer, or special auctioneer within this state without a license issued by the department of agriculture. No auction shall be conducted in this state except by an auctioneer licensed by the department.
This section does not apply to:
(C) An auction mediation company;
Nor do I disagree. The 3yr+ budget problems are forcing a lot of bad decisions. No one wants to pony up and admit that Ohio can't afford to offer services like it has in the past. And of course, very few using those services will let them be cut without opposition. Something has to give.
As I see it, this is one of many end-runs around US Congress' ban on 'net taxes. I'm sure there will be more.
There is a lot of room for change if it is believe that agency is not following the intent of the law.
I never stated it was a good law as written, or even as modified. Just that the authors said the interpretation, as presented here on /., was not what they intended; that they themselves would be negatively impacted, and would be changing it before it was signed. /shrug
And if you have read any US SC desicions I believe you will see "congress' intent" used a lot when it comes to deciding whether or not an agency's actions are legal or not. Therefore, I would believe that intent does matter in law & in courts assuming this extends to state courts.
I live in Ohio and this was covered on local NPR or some other newsource a few days ago. As written, it can be interpreted to apply to casual sellers on Ebay. But the authors state that it is not the intent, and that it will be modified to exclude casual sellers before it goes into affect.
Workaround This can be worked around by disabling IDN support. To do this, you will have to edit compreg.dat, which is located in your Firefox profile directory (Common profile locations).
Open this file with a text editor which understands the line endings in it, such as Wordpad (or your favourite text editor on other platforms), and comment out all lines containing IDN by adding # at the start of the line.
Note that you will have to repeat this edit if you install any themes or extensions, as compreg.dat gets regenerated.
Happy to help. I only scanned the links before posting (forgot to sign-in), so I'm not positive they apply to the original article. But, it should give you a trend of adult Americans...the high school specific parts may be in there somewhere.
I've read a number of these "Wikipedia is dangerous" articles in the last few weeks and one thing that is overlooked is that the user has the responsibility to evaulate the source. Labeling Wikipedia unreliable is not fair. I would tend to blame the lack of critical thinking skills among the users--those who read the articles--as the major problem. I use Wikipedia all the time, and I appreciate the bias in many of the articles. To me, bias is flavor...much like the opinions expressed on /. All fact would be boring. But perhaps I've aligned my expectations with what Wikipedia can offer, and thus it perfectly fulfills my needs.
If I had a soapbox, I would use it to point out the education system in US is failing to teach critical-thinking skills. I'm not sure it was ever part of the standard curriculum, but I would be suprised if it exists at all today with focus on test scores and benchmarks. And that is trouble. Being able to aggregate information from a variety of sources is such an important skill. Our lives are inundated with scams, advertisements, and "news" that all has a hidden agenda. Society wouldn't have to be so skeptical and untrusting if we had more confidence in or an accurate measure of our ability to evaluate information & sources.
I found Adobe Reader SpeedUp located at http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/ to help with the slow PDF load issue. It's a bridge until FireFox is fixed; I didn't have a problem with 0.8 loading PDFs.