Ebay forgot about us Sniper type people shortly after they went public in I believe October 1998. Things really quieted down. By mid 1999 I think because Ebay was growing so fast the small town community was lost to the big city and the anti snipe voice sort of got lost in the wind. It was in 1999 and beyond that Ebay started taking politically correct positions with every new unpopular decision they made and in most cases would back up their argument with safer and more secure community speech... albeit Ebay was no longer the community as we knew it. It was now the big city full of big city type problems. There were more pressing issues on Ebay.. something was offending somebody else and wanted other things banned.
Between the years 1999 and 2002 a whole lot of people got the clue you could interface with Ebay and provide services they were not willing or could not provide. Enter the Ebay Developer's program or API as it is called. Ebay sent out an email to known developers and invited us to join the program. I along with other programmers I know filled out their incredibly detailed application which amounted to you disclosing your complete business plan to them... Well.. some months later every Snipe program developer's application was turned down. We for some reason were not allowed to join.
For a period of time when Ebay made changes on their site they would send out an email to the known developers and let us know a change that could affect our programs was going to happen. The couldn't disclose what the change would be but they did give a two minute warning whereby in turn we would alert our user bases of an impending change.
Ebay Germany has banned automated sniping services on its site. According to Ebay spokesperson, Kevin Pursglove, there were concerns by users of Ebay Germany that people who used sniping services had an "unfair advantage" over people who were sniping manually.
That came as a shock to us Snipe program developers. Germany? Right away I became negative and started doing some stinking thinking and my gut was telling me that Ebay Germany would be the test ground to ban Sniping.
Never believing the Ebay spin on things, my second largest user base after the US is Germany so I emailed some Germany Cricket users and asked what's up?
The primary issue was it seemed at the time over mis-representation or false advertising, interpreted by this attorney, so what was the fuss about revealing of a user's password to a 3rd party which is against the Ebay User Agreement?
The defendant acted as agent in his own words, not safe behaviour. I assume that to mean the defendant, owner of the website didn't have an attorney?
You - even though you made cricket - don't know my password, a critical difference. and further stated,
The whole password argument makes no sense if the piece of software was like Cricket. After all Internet Explorer caches my Ebay password and I didn't see a law suit against Bill Gates, hence my supposition that the software involved a website or third party with knowledge of users passwords.
Keeping in mind what spokesperson Pursglove had said about an unfair advantage I said to the attorney,
"If an unfair advantage could be construed out of this the only advantage the snipe program has over the browser snipe is that with the former, the end user is not required to be present. It really boils down to what pushes the bid button. A human or a program."
His reply,
Remember this was a fast track case. The court rules on a temporary basis to
avoid irreparable damage in time sensitive cases. This means that such arguments
are not considered. Indeed the court clearly outlines in its ruling it is making
a number of assumptions.
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