I said,
"If this is the case [password issue] I am curious as to how Ebay gets away with transmitting passwords in plain text over the NET if one does not sign in via SSL."
It sounds like their were a few issues, (1) Privacy and the password. (2) False advertising per German Law by the vendor or defendant. The attorney further states,
Under German law misleading advertising is punished very
strongly. I understood the claim [Snipe always wins] as a hyperbole,
under German law I feel I would have the right to sue the vendor if I lost a
bid. The vendor really screwed himself by making this claim it added to the
impression the program was unfair. Sniping is not unfair but you try and explain
that to someone who probably has not used a computer (the judges).
Cricket's own advertising makes no such claims quite the contrary, just get your
maximum proxy bid in at the last moment is the main feature. That would have
sounded differently in the German courts.
He further stated,
What was interesting in the case is that Ebay stated it was an auctioneer. On its website it categorically denies it is an auction, merely an intermediary. Another indication this thing has not been thought through properly by Ebay Germany. Ebay was in difficulty in trying to enforce its guidelines signed and sealed by its users on a third party. The vendor was not a party to that contract so they had to prove or make credible that the vendor was actively enticing the Ebay users to violate their contracts hence once again the importance of the password issue.
So.. when convenient, Ebay is an auctioneer but for the rest of the year it is just a venue.
Although I have never seen the transcripts and things like that to see for myself, I interpreted the case at the time as a proving ground for banning Sniping. I think Ebay picked Germany over the US because they knew they would have a much bigger fight on their hands and people would riot in the Ebay streets over such an action. Interestingly there was hardly a peep out of the US Ebay users over the incident. The lawsuit was over false advertising and somehow Ebay convinced the court (remember the court made a lot of assumptions in the judgment and the defendant was his own agent) that there were privacy issues, the password and more importantly, it was the Germany users that were making all the noise hence Ebay's actions. I believe the privacy issue revolved around the possible stealing of passwords and the resulting damage from the website.
A couple of points
Ebay publicly is officially neutral on sniping
Ebay behind the scenes has attacked Snipe software and has in the past although they officially denied it is possible, somehow managed to get their bidding servers out of synch with atomic time about the same number of seconds most people Snipe with. It was not just Cricket that documented and logged these time discrepancies but it was reported all over the country by other Snipers that did not use Cricket. What was most interesting about the 10 to 15 second out of atomic synch times was Ebay's servers went forward in time, not backwards like one would expect a computer or clock to do, that is, drift away from atomic time. This caused Ebay to close the auction 10 to 15 seconds early just about the time a program or manual Snipe bidder is sending in the bid. This weirdness on Ebay was sporadic and it went on for months. For a time the auction closed when per the Official Ebay time page time, then later it would close per the server's time providing page requests from Ebay. Then some weeks later it would flip around and be the other way.
Ebay support discourages sniping and suggests with a boiler plate response email you bid early using the proxy. This we know is what makes for auction fever and what an auctioneer wants.
Is last second bidding or "Sniping" all you need to know about winning more Ebay auctions?
Check the Bulletin Board for the latest notices concerning cricket snipe products
Check here for available downloads and software updates
Not a programmer and need a Windows programming solution? Choose from our list of custom controls or let us know what your needs are. Reasonable rates are the rule.