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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (67870)	7/15/1999 4:43:00 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164685

>Prosecutors say Guest collected about $37,000 from bidders between March and >May of last year. Victims paid him through checks and money orders. I doubt it is an isolated incident. Any criminal worth their salt will see how easy it is to scam money from gullible eBay users, and soon the number of frauds will outweigh the number of legitimate auctions. eBay is in a tough position- while they legally do not want to be responsible for any of the transactions, they want users to _think_, in the back of their minds, that somehow eBay is a big company working behind the scenes and that anyone selling something on eBay is somehow "safe." Auctions will eventually be free, just like usenet forsale items are free. The law will eventually boil down to this: You can't collect a fee, unless you're willing to take responsibility for successfull completion of all transactions. That's how real-world auction houses work. And of course, ebay could never afford that kind of overhead, so they will eventually wither away.