One can not fail but be astounded by the train of thought exhibited by Brian Burke of eBay. He says, to quote him verbatim “Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived)”.

To speak to the costs of reproduction, One wonders what he might say to the concept of drug companies spending untold amounts of money on research and development, then being able to manufacture their product for nearly nothing. This of course, does not change the fact that large amounts of money have been spend on the development of the product.

Since when does the cost of production have anything to do with the viability and demand of a product? It can take months to actually launch a digital product. Does all the product creation and pre-launch involved in getting a product to market account for nothing? I’ve personally purchased low priced ebooks that were extremely informative and would’ve paid more for the information had they asked.

eBay makes a claim which is absurd on its face - I was somehow harmed by purchasing a quality product for a low price! Did eBay’s own developers not develop the digital delivery enabled listings on their site in the first place? And were these not discussed with the users of eBay beforehand?

Getting back to feedback manipulation, you can receive bad feedback even from as little as a single sale for a penny! Personally, I have left a bad review for a product I paid only a dollar for (even at a dollar, I still felt cheated). It is doubtful that the seller in this case was happy to receive this feedback. This is just to illustrate my point here. I have paid far more for digitally delivered products - occasionally they were not worth what I paid for them either. No matter how you pay and regardless of the nature of the product, you can still end up feeling you haven’t got your money’s worth.

eBay’s listings, of course are not free. The seller has to pay in order to list his or her products.

It would be nice to know the real motivation why eBay seems to want to destroy an entire industry when there are many ways to remedy their supposed problem. eBay provides the service. They tout it as a method of advertising products and services at a reasonable cost. Now all of a sudden eBay decides that entrepreneurs who craft products that fill this niche are scamming the system.

One of the solutions to eBay’s supposed dilemma is to just ignore feedback for items selling for less than a certain amount, or to discount such feedback.

It is hoped that eBay will soon revise this policy which is doing such damage to many of their users. There have certainly been adverse effects to businesses utilizing eBay as a venue for their wares from negative feedback - however, as stated above, there is in fact an easy solution to this. The digital segment of the eBay marketplace is growing quickly, and as with any other market segment, opinions may vary as to the products themselves.

Let’s work to get Ebay to be realistic, humane, and simply use good business sense and straighten this out.

Just my 2 cents worth.