Forum Feedback Ebay: The difference between illegal and infringement

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vebk

vebk

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This has got to do with the ebay thread. Unfortunately all threads created about that get closed very soon, not affording people a chance to express their opinion.

I just wanted to make one subtle but important point: There is a difference in something being illegal and something being an infringement of terms and conditions between private parties.

A law is a set of rules laid down under the Constitution of India by a variety of ways - the parliament, state legislatures, supreme court, delegated legislation to executive bodies etc. Terms of conditions are rules laid down between two private parties and only between those two private parties to define the contractual relationship between them. It has no standing with regards to persons other than the consensually contracting parties.

A violation of a law can be termed "illegal" but a violation of terms and conditions is an "infringement." An illegal act is liable to such penalties as is laid down by law - fines, imprisonment, losing of license, suspension from public office etc. etc. An infringement of T&Cs is liable only to such penalties as are described in the contract, or by the Indian Contract Act (and are usually in the form of damages).

So getting this debate around to the Ebay issue, posting coupon codes may well be an infringement of the T&Cs, but I would be highly surprised it is illegal (i.e. against any law made by India). And unless TE has some understanding / contract with ebay, the violation would also be only on part of the individual posters, and TE would not be liable at all. Yes, in the highly unlikely scenario that Ebay decides to sue the individual posters, they could go to court and ask that TE reveal details. Which is why the first decision to not advertise creation of multiple accounts etc. was appropriate. But there is no illegality or violation on part of TE to let users share coupon codes. In other words, TE has (presumably) no contract/agreement/obligation with Ebay, and Ebay's T&Cs don't apply to it.

In a nutshell: Companies don't make laws. They only make T&Cs by which their users are bound, and the infringement of which is a matter between the company and their users. TE being a party outside such a contract/agreement, is not bound by any of the clauses. And no law AFAIK bans the publishing of coupon codes that are being advertised by the companies themselves. So there is nothing wrong with letting users post coupon codes.
 
All got messed just because TE sent good amount of referrers hits to ebay through which ebay got to know about it.

If we would had been putting url in "codes" so that weren't hyperlink-able, I think could have saved us plenty more time.

But after all TE does have good page rank and search engine picks up good pages of TE automatically.

I think we have to make a open-free blog, where people can post as many coupon codes.

Anyone interested, if I provide domain n hosting..then manage themselves ?

p.s. intention not to compete with TE. lol
 
all i know that if it wasn't for TE(Supra's thread) i would never have made account in ebay in the first place.. and since then i have bought stuffs for more then 20k..:hap2:
 
^ That is exactly why ebay did this campaign. You don't give free Rs. 250 to people who are already signed up. I am sure it was intended to attract new customers. And as you correctly pointed out, they have a lot of new members, who will now at least consider ebay when making a purchase. Practically speaking, ebay would be the last one to complain about people using these coupon codes!!

But since we were taking a technical/legal approach, I just wanted to make clear that there was an error in assuming that TE could somehow be in trouble by all this coupon code stuff.
 
VEbk, i was going to post the exact same thing yest night, i mean EXACT, My point was the power of ebays terms and conditions is limited to the accounts on their site, they can not dictate what we do on TE, At the most they have the freedom to suspend/ban the ebay accounts,

In no way can discussion abt ebay coupons be illegal, if people are creating multiple accounts its ebay's problem, i see no reason why one can not discuss it here,

Creating multiple accounts after agreeing to ebay terms and conditions is the violating users problem, I frankly believe we've become over cautious over here.

While its not bad, its preventing some good discussion and traffic to TE..

If ebay wants the coupons to remain private, then THEY should be taking the steps or stop the coupons all together.

Also i dont understand how the mods closed the thread that was hugely popular with the members, without at least taking opinions from the members :(
 
Me too hooked on eBay. I'll check out eBay at least once before I make any moderately priced purchase!
 
Party Monger said:
If ebay wants the coupons to remain private, then THEY should be taking the steps or stop the coupons all together.
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Exactly , if they wanted to stop it , they would've created coupons which could be used only by the account to which they are sent , this would render sharing and creating multiple accounts useless
 
^^ lol

We all TE members were asked not to discuss about what and all we have bought, and what and all we have received, you're still doing the same.
 
EDIT: slightly ot question - now as people have bought items .. are they legally bound ?

(not sure if mods may be against this question.. i apologize otherwise.)
 
Party Monger said:
If ebay wants the coupons to remain private, then THEY should be taking the steps or stop the coupons all together.

:(
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Exactly, if they want to issue coupons then it should be limited to only buyers whom they have send the coupons through email, instead they accepted those coupons for all the accounts and now they are suspending all the accounts, they became mad.
 
Guys ebay did not think that it would come to this.They had not factored the saviness of the indian brain.Anything free get it.They have learnt their lesson and we are the losers ie we will never get to use another "Magic Coupon" again.Hopefully I am wrong and we can have another go at it this time incorporating all the tricks of the trade.
 
johnie1 said:
Guys ebay did not think that it would come to this.They had not factored the saviness of the indian brain.Anything free get it.They have learnt their lesson and we are the losers ie we will never get to use another "Magic Coupon" again.Hopefully I am wrong and we can have another go at it this time incorporating all the tricks of the trade.
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Those tricks & trades were always there on the net but we became too casual in our decisions. As a result members, buyers & sellers suffered.... Everybody has learned the lesson the hard way but right now hard choices have to be made. eBay took Indian buyers lightly for their quest for free stuff...

I hope everything comes back to normal for everyone & we go about living our life's normally..
 
Guys ebay did not think that it would come to this.They had not factored the saviness of the indian brain.Anything free get it.They have learnt their lesson and we are the losers ie we will never get to use another "Magic Coupon" again.Hopefully I am wrong and we can have another go at it this time incorporating all the tricks of the trade.
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Bah, At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me say what I've already posted again

Someone at another forum stated that eBay received some 10K odd orders using these coupons

Total cost (assuming everyone used the 250/- coupon) to eBay - A measly 25 lakhs - Barely the same money that would get them 3-4 ad slots on national TV

What they gained however is a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth publicity ..It also served to advertise the fact that with their new paisapay escrow system and the relative maturing of the Indian market, eBay has come a long way since the Baazee days, esp the following two facts:

- eBay prices are now actually competitive and at times better than local street prices

- The PaisaPay escrow system now ensures that sellers use good shipping methods and dispatch products properly and in time thereby making eBay a lot safer place (co,pared to what it was before) to make a purchase

Having used (and burning my fingers) with Baazee in the past, eBay wasn't something I'd have touched with a bargepole

Having seen how much better it has become now, I'll be definitely ordering more stuff from ebay now onwards - coupons or without...And I am sure many folks here would probably continue using eBay (unlike the stupid promotion by the mobile phone payment gateway - can't even remember its name now)

That's what eBay intended to do, and they achieved it with a amazingly small marketing budget

coming back to the topic, there frankly wasn't anything on that thread that should have prompted a closure and flushing of the thread, and perhaps deleting the gray area posts should really have sufficed.....anyway, it's done and over with...

But censoring silly stuff like this isn't really helping TE in any way... As is, TE has had a massive drop in Alexa rankings, and unlike before, Google searches on tech stuff hardly throwup any results from TE ...

playing it ultra safe all the time is not helping the cause...Here's hoping that TE (one of the few mature Indian BBs) does not display any signs of silly immaturity going forward
 
^^ exactly my thoughts. Look, at a place where over a thousand people regularly post comments etc, it's obvious there is bound to be a few things that may not conform to the laws or standards of others. Moreover, Internet has always been a gray zone and forums specially so.

We need to conform to the norms of Internet and not the rules set by Ebay and alike. I don't say that go all out and open sections to distribute warez, but at least the matters which are in gray zone should be allowed.
 
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