Michael Ward’s Techdirt Profile

On the post: Up-and-Coming Label Illustrates How to Sell Infinite Goods in the Internet Age

Michael Ward ( profile ), 08 May, 2008 @ 12:34pm

Scare goods

I think you meant to say "scarce goods" rather than "scare goods related to the band" up there in the text. God knows there are some bands that pretty scary, and some goods likewise.

On the post: Businesses Prefer Not to Be Sued, Film at 11

Michael Ward ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2008 @ 05:31pm

Cheap

I think they left off the last three zeros. However, if not ...

For that money, which is less than some people spend on their new cars, we could buy some -good- laws for a change.

On the post: Can Dropping Fees Revitalize eBay?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2008 @ 12:28pm

Amazon can eat eBay's lunch any time it decides to

I've sold spare books, magazines, and (very) miscellaneous items on both eBay (as michael_ward) and Amazon Marketplace (as MikeAndKaren). Amazon is a much more pleasant experience.

You can list things for sale on Amazon and **they don't charge a new listing fee every week**. And if you pay them $40 a month for a storefront, they let you create thousands of pages for a wide variety of items without making you renew the listing. And Amazon has millions of customers.

eBay has a storefront program, but they charge you a listing fee every month and a rather high percentage for the transaction, and extra fees for credit card clearing if you use PayPal as everyone does.

What's keeping Amazon from taking over the eBay ecological niche? They are not organized in terms of categories the way eBay is. Their search mechanism is not quite as good. Feedback is still primitive. And... people don't yet go there looking for the collectible kinds of things they find on eBay. Not enough customers, not enough offerings; chicken::egg.

However, that hasn't stopped various people from trying to offer collectible items for sale. An unfortunate side effect of the dealers' attempts to use the Amazon Marketplace for small, collectible, and niche items is the number of dead listing pages that come up on a search, the result of offerings of unique items that sold, or were taken off sale. This is a consequence of Amazon's original model of retail sales of high-volume, commercially widely available standard items.

In the Marketplace for used books, there are only so many titles/editions ever published; once those all have a listing page, no more listing pages need be created. This is not the case with souvenirs of Paris. Amazon needs to hire a few more people, or some smart AI software, to clear out the deadwood. (While they're at it, they could merge the multiple listings for identical items, created by dealers who failed to find the existing listing pages that cover their title/edition.)

eBay, with a stroke of the pen, could compete with Amazon in this market. It simply has to decide that its current pricing model, even as modified by the latest changes, is out of date. But it's huge, and rich, and stuffed to gills with time-servers who are afraid to endanger the income stream. So we get deck-chair rearranging like this latest bit.

On the post: Can Google Solve The Domain Tasting Problem?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2008 @ 10:19am

domain tasting

Why doesn't some public-spirited ISP sue ICANN to force them to stop allowing domain-tasting?

I've read extensively about this problem, but have yet to see any justification for the "first five days are free" policy.

On the post: Kindle's Overpriced Content

Michael Ward ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2007 @ 06:33pm

Pricing, payments, formats

Too expensive, extras also too extra expensive. Perhaps the second version will be cheaper. But I like the wireless approach they came up with.

At 99 cents a blog, does that mean they pay TechDirt a percentage for each person who subscribes?

How come no PDF? If you've got a fixed display size, PDF is an easy win. They don't even have to rent it from Adobe; there are plenty of software shops that can do PDF renderers for them. Someone at Amazon has his brain wedged.

On the post: If A Spam Arrives In The Forest, But Nobody's Around To Receive It…

Michael Ward ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2006 @ 03:10pm

Stopping SPAM (yes, really)

Some SPAM is illegal, even under the Can-Spam Act. My mailbox get lots of it.

I can't go after the spammers, but my ISP could go after the problem by suing the people who hired the spammers -- the Gevalia Coffee companies and the mortgage brokers and the fake-drug makers.

The spammers are acting as agents for the companies that benefit from spam, and there's a long history in the legal code about "agency" and the responsibilities a company has for the actions of its agents.

Why doesn't agency law apply here?

On the post: 93% Of Domain Reigistrations For Scam Sites?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 18 May, 2006 @ 06:17pm

Refundable Scams

This is stupid. Just make the entirety of the domain fees non-refundable.

On the post: How Quickly Everyone Forgets eBay Already Has A Buy Now Site

Michael Ward ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2006 @ 09:12pm

Half.com vs Express

eBay tried to shut Half.com down a little while ago, but the sellers there objected. Half is not the same as eBay: you can list something for sale, and it will be on sale until it sells or you remove it. You do not pay anything until it sells, and you don't have to keep renewing the listing.

eBay Express, on the other hand, is simply a repackaging of current eBay fixed-price (aka "Buy it Now") listings. If you are not an eBay storefront user, you will have to keep re-listing the item to keep it on sale. I believe this will involve additional listing fees.

Of course, you can set up an eBay storefront (for what is actually a low fee, if you have any volume to speak of). I don't remember if you have to pay relisting fees or if the relisting can be made automatic like you can do on the Amazon Marketplace (for a monthly sum).

The Amazon Marketplace is what keeps eBay awake at night.

On the post: Exec Says Kodak Planned To Shrink Your Photos While Saying It Was An Improvement

Michael Ward ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2006 @ 09:02pm

Cheap Storage

Kodak can rent storage from Amazon. 100 GB for $15 a month, and fairly reliable. Go, guys! Make a deal.

On the post: Why Does Adware Persist? Because There's A Market For It

Michael Ward ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2006 @ 06:13pm

Unscrupulous agents of the unscrupulous

You know, when I studied business law there was a whole chapter on Agency, the way in which when you hire an Agent to assist you in your business you are responsible for many of the business-related actions of that Agent.

I do not understand how these companies can escape punishment for the actions of their Agents, who after all were hired to perform certain tasks and paid for doing so.

If the Agents are violating the contracts signed with the original providers of the ads, lets see some lawsuits against them for contract breach, and some turning of State's Evidence against the rogue Agents.

The absence of such lawsuits and such testimony tells us what we already knew--that the Agents are doing exactly what they were hired to do.

They infest your computer because that is their job, and they do what their boss tells them.

On the post: FCC Yanked High School Radio Station Broadcast Licenses

Michael Ward ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2006 @ 10:19am

Re: frequency allocations

Limited number of frequencies available in a congest spectrum area like greater Boston.

As long as it was limited to 10 watts, the station was unlikely to interfere with other non-commercial broadcasters. Raising the power to 250 watts introduced the possibility of adjacent-channel or co-channel interference with other broadcasters.

What is unclear from the article is why the FCC "simply gave away" the frequency to a non-local group like this obscure religious operation. Was the fix in? Are they raising money for somebody the FCC Chairman favors?

On the post: How Sony BMG's Rootkit Is Impacting Sales

Michael Ward ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2005 @ 10:56am

SONY in trouble

A bunch of the family is buying a new computer for parents. We narrowed the choices down to Dell and Sony; after this nonsense, we've deleted Sony from any consideration at all.

Multiply this by some large number of similarly angry consumers.

On the post: Do You Mean To Say That Phishing Was Legal Prior To Friday?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2005 @ 11:39pm

illegal Phishing

Does this mean I can go after someone on my own, and get a $500,000 judgment on them?

Sure, may be hard to collect, but it's the principle of the thing. I'll go get my net.

On the post: Pay-Per-Click Speculators Driving Domain Registrations

Michael Ward ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2005 @ 11:38am

Domain-click spam

Why is there a five-day cooling off period for a registration?

Doctor, it hurts when I hit myself like this.

D'oh.

On the post: Can We Legislate More Smart People?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2005 @ 11:35am

Encouraging science and engineering careers.

Pay the scientists and engineers. Stop using them as layoff fodder. Stop making them work nights and weekends for free.

If your mommy or daddy is an engineer, you know one thing: You're going to go to law school or get an MBA. You're not going to go through engineering school hell only to wind up on the street, with your job in India.

On the post: The Company That Spyware Built

Michael Ward ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2005 @ 11:08am

Claria

Did you know that Silicon Valley legend Andy Bechtolsheim is a major investor in Claria/Gator? How come he isn't being ostracized? People should be picketing in front of his house. And he's only one of them. The list is long.

On the post: Should Companies Be Responsible When Their Affiliates Spam?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2005 @ 10:19am

spamming affiliates

While I am not a lawyer, my recollection from business law 101 is that the affiliate relationship is a pretty clear case of Agency. You hire an agent, you are responsible for what the Agent does in pursuit of the business relationship. You can put gobbledegook in the contract with the Agent, but courts have pretty much gone for rational interpretations of Agency and it's hard to weasel out of it.

Summary: the sellers are responsible for whatever crimes the spammers commit in an effort to find them customers.

On the post: Is Freeing Up Intellectual Property Not In Our Economic Interest?

Michael Ward ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2005 @ 10:45am

IP value

The value of any intellectual property is whatever someone will pay you for it. If no one wants it at any price, its value is zero. The library is full of books, still in copyright, which no one will pay anything for; stock footage houses are full of clips that no one wants. If you knew which ones they were, you could make them available for free and concentrate on the ones that will make some money.

On the post: No More Emails

Michael Ward ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2004 @ 02:22pm

phishing

I'm certainly never going to get an account at SunTrust; they have failed to send responses to any of the phishing attempts that I've forwarded to their abuse@ address.
On the other hand, eBay and PayPal -always- thank me for forwarding phishing mail and -always- later on send a note telling me that the e-mail was faked. That's the kind of reaction that all institutions should at the very least start with.
I still want to see some more phishers get jail time, though. Maybe we could reinstitute whippings and the stocks, also; I'd be there with some good garbage to throw at them.

On the post: Phishing Losses Not So Big; Confidence Losses Are Another Story

Michael Ward ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2004 @ 09:12am

Phishing

I'm getting tired of forwarding these phishing attempts (with full headers etc.) to spoof@ebay, abuse@suntrust etc. As far as I can tell very little is actually being done to track the phishers down and lock them away.

Let's have some positive stories about phishers getting caught!

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