Digital goods banned on eBay UK & Ireland
1/04/2008 at 15:30
As expected after last week’s ban from .com, digital goods are to be banned from eBay UK. From April 29th, “all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically” are banned from being listed in *any* format on eBay UK or eBay Ireland. Sellers thus do not have the option to list in the Classified format that US sellers were offered. Anyone who thinks they may be affected should consult the downloadable media policy for further information.
While I don’t have much sympathy for the people who sell feedback under the guise of endlessly replicated spammy ebooks, there are some genuine sellers who list digital items on eBay: not only ebooks with useful content, but auction listing templates, for example. The best advice I’ve seen anyone come up with for these people is to start producing CD copies of your work which can be mailed to buyers: it’s not an ideal solution, but it should at least keep you in business. But as Brian Burke has made clear, saying “free shipping” when you mean “email delivery” is not permitted.
keith says
4:59 pm on 01/04/2008
Interestingly on the policy page. If you click ‘why does Ebay have this policy’ it says
This policy helps protect buyers from purchasing unauthorised or counterfeit merchandise, and helps intellectual property rights owners protect their rights.
keith says
5:15 pm on 01/04/2008
Ignore the above. I thought it was a new policy. Just checked on .com & it was in the old policy.
Even though .com banned DD from today, they still have help pages on how to list them.