Bootlegs* are sold on eBay every day. It's not like they're hidden. eBay is aware it happens and specifically bans it.

And yet... there they are? Why?

eBay provides a method to complain about illegal auctions and will pull them if their attention is directed the right way by a buyer. But it seems they will only pull if told about it.

So I can only assume, eBay is not monitoring their auctions for illegal activity. They 100% rely on users complaining about auctions.

Given eBay's massive profits, I would have thought it possible for them to implement at least an automatic method of finding illegal auctions.

It's obvious it is against eBay's interest to pull any auction. They make a commission on any sale. Pulling an auction is lost money. Why pay a team of people, or pay for software, to deliberately cost the company money?

How similar is this to the recent copyright cases brought against various P2P software companies? It's exactly the same, except in eBay's case they're directly making commission money from the sale of copyrighted goods. In the P2P case, no money changed hands for the goods, only advertising.

Think about it...

* in this post, "bootleg" refers to a live recording of a concert not officially recorded or released by the band being sold for money to the unsuspecting and suspecting public. Live concert recording and sharing is a grey area in copyright law, ignored by most bands. However the sale of such recordings is never accepted.

A report on technological protection measures (TPM) exceptions is in. It goes further into recommendations for the rights of users, copiers, historians and the right-to-copy that anyone expected:

Quote from LawFont analysis:

No, user groups can’t dance in the streets at this stage. These are recommendations: implementation is for the government and is the next phase.

But this unanimous report puts the ball squarely in the government’s court. Two arms of government have now spoken: the High Court of Australia, and a committee of the Parliament. Both have affirmed that copyright law must be balanced; that anti-circumvention laws should be matched to copyright rights, rather than overly extending them . How will the executive react?

LawFont article includes links to more analysis and comments on the fact that these are recommendations and may not fit well with the Australian/US fair trade agreement.

Update: Lawfont comments today on the conflict between the Aus/US fairtrade agreement and this report.