A week ago I wrote about my concern that eBay does not police it's own policies on illegal activities without first receiving a compaint from the public. I emailed eBay about it and here was their reply.

Thank you for your email. My name is [suppressed] and I appreciate the opportunity to be of assistance.

As stated in Section 3.1 of eBay's User Agreement, although we are commonly referred to as an online auction web site, it is important to realise that we are not a traditional "auctioneer." Instead, our Site acts as a venue to allow members to offer, sell, and buy just about anything, at anytime, from anywhere, in a variety of formats, including a fixed price format and an auction-style format commonly referred to as an "online auction." We are not involved in the actual transaction between buyers and sellers. As a result, we have no control over the quality, safety, or legality of the items or content posted by users on the Site, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items, or the ability of buyers to buy items. We cannot ensure and do not guarantee that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction or act lawfully in using our Site.

For a full review of our User Agreement, please follow this link:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/user-agreement.html

With this, we do try to respond to all reports of any illicit or illegal listings when they are received but as we do not actively police eBay listings looking for these items, it is often the case that some offenders will occasionally slip by. That is why we rely on our members to report these listings to us.

If you would like to report a listing to Community Watch, you can do so at the page below:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/contact_us/_base/index.html

Please note that even if some sellers are currently in violation of eBay listing rules and guidelines this does not lessen the seriousness of the violations for those sellers whose listings have been reported to us and subsequently ended. We will suspend the registration of any seller who relists an item after receiving prior notice from eBay to not do so.

Or, "we just make the rules, we don't police them."

I appreciate the time they've spent replying. I also agree with the idea of not blaming the software provider for activities of the software users (see Napster, newsgroups, FTP, telephones, guns, cars, chainsaws, drugs, enriched uranium).

But this still irritates me. Mostly due to the money involved. And given how easy and inexpensive it would be to police.

If I felt strongly enough about it I'd write my own script to search for dodgy listing and send out "please cancel" messages.

But I won't.

Behringer, the brand that created the little mixing desk I have attached to my computer at home for demos, has brought out a huge range of guitar pedals.

What's so amazing about them is that they're $40 each. A typical guitar pedal from the most popular brand, Boss is about $200.

I remember when the band was in full swing looking around at guitar pedals and remember being frustrated at the cost. I struggled to understand how a small box with a sound chip in it could cost so much. Boss guitar pedals are very rugged (they're called "stomp boxes" for a reason) and last forever, but even so, it seemed much too steep and obviously had more to do with the market than the actual cost to build.

$40 is a very reasonable price for an effect box and I intend to buy a few of these pedals to try them out. Probably tremelo and the distortion modeler. I need some less hardcore distortions to play with.

I should note that I've never been happier with a piece of musical toolarage than I have been with my Boss Chromatic Tuner ($220). The $100+ or so I've spent on cheap guitar tuners over the five years I'd played before buying the Boss was completely wasted.