San Francisco (CA) - If you were making a lucrative business selling legitimate downloadable material on Ebay, it has suddenly become much less lucrative as the auction site now requires you to make these sales through Ebay Classifieds, a service that costs the seller $10 per month.
Ebay said the objective of this was to prevent feedback abuse. "This ease of replicationcreates the opportunity for sellers to list thousands of the same itemin an attempt to manipulate the feedback system. It also creates aperception that even legitimate sellers of digital goods aremanipulating the feedback system. This dynamic - real andperceived - undermines trust across the entire marketplace," said the site in its official blog.
The Internet juggernaut said it considered other possibilities but ultimately decided that barring large-volume digital downloads from normal auction listings was the best option.
