One down for EBay

Apparently the French courts have ruled against EBay to the tune of £30m in a bizarre case (at least from my point of view).

LVMH (who own a number of designer brands from Christian Dior to Louis Vuitton) sued EBay for allowing EBay’s users to sell counterfeit designer goods. I think this is just ridiculous. EBay are in the business of providing a service to perform online auctions, and really should not have to take blame for what their users sell. LVMH really should have gone out for the counterfeiters themselves.

The concept is pretty simple: there are many companies out there that provide a “service” for their end consumers, and it’s their consumers who actually make the conscience decision to utilise it. If someone doesn’t like it, the service provider really should not be blamed here. The end consumer is at fault. The same argument can be applied when an organisation like RIAA sues an ISP – it’s not the ISP who downloaded all those songs, its the users!

So, what’s next ? A person who just had his house robbed sues the car company that the robbers used as a getaway vehicle ?