My colleague Robert Shrimsley has written a nice opinion column on the mess surrounding the Live8 tickets.
Rob writes (and it's worth a read):
Found on eBay earlier this week: Absolutely vital point of principle. Good condition. Much-prized individual liberty. Works best in combination with a free society. PayPal and personal cheques only. Time remaining three hours.
Within hours it was being heavily discounted. An hour later it appeared to have been deleted altogether.
Freedom, liberty, principles and integrity joined Nazi memorabilia as the only things the world's most famous online auction house is squeamish about offering.
The commotion began this week when Sir Bob Geldof voiced outrage that, wholly predictably, tickets for the Live8 concerts were being sold at huge profit on eBay.
He had a point; eBay was on uncomfortable ground in facilitating the venal profiteering of those selling their tickets for near 100 per cent profits. It could have asked sellers to take their business elsewhere.
He went on to heap illogical emotional abuse on the site. EBay were "electronic pimps". They were hurting the poorest people in the world. Of course, in truth, this secondary market had no impact on the world's poor.
Indeed since the concert is seeking to raise consciousness not money, the seller's behaviour, while clearly amoral, had no adverse consequences at all - except perhaps to demonstrate how much could have been raised had Sir Bob sold the tickets rather than given them away.
EBay responded by offering to donate all its own profits from the sale. But Sir Bob did not want their "tainted" money - though presumably the poorest people in the world might have found a use for it. (Perhaps what it should have done is outbid Sir Bob by announcing it was raising the commission on all ticket sales to 50 per cent and giving that money to Oxfam.)
Unusually for those facing the wrath of Geldof, eBay stood firm. It decided there was a point of principle here. In a free society, eBay said, "people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell". It is a matter for their own consciences.
The whole point of principles is that you have to stick with them even when they are uncomfortable. Anyone can defend popular principles. The hard - but more vital - part is defending people's freedom to behave like gits.
It was a brave decision. That Sir Bob's heart is so completely in the right place disguises the fact that he is a demagogue who resorts to using the most base, emotional rhetoric to vilify those who cross him and stirs up mobs with the promise of simple solutions. He may often be right but means matter as well as ends.
Alas, eBay's defence of freedom proved about as solid as the armies of the Sudetenland in the face of Sir Bob's panzers and some bandwagon-jumping junior minister.
When they would not back down he cleverly called on people towreck the sales by flooding the website with impossible, multi-million pound bids. EBay caved within hours. Having cried freedom, they cried off. Liberty wasn't worth the price after all.
Rob writes (and it's worth a read):
Found on eBay earlier this week: Absolutely vital point of principle. Good condition. Much-prized individual liberty. Works best in combination with a free society. PayPal and personal cheques only. Time remaining three hours.
Within hours it was being heavily discounted. An hour later it appeared to have been deleted altogether.
Freedom, liberty, principles and integrity joined Nazi memorabilia as the only things the world's most famous online auction house is squeamish about offering.
The commotion began this week when Sir Bob Geldof voiced outrage that, wholly predictably, tickets for the Live8 concerts were being sold at huge profit on eBay.
He had a point; eBay was on uncomfortable ground in facilitating the venal profiteering of those selling their tickets for near 100 per cent profits. It could have asked sellers to take their business elsewhere.
He went on to heap illogical emotional abuse on the site. EBay were "electronic pimps". They were hurting the poorest people in the world. Of course, in truth, this secondary market had no impact on the world's poor.
Indeed since the concert is seeking to raise consciousness not money, the seller's behaviour, while clearly amoral, had no adverse consequences at all - except perhaps to demonstrate how much could have been raised had Sir Bob sold the tickets rather than given them away.
EBay responded by offering to donate all its own profits from the sale. But Sir Bob did not want their "tainted" money - though presumably the poorest people in the world might have found a use for it. (Perhaps what it should have done is outbid Sir Bob by announcing it was raising the commission on all ticket sales to 50 per cent and giving that money to Oxfam.)
Unusually for those facing the wrath of Geldof, eBay stood firm. It decided there was a point of principle here. In a free society, eBay said, "people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell". It is a matter for their own consciences.
The whole point of principles is that you have to stick with them even when they are uncomfortable. Anyone can defend popular principles. The hard - but more vital - part is defending people's freedom to behave like gits.
It was a brave decision. That Sir Bob's heart is so completely in the right place disguises the fact that he is a demagogue who resorts to using the most base, emotional rhetoric to vilify those who cross him and stirs up mobs with the promise of simple solutions. He may often be right but means matter as well as ends.
Alas, eBay's defence of freedom proved about as solid as the armies of the Sudetenland in the face of Sir Bob's panzers and some bandwagon-jumping junior minister.
When they would not back down he cleverly called on people towreck the sales by flooding the website with impossible, multi-million pound bids. EBay caved within hours. Having cried freedom, they cried off. Liberty wasn't worth the price after all.
posted by Steve at 5:00 PM
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