The Insidious Effect Of Easy Money, Perceived Influence & Expanding Power

How eBay Makes Regulations Disappear

The original idea behind regulation of commerce was to fulfill the mission of the Constitution as described and set forth in the Preamble of that great document. The goal was to ensure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare by assuring ethical business practices that protected the consumer, the lives of our citizens, the "fair playing field" for competitors in the various industries, and the benefit of the government so that it could further its goals through funding by fees, tarriffs and taxes.

But today, the regulation of industry and commerce is more about money, power, influence and greed than it is about the ideals of ensuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare. The article being cited here speaks to the power big business has to pervert these ideals and focus on the foundations of greed that seem to be what makes our political world go around.

But how many of us bother to really understand the dynamics of power, money, influence and greed that permeates our governmental processes and regulations these days. We elect representatives, senators and officers to do the necessary work, in full hope that these constitutional ideals will remain in the forethought of each representative and in front of every governmental process. But that is not how it works. Powerful lobbyists from every industry--including powerful not-for-profit entities like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Red Cross, United Way, Easter Seals, Churches, Ministries, etc.--walk the halls of our legislative and executive offices and buildings, always waiting patiently like vultures looking for carrion or offal, seizing upon any opportunity to change regulations in their favor. Somewhere in this process our basic values, our first principles and our own best interests are lost.

This article about e-Bay demonstrates how those ideals are set aside in favor of GREED. Also lost in the process are basic protections from rip-offs... some of them occuring because these regulations have been wiped away or set aside. We need to return to some old sage advice: The law ought not to be set aside or suspended except in the most extreme of circumstances.

In quick succession one morning last month, Louisiana state legislators plowed through a long list of bills, including one to relocate the motor vehicle commission, another to regulate potentially abusive lending practices, and yet another that was the handiwork of eBay, the digital shopping mall that bills itself as "the world's online marketplace."

EBay had worked overtime to ensure the passage of Senate Bill 642, which sought to exempt some Internet transactions — like those that occur on its Web site — from Louisiana licensing requirements for businesses conducting auctions. As the State Senate's Commerce Committee convened to consider the bill, Duane Cowart, an eBay lobbyist, testified that forcing eBay "trading assistants" to fork over $300 for a license was unduly burdensome.

"What they do on the Internet is not an auction, and they are not auctioneers," Mr. Cowart told the committee. Trading assistants take items on consignment from other owners and put them up for bid on eBay, but Mr. Cowart said their activities were more akin to placing classified ads. Louisiana's senators seemed to agree with him wholeheartedly. "I think eBay is great," said one, while another regaled the room about his adventures shopping for a Plymouth Prowler on eBay. State Senator Noble E. Ellington, a Democrat who sponsored the bill at Mr. Cowart's behest, beamed as his colleagues gave the legislation their unanimous support.

EBay's lobbying activities are not confined to Louisiana. As the company has spread its innovative and influential wings across the Internet, it has also woven together a muscular and wily lobbying apparatus that spans 25 states. "It is a fast-moving train, and if you get in front of it you'll get flattened," said Sherrie Wilks, an official with Louisiana's licensing agency, who is concerned that eBay flouts regulatory oversight by persuading state legislators to take the company's side.

Regulators in other states also say that when they try to erect guidelines around eBay's activities, they quickly encounter the realities of the company's political power, raising anew the perennial questions about the proper balance among public policy, consumer protection and business interests. EBay's lobbying tactics, meanwhile, illustrate the spoils to be won when a savvy, resourceful company combines local political persuasion and grass-roots rallying to get lucrative regulatory exemptions that allow it to safeguard its profits.

EBay's efforts have been remarkably successful, and the company, which has worked tirelessly to cultivate its image as a friendly neighborhood bazaar even as it engages in hard-nosed lobbying, is not shy about boasting of its victories. Last year, Ohio passed a law that would have regulated eBay sellers, but the company moved quickly — with the help of seasoned lobbyists — to have a pre-emptive and more favorable bill passed.

"We realized what was there, and we worked with local lobbyists and were able to get the law reversed," said Tod Cohen, eBay's vice president for government relations. He oversees the company's efforts to convince state lawmakers of a core eBay belief: that state regulation can impede the flow of e-commerce.

The Federal Trade Commission, which has loosened regulations across a broad range of industries, appears to agree. Late last week, responding to a request from Mr. Ellington for an analysis of the Louisiana bill, the agency advised that the bill promoted competition and increased consumer choice.

Unlike many other Internet companies, eBay has to be especially fleet-footed when it comes to stopping what it perceives as hostile regulation, whether it involves the growing number of eBay drop-off stores — places like UPS stores and small shops where people take their goods to be sold on eBay — or the more general category of trading assistants. Anyone engaged in selling on the site depends on a relatively friction-free environment in order to make a profit. So does eBay, because its overall corporate goal is to keep sales volumes high.

At any given moment, 89 million items are for sale on eBay, and the mother ship — eBay itself — gets a fee for each successful transaction. It also charges its 193 million registered users listing fees for any products they display on the site. EBay's gross transaction fees for the first quarter of 2006 alone were more than $500 million, a 30 percent increase over the same quarter in 2005. Keeping regulators at bay, particularly those whose efforts might slow down sales traffic, is a particularly high priority for the company.

Regulations are threatening to eBay for another reason as well. They set precedents. Once a law regulating eBay sellers takes hold in one state, other states are more likely to follow suit. And not only do licenses and other regulatory requisites increase the cost of selling items on eBay, but regulations may deter entrepreneurs who are thinking of introducing eBay-based businesses. Although regulations can help rein in con artists and other fraudsters masquerading as legitimate vendors on eBay — which is why most regulators say they favor strict licensing requirements — eBay sees its online community as self-regulating.

Analysts say the company has little room to maneuver when it comes to opposing outside oversight.

"EBay doesn't have a choice," said Ina Steiner, editor of Auctionbytes.com, an online newsletter. "This is such a tight-margin, price-sensitive business that if there are excessive regulations on sellers, it will affect eBay dramatically."

Accordingly, eBay fights regulators who try to categorize it as an auction house — despite the fact that for years eBay has used the word "auction" when describing what takes place on its site. In securities filings from 1998, the year eBay went public, it said that it "pioneered online person-to-person trading by developing a Web-based community in which buyers and sellers are brought together in an efficient and entertaining auction format." In the annual report last year, eBay said it provided the "infrastructure to enable online commerce in a variety of formats, including the traditional auction platform."

Yet eBay contends that such references are informal and says that auction laws — many of them written long before the Internet and eBay even existed — should not apply to its sellers.

Chris Donlay, an eBay spokesman, said the timed auctions on eBay were fundamentally different from "someone who holds a live auction in front of an audience until he has achieved the highest price possible for the client." Instead, as the company says on its Web site, eBay merely "offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day."

THE headquarters of the Louisiana Auctioneers Licensing Board is a modest, three-room office in Baton Rouge with two employees and a dial-up Internet connection. The agency says its mission is to protect the public from "unqualified, irresponsible or unscrupulous individuals."

Late last year, the agency's seven-member board, concerned about possible abuses, decided that eBay trading assistants doing business in Louisiana needed licenses. Last summer, Jim Steele, a retired police officer who is the agency's investigator, started paying visits to eBay sellers around Louisiana who were registered as trading assistants.

Among those visited by Mr. Steele was Cheryl Brown, who runs a small eBay business out of her modest one-story home in Hammond, about an hour's drive east of Baton Rouge. Ms. Brown keeps an eclectic mix of wares — including shoes, belts and Black & Decker laser levels — piled around a bed in a spare back bedroom. Mr. Steele arrived at Ms. Brown's door last February and told her that she needed to get an auction-business license or face a cease-and-desist order.

Ms. Brown said she was "blown away" to find herself singled out. After all, she said, her sales averaged little more than $2,000 a month. Even so, she paid $300 for the license and an additional $250 for a surety bond the licensing board required.

Ms. Brown has yet to make a single sale as a trading assistant ("I don't want to sell people's old clothing," she said) and says she would rather not have to have a license. But, she said, she also enjoys the extra credential that a license gives her. Further, she said, she believes that her transactions on eBay are, in fact, auctions. "My opinion is that eBay is the one doing the auctioning," she said. "They're in control."

Ms. Brown's opinion is shared by Brian Leleux, an eBay seller at the opposite side of the state and the opposite end of the eBay sales revenue stream. Mr. Leleux employs nearly a dozen people and sells some $120,000 each month in recliners, inflatable air beds and other goods on eBay, making him an eBay "Platinum PowerSeller." He pays eBay about $12,000 every month in listing and transaction fees and an additional $2,100 to PayPal, eBay's automated payment subsidiary.

Mr. Leleux operates his business, MassageKing.com, in a large warehouse near Lafayette, and Mr. Steele visited him there earlier this year. Mr. Leleux had signed up with eBay as a trading assistant but done very few consignment sales. Still, he paid the state's fee and applied for the license. Like Ms. Brown, Mr. Leleux said that he did not want a license but that it did give him "one more bit of legitimacy," a notion that appealed to him. And he, too, says he believes that eBay is an auction house.

Still, not every eBay trading assistant was so compliant when Mr. Steele came calling. Barry Simpson has a computer equipment store in Morgan City and sells items on eBay as a sideline. Earlier this year, Mr. Simpson said, Mr. Steele visited him and insisted that he be licensed, even after Mr. Simpson said he would prefer to stop being a trading assistant. Mr. Simpson refused to get a license and complained to eBay, after which the company stepped up its legislative push in Louisiana.

"At that point, we decided we needed to act," said Mr. Donlay, the eBay spokesman.

Mr. Simpson says he believes that complying with certain regulations just does not add up. "If someone comes in and tells me I need a license and I'm selling something for someone else, and I don't do enough of that business, I'll quit," he said.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, Mr. Simpson has a well-heeled and influential corporation — as vigilant about its own interests as it is about his — ready to take on regulators. And eBay appears to be prepared to contest regulators in almost any state where it feels that its prerogatives are threatened.

In California last year, a bill that would have subjected eBay drop-off stores to restrictions now placed on pawnbrokers died quickly after eBay executives — including Meg Whitman, the chief executive — met with leaders of the Republican caucus of the Legislature. "The Republican votes we thought we had withered away," said Leland Y. Yee, the Democratic California assemblyman who sponsored the bill.

Last year, after eBay waged a protracted lobbying effort in Illinois, the state revised its laws to allow Internet auction sites to compete with licensed ticket brokers and sell tickets for more than their face value. New York and Florida have passed similar amendments after eBay lobbied for changes.

Auctioneering laws like those in Louisiana are another focus for eBay. In Maine and Tennessee, after eBay intervened, laws were changed to exempt Internet auctions from licensing requirements.

All of this is just a matter of common sense, according to some people involved in the debate. Ms. Steiner, the newsletter editor, says that many eBay sellers do their trading part time or in addition to another job. "If they are overregulated by licensing fees," she said, "they will abandon their eBay business." For its part, eBay is leaving little to chance.

Over the last eight years, eBay has built a stable of local lobbyists in 25 states. Those lobbyists — who work on retainers that can reach $10,000 a month, according to state lobbying registration documents — have also made contributions to individual politicians who sponsor bills favorable to eBay. For example, Mr. Cowart's political action committee in Louisiana contributed $2,000 to Mr. Ellington in 2005. And eBay lobbyists in Illinois have contributed thousands of dollars to politicians who supported the ticket-scalping bill.