Michael

A humorous note from the front in the Digital Wars:

A musician, George Ziemann, was attempting to sell some CDs of an album his band had recorded via eBay, hoping to get some exposure. Unfortunately, in his auctions he used recordable CDs that he manufactured himself. Someone (it’s not entirely clear from my reading of the story)—either an eBay employee or an outsider who approached eBay via its Verified Rights Owner program—accused Ziemann of piracy and eBay shut down his auction repeatedly, despite the fact that the music in question was entirely his legal property.

Less humorously, the wired.com story reveals that:

... eBay would not comment on its policing policy, but several companies scour the Internet looking for copyrighted materials. The movie industry uses Ranger Online...The recording industry has employed several search companies, including Media Enforcer and BayTSP.com

You can read the entire account here.

Cheers,

Friedrich

P.S. George Ziemann himself is a pretty entertaining guy, and you can read about him here.