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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <HTML> <HEAD> <title>AuctionBytes TV Internet Television Video - AuctionBytes News in Review</title> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <meta NAME="Author" CONTENT="Ranson's Scripts"> <meta NAME="description" CONTENT="JK Rowling asks fany to lobby eBay to prevent books with forged signature from being sold on site, eBay Acquires Skype for $4.1 Billion, ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo not high on Skype purchase, BuySafe and TIAS join to offer bonding to merchants, eBay sets aside $1 million for eBay sellers affected by Hurricane Katrina, eBay Giving Works, Lighter side"> <meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="accounts, acquire, affected, allowed, answer, antiquescollectibles, appealing, appeared, appears, areas, auctionbytes, auctions, back, bearing, billion, blog, bonded, bonding, books, brand, business, buyerseller, buysafe, call, called, calls, cases, categories, channeladvisor, charging, charity, china, chinawhite, communityebay, companies, concerned, conning, consultant, contact, copies, costeffective, customer, customers, deal, deposit, descriptions, dollars, donate, ebay, ecommerce, edition, email, enable, extended, fans, fees, final, forged, forgeries, free, friction, giving, guaranteed, harry, highvolume, hiring, hurricane, hyperlinks, include, industry, information, insisted, integration, katrina, khan, landline, large, largest, latest, launched, leads, lighter, limit, links, listings, living, lobby, local, make, malls, merchants, messagewelcome, million, millions, mobile, money, news, newspaper, note, offebay, online, onlineauction, overstock, owners, pages, paid, participants, paypal, people, percent, phones, photo, post, posted, potter, prevent, price, program, programs, qualified, region, representatives, reside, results, review, rowling, rowlings, sale, scot, scotsman, seal, sellers, selling, september, service, setting, shakil, shanghai, share, shoppers, signatures, site, skype, spokesperson, stay, steiner, steinerjk, stop, store, strategy, stronger, system, takes, tias, today, tonguecheek, traditionally, transactions, tuned, users, valued, visit, week, wingo, wondered, working, works, "> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="FFFFFF"> <CENTER><H2>JK Rowling asks fany to lobby eBay to prevent books with forged signature from being sold on site, eBay Acquires Skype for $4.1 Billion, ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo not high on Skype purchase, BuySafe and TIAS join to offer bonding to merchants, eBay sets aside $1 million for eBay sellers affected by Hurricane Katrina, eBay Giving Works, Lighter side</H2></CENTER> <BR><BR> Welcome to AuctionBytes News in Review.<BR> <BR>Today is September 12th, 2005. I'm Ina Steiner. <BR><BR> JK ROWLING called on her millions of fans to lobby eBay to stop selling copies of Harry Potter books bearing forged signatures, according to the Scotsman newspaper. Ms Rowling said eBay appeared "unable" to prevent sellers from conning fans. A UK spokesperson for eBay insisted the site was working with Ms Rowling's representatives against forgeries. <BR><BR> eBay will acquire Skype in a deal valued at up to $4.1 billion dollars. Note that eBay paid $1.5 billion for PayPal in 2002.  <BR>Skype users can make free calls to other Skype users and can also pay to call landline and mobile phones. eBay said Skype takes out some of the friction in ecommerce. But eBay has long been concerned about off-eBay transactions and has traditionally tried to limit buyer-seller contact to email that goes through the eBay system. While sellers can include contact information in listings pages, they cannot include hyperlinks, though links are allowed in <BR>About Me pages. It appears eBay is considering charging sellers to include Skype links in eBay descriptions, perhaps in certain categories. <BR><BR> ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo, said the integration of Skype into eBay is not appealing to his large customers, who are high-volume sellers on eBay. <BR>Hiring people to answer customer service calls is not cost-effective in most cases, he said. <BR><BR> Stay tuned for more news after this message. <BR><BR> (commercial) <BR><BR> Welcome back.  In other news, BuySafe launched an ecommerce bonding program on Tias, one of the largest online antiques-and-collectibles malls. Qualified Tias merchants may post the BuySafe Seal on their listings and enable their transactions to be guaranteed up to $25,000. The companies say this leads to more shoppers, better results and a stronger brand for the program participants. BuySafe also has bonded programs for eBay and Overstock Auctions sellers. <BR><BR> eBay said it was setting aside $1 million for eBay business owners in the region affected by Hurricane Katrina. eBay will deposit $1,000 into the PayPal accounts of its top 1,000 sellers who reside in affected areas. They will be able to use the money to help themselves, or share the money with others in their local community. <BR><BR> eBay has also extended its Giving Works program for charity auctions. eBay will now donate fees that are paid by sellers for auctions in which sellers donate at least 90 percent of the final sale price to charity. <BR><BR> On the lighter side, a UK consultant living in Shanghai China posted a photo of an eBay store on his ChinaWhite blog. Shakil Khan wondered tongue-in-cheek if the store was part of a new eBay selling strategy in China. That's it for this edition of AuctionBytes News in Review. For the latest online-auction industry news, visit AuctionBytes.com. I'm Ina Steiner, See you next week. </BODY> </HTML>