Was This Really eBay's Fault?

There are a few things which should absolutely not be sold on eBay.

Pieces from the space shuttle which broke up over Texas would be an example.

But I can't really see why tickets to the London Live 8 concert should not be sold on eBay. I especially do not see why eBay should receive more blame than those selling on eBay.

Rolling Stone article

Yeah, Bob, you're doing a good thing fighting hunger and poverty. But by organizing this concert, you've also created something of great value. I really don't know why you decided to give tickets away instead of selling them and raising money for the cause. Its not like you really made them accessible to the underclass by holding a text message lottery.

And once those tickets leave your hands, they really are the property of the ticketholders, who are free to do with them as they wish. Nobody's found an iron-clad way to prevent scalping yet, and for a concert of this magnitude, where the number of people wanting to attend vastly exceeds the number who can, the law of supply and demand says that tickets can and will be sold for very large amounts. Appealing to the sellers better natures might help you see some of that $ back as donations. Acting the control freak and making it harder for people to sell their tickets will make them that much less likely to contribute what money they do get for them.

Get real. If we lived in the kind of a world where no one would sell their free Live 8 concert tickets, there wouldn't need to be a Live 8 concert, would there?

- Sue