eBay Policing Copyright Fraud
eBay has begun monitoring items for sale on its site for possible copyright infringement, a move in response to pressure from software makers and intellectual property interests.
The new program has removed about 12 listings per day for software, movies, music and other copyright content since it began in December, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The software industry's anti-piracy trade group and manufacturers of copyrighted products, such as Microsoft Corp., pushed for the change.
"We recognize they have some issues and so we wanted to do everything we could," eBay lawyer Jay Monahan said.
The program is staffed by 15 full-time employees. For software sales alone, the company has two full-time lawyers devoted to fraud prevention, as well as a software-industry liaison and a special e-mail queue for industry complaints.
The company has also instituted a policy to prohibit the sale of anything recorded on a blank compact disc, and it stops sales of certain types of DVD players and gaming equipment that can be used with illegally copied media.
Copyright infringement has risen to rank as the software industry's No. 1 issue, with approximate losses of billions of dollars.
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