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."
Cheryl Brown, who is authorized to sell other people's items
on eBay, said she was "blown away" when Louisiana forced her to get a license.
Sherrie Wilks and Jim Steele of the Louisiana Auctioneer
Licensing Board felt the backlash from their license enforcement efforts.
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.
EBay combines its politics-as-usual approach with more creative grass-roots
tactics. It keeps its membership informed about regulatory issues as soon as
they crop up, using mass e-mail messages and a year-old Web-based initiative
called "eBay Main Street," which sends out "legislative alerts" and provides
letters that users can send to government officials. Bowing to the traditions of
ward politicos adept at turning out the vote, eBay routinely summons its sellers
and sends them on personal visits to statehouses around the country to meet with
legislators.
"What better way to get a response than to get to the grass roots, which is
eBay's members," said Kathy Greer, an eBay seller in New Hampshire, where there
has been continuing debate about regulating eBay sellers. "Let them go out and
fight your battle."
WHEN eBay sent e-mail messages in April to its Louisiana members to tell them
their livelihoods could be threatened by the state's intention to require
licenses — and urged them to take action — Ms. Wilks, the licensing agency's
sole administrator, was besieged with phone calls and e-mail messages from angry
eBay sellers. After she explained that the board intended to require that only
about 460 registered eBay trading assistants be licensed, the hubbub died down.
But some sellers who joined in the campaign say they felt that eBay had
misled them by making it appear that the proposed regulations were more
sweeping. "They approached it in a very underhanded way," said Stephen Dille, a
Baton Rouge accountant who sells items intermittently on eBay but received the
alert and sent an e-mail message to Ms. Wilks. "I always thought of them as a
good company, but now I'm questioning their culture, and their ethics."
Anna Dow, a lawyer for the Louisiana licensing board, put it more forcefully.
"They're being deliberately misrepresentational of what's going on," she
said.
For their part, eBay officials say that the licensing board has repeatedly
refused to give the company a clear answer on whom it plans to regulate, so it
has sent e-mail messages to a wide variety of recipients. EBay's anti-regulatory
stance extends to storefront drop-off centers, which have been proliferating
rapidly around the country. Vendors welcome the company's help.
Debbie Gordon, the owner of Snappy Auctions, a nationwide chain of eBay
drop-off stores that is based in Nashville, says she believes that all eBay
consignment stores should follow certain practices to make sure that customers
are protected. But she was outraged two years ago when Tennessee regulators told
her that she would have to get an auctioneer's license and attend a week of
auctioneering school.
Ms. Gordon paid $700 for a license and other fees and spent what she called
"five days I'll never get back" at a training course for auctioneers.
"Ninety-nine percent of the course had nothing to do with our business," she
recalled. "It was about traditional auctioneering, cattle and land and
firearms."
Soon after a local newspaper publicized Ms. Gordon's experience, eBay stepped
in. It convinced lawmakers that not only did outfits like Ms. Gordon's have no
relationship to hog calling, but also that because of the timed nature of an
eBay auction, the transactions were altogether different and thus not subject to
auctioneering laws.
"We fundamentally believe that auctioneering laws are not applicable, are
detrimental and are being used to harm competition," said Mr. Cohen of eBay in
an interview. "They protect entrenched incumbents rather than enhancing
competition, consumer choice and entrepreneurial spirit."
BUT Ms. Wilks of the Louisiana licensing board says that if trading
assistants on eBay are not required to have licenses, people like Linda Williams
will have nowhere to turn. Earlier this year, Ms. Williams, who lives near Baton
Rouge, gave an antique couch to someone to sell on consignment on eBay, she
said. The couch was sold, Ms. Williams said, but she did not see a penny of the
proceeds.
Ms. Williams called the licensing board, which found that the seller was an
auctioneer who was already facing a separate investigation. A bank seized his
assets — which included a warehouse filled with items he had taken on
consignment from dozens of people, including Ms. Williams — and his license was
revoked, according to Ms. Wilks and Ms. Dow. "They were very helpful, and told
me to call any time," said Ms. Williams of her experience with the licensing
board. "If it wasn't for them, there would be nothing I could do."
EBay executives say that stories like this do not mean that more laws are
required. They point out that law enforcement agencies are set up to investigate
Internet fraud. "Regulators regulate — that is their job," Mr. Cohen said. "But
we have an obligation as a company to protect our community."
Shortly after the first legislative hearing on Senate Bill 642 in Louisiana,
eBay sent out another e-mail alert, this time to its biggest sellers in the
state. The company asked sellers to attend a meeting late last month to update
them on the bill and to brief them on other potential impediments to their
businesses. Some 50 sellers from around the state attended the meeting at a
Baton Rouge Marriott. Michelle Peacock, eBay's director of state government
relations, flew in from California to join Mr. Cowart, the lobbyist. Large
colorful billboards outlining "barriers to e-commerce" decorated the room.
Ms. Peacock discussed the proposed revisions to Louisiana's auctioneer
statute and talked about a bill supporting the elimination of restrictions on
the resale of tickets on the Internet. After the meeting, several attendees
piled onto a shuttle bus that eBay provided and drove to the Capitol to talk
with their state representatives about Senate Bill 642.
The next day, the Commerce Committee of the Louisiana House of
Representatives took up the bill, which the State Senate had already passed. The
bill received unanimous support in the committee. Mr. Ellington, the state
senator, said in an interview last week that he expected to see the bill pass
the full House this week — without a
hitch.