Bitcoin Forum

http://www.biddingpond.com/item.php?id=45

Go ahead, see if I'm serious!

Few will bid unless it is seriously under priced. When they do, they will have emotional investment and will eventually drive up to approximately where the price you want it to be.

Did you get permission? Or are you violating the terms and conditions that you agreed on when signing up?  ::)

 

Is he for real?!

Can you link me to the terms so I can verify that craziness?

Should this move to the marketplace?

Is there escrow? This is way to big to just send to a stranger with no rep at all.

Sorry, I also agreed with those terms, so I'm not able to link myself ;)
Go to biddingpond and click on the "Terms and conditions" link in the bottom.

I can't remember if I made an account or not. Oh, wait I did; I made a bid even. If I delete it can I regain my linking freedom?

I hate to bitch about someone who's obviously doing great service for bitcoin, but rejecting that kind of controlling crap is why I'm here at all.

 

This post licensed under LGPL 3.0 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt) - The main difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that the latter can be linked to

I think I covered most argumentative efforts on everyone's behalf in this post.  If I missed any, feel free to add.  Sorry to hijack thread. ^_^


here's a workaround: http://is.gd/eye7L

It is in the terms of service and I, for one, will boycott BiddingPond for such patheticism.


Open source and freedom ftw!  BiddingPond has a bit of evilness it seems.  Perhaps it can sell it as one of its auctions and then it won;t be evil after someone buys it?

There have been some disputes about links that bypass a site's home page, because this practice may cut into the linked site's advertising revenues. (http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/internet-web-site-agreements/653-1.html)

Does BiddingPond even have advertisements?  I don't know, I use adblock and adblock element hiding helper

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/link-etiquette-you-do-not-need-permission-to-link/
http://www.pcuser.com.au/pcuser/hs2.nsf/lookup+1/3557B242FF65D1C0CA25706800280D9D
http://www.templetons.com/brad/linkright.html
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071017/092927.shtml
http://www.linksandlaw.com/linkingcases.htm

Perhaps if the community is to consider BiddingPond a major contender in auction type of site for Bitcoin currency, then maybe linking to a google cache (shortened via url shortening service or lmgtfy.com) is another alternative, however, doing so is extra unnecessary effort.

http://biddingpond.com/robots.txt doesn't seem to exist

As it stands now, there appears to be a doctrine of implied public access on the Web. The Web was created on the basis of being able to attach hypertext links to any other location on the Web. Consequently, by putting yourself on the Web, you have given implied permission to others to link to your Web page, and everyone else on the Web is deemed to have given you implied permission to link to their Web pages. (http://www.benedict.com/Digital/Web/WebLinks.aspx)

"My view is the reason you put stuff on the Web is so people can link to it," Abelson said. "If you look at the technical architecture of the Web, it's designed so that any part can link to any other part." (http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/01/23/lawsuit_over_website_links_in_spotlight/)

"For me to back down now would be saying that I was violating the law--and I'm not," Peck said. "But we don't have a huge bankroll to say, 'Hey, take us to court.'" (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-206228.html) -- In my case, I have no money whatsoever, but I will fight till the end.  Take me to court!  I insist!

BiddingPond: If you don't want links to your auctions, either prevent access from referrals (not reliable, but useful to prevent most lazy computer users from accessing your site) or otherwise implement the service on some protocol other than http/https.

Can you guess how many links are in this post?  Should I be afraid of violating anyone's terms of service?

What's next? (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071017/092927.shtml)
-

http://www.unhappybirthday.com/
I suggest on Bitcoin's next birthday several of us prepare a public performance singing the song and then report ourselves to ASCAP.  Maybe they will accept settlement in Bitcoins?

What? Sounds like the BiddingPond is more like a Pond of Evil :D

I'm not sure they can even do that legally, first amendment and all but legal or not it goes directly against my personal principles so I'll not spend a Bitcoin there and tell everyone I can to do the same. Vote with your Bitcoins ;)

The intent of that line was to avoid hyper linking directly to images to keep bandwidth costs from getting out of control. I have reworded the terms of service to reflect my intent.

Yay!  *happeh*  :) ;D :D :-*

So we do have your permission to link to our auctions? Those are "main pages"?

i wouldn't think so.
sounds to me like "promote us is ok, promote your auction is not",
although it says
now.

do you really think, your users read and understand what you mean by that?
if you dont want them to hotlink images, why not tell them?
theres other ways to stop people from hotlinking your images and stealing your bandwidth (is it that high yet?).

wtf?

What is the point if you cant promote your listing?

Yeah, T&C are bullshit. I mean are you really giving me an ultimatum? Don't you even want to put in a text box for a counter offer of terms? Does this need to be this way?

If someone said "Please don't use up my bandwidth by hotlinging images, there is no way I'd ignore that." And if someone ignores you does it really matter if it was in the T&C? Are we going to court now?

I'm sure you just used T&C because it's common, so I don't mean to blast you. But it would be awesome to do buisness with people who do it differently.

All that said, do you ever hold funds or are payments handled by the parties directly?

I don't understand all the hate.

You can link to individual auctions, but you can't hotlink to a cool arrow graphic that biddingpond uses.

what hate?
aren't we allowed to discuss things?

nothing to say against some kind of hotlink-protection,
it's just that those kind of paragraphs force misunderstandings and are the reason, people end up on courts.

i don't hate people or services that have strange T&Cs, i just try to avoid them.

I believe most users will understand and those who don't, will ask for clarification if they believe they are not practicing fair use. I will also have users who don't care. There are many ways to stop people from hot linking images both legal and technical.

The reason I do not state specifically "no image hotlinking!" is there are many other site linkings that are for nefarious purposes that would make an exhaustive list impossible. One example that comes to mind is the attempted database injections (which require unauthorized linking and/or access to the site) all of last week that were thwarted by my good filtering code, coding practices and other counter measures.

With that said...

I can only promise to be reasonable and do the right thing.

I believe reasonable people will do the reasonable thing. I also believe that I do not wish to do business with unreasonable people and the biddingpond.com(and bitcoin) community will want to do the same(profitable and easy transactions the exception, let people be unreasonable then). That is also the reason why I have a two way feedback system unreasonable buyers and sellers will quickly weed themselves out (implementation to filter buyers based on feedback rating is in the works).

This is also the reason why I think non reversibility of transactions are appropriate for a bidding site(bitcoins). It eliminates buyer fraud and extortion. The feedback system eliminates other types of fruad and marginalizes them very quickly(both parties can leave feeedback.

Yeah, I don't have any hate. I try to say in every post in this thread that I appreciate people who make sites that take bitcoin. But if we don't let people know what we find bothersome and unpleasant then the world will be unpleasant for us. Maybe it will anyway.

Yes, full permission is given to link to individual auctions for legitimate purposes. I am a fond believer of if the users do the right thing there is nothing to worry about. At no point was the terms of service to hamper legitimate fair use of links and information on the site. The terms of use are there to notify illegitimate users that bandwidth theft(image hot linking) and other nefarious uses are not allowed.  If image hot linking does become a problem and countermeasures are constantly thwarted I will just start charging for image hosting.

Thanks for clearing that up.You should just put your last post in your t&c  :)

I understand the site will grow because I plan to run a legitimate business by running the best customer service that is possible.  T&C are there because not everyone is reasonable and court actions do arise whether they are legitimate or not and this chance increases with an increasing user base.  A good reputation and a visible public agreement to me are the basis of good business transactions.

Right now it is the responsibility of the parties to work out payment agreements. Currently being worked on is a payment system for bitcoins (sendical.com) which will include in the future an escrow service for a nominal fee.

I believe in very simple escrow solutions and will offer multiple options when that time comes. In the mean time if someone wishes for me to hold funds for transactions and both parties send me an agreement I have no problem handling that manually at the time.

Updated terms and conditions have been posted to the biddingpond.com discussion thread.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=574.0;all

Oh, so that language was referring to hotlinking? Why not say that directly? That language was very confusing and the replacement isn't much better. Either way, do you actually believe to prevent hotlinking by forbidding it in the TOS? :D

I do not think that is a realistic expectation. If somebody wants to hotlink they'll do that and wouldn't give a damn about your TOS. And people supporting the site are not going to do that out of respect. So there is no reason to include that line in the TOS other than cosmetic and stirring up controversy. It really makes no sense. It's better to restrict it with some technological means, which is possible if it would become a problem.

So my advice would be to get rid of that particular point. It serves no real practical purpose.

This has been answered already.


http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html
I do not see reference to "link" (2 unrelated string matches) in same context in eBay user agreement.

"eBay image hosting" search results

http://www.inkfrog.com/terms.html - no mention of "link" here
http://imageshack.us/content.php?page=rules

http://photobucket.com/terms

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/rules.php - no mention of "link" here

 - I can relate to this, but I can also understand how this statement will not be accepted by some people and therefore cause more effort to be pursued in establishing terms of service/user agreement.

semyazza : Don't get stressed out over issues like this if you are. ^_^

Not stressed, just being responsive on where I stand to keep the rampant assumptions from ruining a good reputation.  IMHO reputation of all parties involved is one of the top priorities of any business transaction.

Cool, I guess I'll see how much my wife wants it. It's such a long auction, I'm not going to bid until it's closer. Value fluctuations and all.

Oh, what a bold title.

Auction closed.

Or maybe just reposting with a lower minimum?

Apparently not serious?

LOL, I can't find the power adapter for it, but when I do, I'm going to re-list it.  I also need to re-format the hard drive and re-image it.

Here's the actual item, FYI:

http://imgur.com/xa9B9.jpg (http://imgur.com/xa9B9.jpg)
http://imgur.com/xgSlK.jpg (http://imgur.com/xgSlK.jpg)

As you can tell from the serial panel, I've upgraded both the RAM and the Hard Drive.

Hold tight... if I can't find the power adapter, I'll buy a replacement this weekend.

Also, I'll be listing it with a 5,500 bitcoin minimum when I relist it.

Oh, and I'll clean the keyboard before I send it... I used it in the field non stop. :-)

Alright, looking forward to it.

How about I also ask BrightAnarchist to be a trusted escrow agent?  Would that make bidding easier?

Yeah, he seems like a good dude. It would be my fourth working computer, so I'm not necessarily a motivated buyer, but if I win it, escrow would be nice.