Monday, May 16, 2005

The Catholic boycott of eBay is over?

The Catholic News Service ran this story claiming that eBay will not permit future auctions of Catholic communion hosts. This is good news. Can any readers out there confirm this?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds right... I have an email in to eBay asking about it, but they haven't responded yet.

Mildly on-topic, eBay's (or, more likely, eBay affiliates') automated buying of all the Google AdWords they can get their hands on has run amok - a few weeks ago I saw a bizarre eBay AdWord on the sidebar of Thumos:

Catholic Nuns for sale.
Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com

:-D

Anonymous said...

From an email sent by e-bay's customer service on May 2

"As a marketplace, we strive to respect the diverse perspectives of our sellers. We also work hard to promote an open environment for trade. That said, eBay has policies in place to remove listings for illegal items as well as highly offensive listings that promote hate or intolerance.

"We understand that the listing of the Eucharist was highly upsetting to Catholic members of the eBay community and Catholics globally. Once this completed sale was brought to our attention, we consulted with a number of our users, including members of the Catholic Church, concerning what course we should take in the future should a similar listing appear on our site. We also consulted with members of other religions about items that might also be highly sacred and inappropriate for sale. As a result of this dialogue, we have concluded that sales of the Eucharist, and similar highly sacred items, are not appropriate on eBay. We have, therefore, broadened our policies and will remove those types of listings should they appear on the site in the future.

"As always, we welcome and appreciate the assistance of the community in upholding the rules of our site. Should you see another Eucharistlisted on our site, we encourage you to notify us so we can take appropriate action."

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