Hi Charlie,

On the surface, your argument about "Free Press" makes some sense. But upon closer examination, it kind of falls part .....

First, the First Amendment you refer to deals with Congress's ability to pass laws abridging free speech, not commercial sites like eBay. So, I think you assume a right that is not really there to begin with.

Second, eBay has no choice in the matter. The Digital Millinium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it clear that eBay either assumes responsibility for all of the comments posted, or none of the comments posted. There is no middle ground:

http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf

Third, while I certainly understand the frustration that comes with getting an undeserved or outright false negative, I have to recognize that there is nothing eBay can do.

Can you imagine what it would be like if eBay had to decide who gets to leave negatives and who can't, who's telling the truth and who's lying, based only on emails?

Worse yet, imagine that you left a negative that was richly deserved, but the seller was better at expressing himself, and an eBay employee decided to remove it, believing the seller's story over yours?

No way am I saying that the Feedback Forum is perfect. It can't be perfect since it's made up of comments left by imperfect users.

All I'm saying is that it sure beats no feedback system at all, that eBay really has no choice in how it is operated, and any "blame" rests entirely on the backs of the users who abuse the system, not eBay.