Should eBay be held responsible because the crap people sell on the site? Should we really expect them to examine each item that is put up for sale and guarantee the authenticity of that sale? Well, apparently a French court does.

A French commercial court Monday ordered eBay Inc. to pay more than $59 million to a high-end fashion company because counterfeit goods were sold on the auction site.

Maybe we should all get together and file a class action suit and demand our money back for all the items we bought that were clearly marked “in excellent condition” that ended up being just mediocre in quality.

Would I be mad if people were counterfeiting my products? Sure I would. I would also work with eBay to get those items removed, you know, like eBay already does.

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Oh… Suhweet! MySpace is redesigning their site! MySpace is redesigning their site! MySpace is redesigning their site!

News Corp’s MySpace plans a global redesign next week in an attempt to widen its demographics and boost user engagement on the site, the social networking site said on Friday.

In what it said would be the largest scale relaunch of a website of its size, MySpace will change its home page, navigation, profile editing, search, and MySpaceTV player facilities. Other changes will come during the summer.

“This is more than a face-lift; we’re changing the way people interact with the site and with brands,” MySpace said, adding that a major advertiser was signed for the U.S. MySpace home page on the first day of the relaunch.

Oh wait. Yeah. Still don’t care. Yawn.

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I had a rough day at work today but not nearly as rough as someone else had it. I think the only people who had a worse day are mortgage lenders.

Hackers knocked Comcast.net offline late Wednesday night, preventing customers from getting to their Comcast Web mail and account records on the company’s Internet portal.

The criminals somehow got their hands on passwords used to alter domain-name registration information with Comcast’s registrar, Network Solutions, said Susan Wade, a Network Solutions spokeswoman.

How in the hell does the password for their DNS fall into the hands of hackers? Ouch. Don’t the Comcast employees know that you never, ever give anyone your password information? Well, I bet they know now.

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I knew we hadn’t heard the last of the whole Microsoft/Yahoo deal. I still think that Yahoo will be part of the Microsoft family a whole lot sooner than later.

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Sunday it has reached out to Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) about an alternative deal that would not involve a full acquisition, in a move that could save the web pioneer from fighting a proxy battle with financier Carl Icahn.

Microsoft said it was not proposing to make a new bid to buy all of Yahoo “but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative” depending on discussions with Yahoo, shareholders of Yahoo or Microsoft, or other third parties.

I have been known to be wrong before, but I don’t think so this time. Of course, I know a great source for cheap flights, so if I am wrong, I can still get out of Dodge if I have too.

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I had no idea that CBS was even contemplating the purchase of CNET. Color me shocked.

Media and entertainment company CBS Corp. is buying CNet Networks Inc., an online news and information provider, for $1.8 billion in cash in its latest bid to expand its reach on the Internet, the companies announced Thursday.

The price of $11.50 per share represents a massive premium of 45 percent over CNet’s closing stock price on Wednesday, and appears to get CNet out of a nasty battle with one of its largest shareholders, which had been agitating for a shakeup at the company after its stock slumped.

…

CBS’s CEO Leslie Moonves told reporters on a conference call that acquiring access to CNet’s large online audience in order to distribute media content from CBS was “a large part” of CBS’ motivation in going after the San Francisco-based online company.

“Our idea is to have our content wherever, whenever you can get it, and adding CNet just makes that happen faster,” Moonves said.

Overall, I think this is an excellent move by CBS, but I am a bit skeptical about how it will all pan out. There is some content on CNET that I rely on, daily, that would make my life more difficult if it was eliminated. It’s kind of like having the wrong bathroom lighting. The wrong lighting changes everything. I hope CBS takes this ball and runs with it and makes CNET an even better resource than it has been for years.

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Comcast has sold their service as ‘unlimited’ for a while now. With the influx of movies and other high-bandwidth using attractions on the internet, it’s only natural for people to be using more bandwidth.

Comcast Corp., the nation’s second-largest Internet service provider, is considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go over.

As more consumers download movies and music online, Internet service providers have to grapple with how to manage their traffic so that bandwidth hogs don’t slow down the network for the lighter users among the company’s 14.1 million subscribers.

For years, Comcast directly called customers who used up several times more bandwidth than the typical subscriber’s 2 gigabytes per month — for instance, by downloading hordes of movies. The big users were asked to reduce their use or have their accounts canceled.

Movies and music didn’t just suddenly appear on the internet. People are going to want to download them, whether or not they use Comcast to do so. Comcast should have prepared for this, and the service that doesn’t cap people’s bandwidth will be the one left standing at the end of the information superhighway.

Companies just don’t prepare anymore. If they did, we would have this issue, foreclosure wouldn’t be an issue for so many people, and the world would be a better place.

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For some of us, this isn’t news at all. As an AT&T DSL subscriber, I have already been enjoying this little “benefit”.

AT&T and Starbucks on Friday announced the beginning of the rollout of AT&T Wi-Fi service at company-operated Starbucks stores, kicking off a nationwide effort that will continue through 2008.

At this year’s AT&T stockholders meeting in San Antonio, Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson announced that the companies have started deploying AT&T Wi-Fi at Starbucks locations in San Antonio.

As of May 1, qualifying AT&T high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi customers will have complimentary Wi-Fi access at more than 7,000 Starbucks locations nationwide. For millions of AT&T customers, that means more speed in more places — for free — is on the way. Analysts said this gives the telecom giant an advantage over competitors like T-Mobile.

Ever since I got the Nokia N810 I have been using the free AT&T Wi-Fi at the Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble stores we visit. This has to be one of the best things that has happened to me in a long time, even if it is being done by AT&T.

On a side note, I get the same bonus when I take the kids to McDonald’s too! Just think, I could sell my house, buy a class A motorhome and park in the McDonald’s parking lot for internet access. Ha! Okay, not.

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I get at least four PayPal phishing spams every day. What about you?

The name PayPal is almost synonymous with phishing scams. According to anti-phishing service PhishTank statistics from last year, PayPal was the number-one target of scams — more than twice as often as PayPal’s parent, eBay, the second most popular target.

On Friday, PayPal announced it was taking an unusual step to combat phishing abuse: blocking old and insecure browsers from its site. It is “an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers, such as Internet Explorer 4,” the company said.

My question here is this… If I get an email that is phishing for my paypal information, and I click one of their links, what does it matter if PayPal is blocking old browsers? The phishers as I call them will still get my data, and I am pretty sure they have upgraded to the new browsers. So how does this help?

“By displaying the green glow and company name, these newer browsers make it much easier for users to determine whether or not they’re on the site they thought they were visiting,” said PayPal.

If these people are still using browsers as old as Internet Explorer 4, I doubt highly that they would know what they were looking for to make sure they have a legitimate connection to PayPal. I still don’t see how it helps when you are redirected to a phishing site. If you don’t know enough to upgrade your browser, it really isn’t going to make a difference.

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After all this time, you would think that Comcast would have done this long ago. Imagine the thought… Giving customers what they pay for. Ouch.

Comcast Corp., under federal investigation for interfering with the traffic of its Internet subscribers, said Tuesday it wants to develop a “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” for file sharing.

The announcement expands on Comcast’s new policy toward file-sharing: It said last month that rather than singling out such traffic and blocking some of it, the company will move toward a system that treats all types the same.

Will this come to fruition? I doubt it. If so, it will contain language that makes it easier for them to get away doing the things the “Bill of Rights” is supposed to stop them from doing in the first place.

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Does anyone really think Yahoo is worth anything anymore? Seriously? Let’s think about this. What was the last original idea to come out of Yahoo?

[scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off is shown here]

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

It seems the only thing “original” coming out of Yahoo is in the form of threats. If you haven’t heard, TechCrunch is reporting that Yahoo has removed a video posted by Loren Feldman because of a complaint from Scorpio Music. Here is the video:

Apparently, Scorpio Music sent a DCMA notice to Yahoo, and Yahoo pulled the video from their server. The complaint claims that the video infringes on copyrighted material they control. Yahoo also threatened to take further action against Feldman. WTF? The puppets sang a line from YMCA, isn’t that considered fair use? It’s not like anyone was caught holding a box cutter or anything.

To answer your questions, Yes, the video was a parody. That was not really the construction guy from the Village People. No, the complaint was not a parody. You can read the complaint at TechCrunch. Yes, it was stupid. The whole situation is stupid. Oh, and you can see more at interviews from Shel Israel at shelisrael.com

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