Free Republic

The art depicts an artist drawing Mohammed with the dialogue, “‘You can’t draw me.’ ‘That’s why I draw you.’” After Breitbart News did a story on the auction, the bidding jumped above $10,000. Fawstin’s picture won the first annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest organized by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer for the American Freedom Defense Initiative. The First Amendment-themed event was attacked by terrorists with AK-47s, although the terrorists were shot dead by an alert officer before they could attack the event.

The artist who won the “draw Mohammed” cartoon contest attacked by terrorists last May in Garland, Texas, said his drawing was removed from eBay Wednesday on a “technicality.” Bosch Fawstin, a former Muslim, won $12,500 in prize money at the May 3, 2015, event, sponsored by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), for a drawing that showed a sword-wielding prophet in a turban shouting, “You can’t draw me.” In reply, a cartoon bubble portrayed the artist as writing, “That’s why I draw you.” Two terrorists opened fire on officers outside the event before they were fatally shot by police.

Researchers who studied people who sell items on eBay (EBAY) turned up a surprising result: Women sellers get 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to a new study published in Science Magazine. The researchers assessed over 1 million auctions from 2009 to 2012 and found that women sellers get fewer bids and lower final prices than men -- for the same products. The gender bias was greatest for new products. In fact, it nearly disappeared for used items -- women make 97 cents for every dollar a man does. The researchers said the lower gap seen with...

EBay Inc's shares plunged 13 percent on Thursday, after a disappointing holiday-quarter performance and a weak forecast suggested that overwhelming competition from Amazon.com Inc was gutting the one-time Wall Street favorite. EBay, which gets more than half its revenue from overseas, is also fighting the impact of a strong dollar, which has knocked the wind out of profits at several companies that have reported results this earnings season. The stock fell to $23.01 in early trading, knocking off $4 billion from Ebay's market value.

A new vulnerability in the eBay-owned Magento e-commerce platform could be remotely exploited to take over sites and steal client information, researchers have discovered. Security vendor Sucuri discovered a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the core system libraries for Magento Community Edition version 1.9.2.3 and earlier, and the Enterprise Edition version 1.14.2.3 and older. The critical flaw could be triggered by sending an email to adminstrators. Sucuri reported the bug to Magento's security team early in November last year. Magento acknowledged the vulnerability on 1 December 2015, but did not issue a patch until 21 January 2016. The Magento...

Ebay did not like a friend's feedback commentary (it WAS a violation of the rules) and has indefinitely suspended a friend's account. Ebay did not like the conservative commentary in the feedback. No warning notice of violation was given, the friend did NOT know all feedback had to be relevant to the transaction. Representative said suspension could not be appealed and was more or less permanent. Please send me a private message to discuss this. I'll give that person advice on what to do after folks comment.

Samsung's got some new friends in its legal battle against Apple -- including farmers, African American small businesses and an electronics retailer. Legal experts, nonprofit organizations and technology companies have filed amicus or "friend of the court" briefs in support of Samsung, urging the US Supreme Court to consider the patent-infringement case. They want the nation's highest court to better define design patents and limit the damages that can be awarded. And they're using Apple v. Samsung as the case that hopefully gets the federal government to enact patent reforms, preventing so-called patent trolls from cashing in on intellectual property....

You could have bought an ancient religious text online for less than $100. That text was an ancient Greek papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John (likely John 1:50-51), and was listed on eBay with an opening bid of $99, according to The New York Times. The papyrus -- called the "Willoughby Papyrus" since it belonged to Harold Willoughby, a University of Chicago professor, according to the eBay listing -- didn’t stay there for long. Dr. Geoffrey Smith, who researches Christianity at the University of Texas, contacted the seller and asked if he could research the fragment, The Times reported....

This is a post from a seller who recently sold an old phone on eBay and ran in to this little kerfuffle: Seller: I sold an old broken iPhone 4 for $15. I shipped the item like I normally do and I definitely remembered to put the phone in the envelope along with my thank you for purchasing letter and packing slip. However I received a detailed message about what the buyer intended to do if he didn't receive his $15 back within 24 hours. Since I can't post a screen shot I'll copy the text of what he said....

eBay, one of the leading players in the global e-commerce market, is expected to face a tough road ahead after the recent spin-off of its payments business. In our valuation model, we forecast the company to lose market share in the global B2C e-commerce market, which was valued at over $1.5 trillion in 2015, over our forecast horizon. This is as the company is seeing dramatic increase in competition, from both e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba, as well as from upcoming players such as Jet.com.

Due to some combination of activist journalism and corporate conscience, major retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Target, and Wal-Mart are removing Confederate flags and other types of Confederate memorabilia from their shelves. Let’s pause for a moment and applaud the Left for its dramatic about-face on the question of corporate morality. Just one year after denying that corporations can have a conscience when that conscience dictates opposing abortion, the reversal is now complete. Corporations — as instruments of the people who run them — do indeed exercise First Amendment rights and do indeed express a moral point of view in...

EBay says it will ban the listing of confederate flags and related items containing the confederate flag image - Reuters

Sellers are asking extremely high "Buy It Now" prices at eBay to take advantage of strong demand for Apple Watches. But in many cases, consumers aren't biting. By most accounts, the Apple Watch did a terrific business on the first day customers could place preorders. Apple reportedly received roughly one million orders last Friday, and demand has been so high that orders placed now won’t be delivered until June or even later in the summer. The first customers who preordered Apple Watches, however, will have their shiny gadgets in hand starting on April 24 or soon thereafter. Part of the...

There is a problem with being able to access eBay this morning. While using multiple client computers, operating systems, and browsers, the normal eBay webpages are abruptly replaced by a Webpage that appears to be eBay in Chinese characters. After this Chinese language page appears, the next webpages indicate access is forbidden or otherwise denied, depending upon the browser being used. eBay is looking into the problem. I'm wondering whether or not anyone else can see the same problems with being denied access one time, gain access another time, and lose access again with the Chinese language webpage/s showing up...

Terrorists are leaving secret messages in porn and on websites like eBay and Reddit to communicate with each other and plan future attacks, new book claims Terrorists have developed several new techniques to communicate with each online by leaving coded messages on websites like eBay and Reddit, claims a new book. The shocking discovery made by intelligence officers and code breakers in Israel, Britain and the United States revealed that seemingly innocuous chats are often much more, according to new sections in the book Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. Code breakers found that al-Qaeda is now using...

THE POLITICO reports that President Obama, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, gave shout outs to a number of American companies in an effort to highlight the strength of the U.S. economy. Nearly all of those companies, it turns out, are big political spenders and have contributed heavily to Democrats. One of those companies was eBay, which Obama cited as an example of how “millions of Americans [are working] in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago.” That now seems like an unfortunate choice, because less than 24 hours after Obama’s speech, eBay announced

“Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined,” President Obama said during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. “Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago — jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.” While Politico pointed out that most of the companies Obama touted are big, left-leaning D.C. spenders, his choice of mentioning eBay...

During the company's earnings call, eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said 2015 would present "real challenges" and forecast that "it will get worse before it gets better." Separately, the company said it entered into an agreement with billionaire activist Carl Icahn, the company's largest active shareholder, and will appoint Jonathan Christodoro, Icahn's pick, to its board.

Big layoffs are coming to eBay. The company is planning to slash 2,400 workers across the eBay and PayPal parts of the business. The cuts will impact 7% of the workforce. The layoffs will be made before the end of March. EBay said it was "simplifying organizational structures" in its quarterly earnings released Wednesday. A company spokesperson told CNNMoney that some of the cuts were to unfilled positions, but would not say how many.

A man who auctioned his ex-fiancée's honeymoon place for charity on eBay has been jilted for a third time. John Whitbread, from Leicestershire, auctioned the £1,800 trip to the Dominican Republic in the hope of finding a female companion. The highest bidder failed to pay the winning sum of £8,000, and now the second highest bidder has pulled out after offering to pay £7,900. Mr Whitbread is now selling £10 raffle tickets for the chance to join him. All of the money raised from the "Jilted John" raffle will go to Balls to Cancer. "It's just been knock after knock...