The elephant in the eBay auction room

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:18

Business IT - Technology

Given that eBay has had a hard time preventing the sale of fake items online, what has it been doing to prevent the sale of genuine ivory?

Rather surprisingly it wasn't until 2007 that eBay banned the cross-border sale of ivory items, while still allowing for the legal trade within domestic markets.

Rather unsurprisingly, it didn't work and it would seem that international ivory trading continued to go on within the virtual auction room.

eBay took advice from the World Wildlife Fund, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Humane Society of the United States and the US Fish and Wildlife Service before coming to the conclusion that a global ban on the sale of all types of ivory was required.

Jack Christin, Sr. Regulatory Counsel for eBay, told eBay Ink "As with all policy changes, this one will take some time to roll out. As we roll-out this change, we will continue to work with a number of international and domestic law enforcement authorities with any investigations they initiate into suspicious ivory sales on eBay sites. We will begin enforcing this global ban in January 2009."

Actually, I understand that the policy change itself will come into effect in December 2008 (although I cannot understand why this should not be an immediate change to be honest) and the January 1st date as Christin says is when it will start being enforced.

As well as having another couple of months during which to sell dead elephants, it would appear that small bits of dead elephant "such as a table with a small ivory inlay" will not be banned. Nor will antique ivory, defined as being pre-1900 in date.

So maybe the elephant is still in the online auction room after all, along with many other animals that can sadly still be purchased in pieces. Go search for monkey skin or elephant foot and see what bargains you can snap up...