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January 6, 2006 2:50pm by David Farrar

The Fitzsimons Eco Friendly Defoliation Kit

Heh. Someone is auctioning off on Trade Me “The Fitzsimons Eco Friendly Defoliation Kit“.

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Comments (43)

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Kelly Broadbent

God that’s funny.
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January 6, 2006 8:56pm
tim barclay

Someone should send her a bill for all that co2 she released into the atmosphere. What is she doing with gorse on her property in the first place. The wicked belching farmers eradicate the stuff. I think that little mini honeymoon the Greens have had since the death of Rod Donald has just ended.
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January 6, 2006 9:09pm
Oswald Bastable

It’s a matchbox- i thought it might have been a razor!
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January 6, 2006 10:53pm
David P

It’d be poetic if NZ missed its Kyoto targets because the Greens were busy slashing and burning.
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January 7, 2006 1:17am
Keith

Which has just been withdrawn by Trademe on some very flimsy pretexts.
See Silent Running for the details, should you care about free speech.
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January 7, 2006 12:00pm
err..

Keith, don’t be silly. TradeMe is not a venue for free speech, it is a business run by people in business to make money.
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January 7, 2006 12:57pm
Adolf Fiinkensein

err, that comment is the epitome of Leftiest dipshittery. Just go away for ten years and think on it.
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January 7, 2006 1:19pm
Murray

Its ok for Trademe to allow a person to pedal miltiple copies of pirated terrorist propaganda but not for someone else to action off a box of matches in a plastic bag that Trademe was in fact making money off since they had taken payment for the listing and several people had bid on it?

More from the stuck on stupid crowd.
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January 7, 2006 2:07pm
Keith

err, my mistake. mea culpa–I missed the directive.
So, enlighten me please. Where exactly are these venues for free speech? Are they duly licensed? Can anybody attend and what’s the entrance fee?
They sound like they’d be interesting places to visit.
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January 7, 2006 2:12pm
err..

Keith, you’re free to say anything you like anywhere. And people who own the places you say things are similarly free to say “fuck off”. Or do you have an issue with private property rights?

If somebody comes around to my house and decides to exercise their right to free speech to say something then… well… that’s their right. And it’s my right to kick them out and not invite them back in again, should they care to offend me. If they want to do it out on the street in a public place then I’d be more than happy to politely ignore them.

Similarly, nobody has a right to walk into somebody else’s place of business and kick up a big stink about political issues unrelated to the business in question.

If you want to exercise your free speech there are many places you can do it. Fundementally, TradeMe are interested in creating a service of value to their users. That means that something which is obviously more about politics than trade does have a place on the site.

As for the pirated terrorist propaganda, have you tried complaining? Just a though. They don’t have infinite resources, maybe the absence of attention to the given listing is the cause? I’m sure they have a very rigourous policy on the sale of copyrighted material.
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January 7, 2006 7:09pm
Keith

“Fundementally, TradeMe are interested in creating a service of value to their users. ”
Fundamentally, Trademe aren’t doing that by censoring content they don’t agree with.The person who paid to have the item listed and then had it removed by them would certainly dispute that they were providing a service to their users.
Free speech isn’t restricted to certain forums (fora?) or venues–the principles of free speech inform every aspect of public life, from the newspapers we read and comment on) to the right to advertise and promote views across the political spectrum. And the right to free speech isn’t a right contingent on not offending others.
The complaints about something with a political colour being removed from an auction site aren’t a “big stink about political issues unrelated to the business in question” at all. They’re central to it. If Trademe wish to exercise political bias in the products they accept for auction then they could at least make that plain to the people who pay money to list items.
” That means that something which is obviously more about politics than trade does have a place on the site.”
Huh? So why isn’t it there any more?

As for the pirated terrorist propaganda, I didn’t mention it. So your point is?
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January 7, 2006 7:51pm
err..

“Huh? So why isn’t it there any more?”

Because I’m a retard and didn’t include the “n’t”.

“Free speech isn’t restricted to certain forums (fora?) or venues–the principles of free speech inform every aspect of public life, from the newspapers we read and comment on) to the right to advertise and promote views across the political spectrum. And the right to free speech isn’t a right contingent on not offending others.”

So what you’re saying is it’s not unreasonable for, say, a Green Party supporter to show up at a National-organised fundraising event and start shouting loudly? Even if this fundraising event is on private property and the Greenie in question is an uninvited guest?

It would then be unreasonable for security to eject said Greenie because it would be violating their right to free speech?
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January 7, 2006 8:43pm
Keith

Sigh..I’ll try and make this simple for you. The right to free speech is not contingent on not offending others, but at the same time, the “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” test still applies. Similarly, it doesn’t give a person the right to disrupt a meeting.
And I never suggested that it did.

“So what you’re saying is …”

No, that’s not what I’m saying and if you can read that into what I wrote above, I’d suggest some remedial comprehension lessons.
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January 7, 2006 8:55pm
Murray

Keith, is your monkey brain damaged? It seems to be a terrible dullard.
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January 7, 2006 9:05pm
Logix

Keith,

Sighs…I’ll try and make this simple for you. Trademe is a private company. The owners have the right to determine what goods and services are advertised, for whatever reason suits them.

Freedom of speech is not an absolute right. Like all rights it is tempered by other ones. For example this blog belongs to DPF. It would be entirely his right to delete whatever post he saw fit, but in general he does not because personally he places a high value on free speech. On the other hand there are many blog owners, esp offshore ones, that rather heavyhandedly censor who can post and what they can say. We may in general deplore that kind of administration, because it rather defeats the purpose of a blog, but there is little one can do about it, save go elsewhere to mount one’s soapbox.

Even more obviously Trademe is not a blog, and although public in nature, it’s stated purpose is trade, not to provide a forum for “free speech”. Therefore there is even less onus on the owners to place any value on free speech, as much as you might wish it otherwise.
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January 7, 2006 9:21pm
Keith

“The owners have the right to determine what goods and services are advertised, for whatever reason suits them.”
Absolutely. And I don’t dispute that.What they don’t have a right to do is accept money for a service and then cease to provide that service without explanation.

“Freedom of speech is not an absolute right.”

If you care to look at my last comment:
“The right to free speech is not contingent on not offending others, but at the same time, the “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” test still applies. Similarly, it doesn’t give a person the right to disrupt a meeting.
And I never suggested that it did.”

Is there something obscure about that?
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January 7, 2006 9:28pm
Logix

What they don’t have a right to do is accept money for a service and then cease to provide that service without explanation.

1. The placing of ads and accepting of the money’s is essentially automated. It is entirely reasonable that the owners may retrospectively review and determine to retract an advert. And presumably refund the money’s.

2. They have provided an explanation, although there is no legal obligation on them to do so, and as much as you may find it unsatisfactory.
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January 7, 2006 9:39pm
Keith

The explanation isn’t “unsatisfactory”. It’s totally dishonest.
And before you give me patronising lectures about free speech, I’d suggest you read my comment next time.
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January 7, 2006 9:50pm
Keith

lol! I just got this email:
“Oh for gods sake don’t bother with logix, hes f**king brain damaged.”

Looks like a pretty fair asessment.
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January 7, 2006 9:55pm
Logix

Keith,

Resorting to that kind of juvenile tactic is risible. You know it is, and so does anyone else reading this thread.
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January 7, 2006 10:06pm
Keith

*shrug* I got the email, I cut and pasted it.
Of course it’s juvenile. But after talking to you and err, I feel like someone who has been trying to teach a rabbit calculus.
So–we all know that it was a juvenile comment. Feel better?
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January 7, 2006 10:11pm
Logix

And before you give me patronising lectures about free speech,

Go back up the thread to your third post. What do we read as the introductory sentence:

Sigh..I’ll try and make this simple for you.

So Frisky here still wants to know, what principle or law obliges the owner of a website, whose stated purpose is trade, to be bound by “free speech” for political purposes?

And what law obliges them to give ANY explanation, much less one that you deem to be “honest”?
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January 7, 2006 10:24pm
Keith

“So Frisky here still wants to know, what principle or law obliges the owner of a website, whose stated purpose is trade, to be bound by “free speech” for political purposes?”
I have no idea–enlighten me. Since I never claimed there was one, I suggest you ask a lawyer.

“And what law obliges them to give ANY explanation, much less one that you deem to be “honest”?’

ditto.

(although I would point out that if a person needs a law in order to know how to behave ethically, then they’re in more trouble than you are with comprehension.)

I’m done here. Never mind calculus, simple ethics seems to be beyond your grasp.
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January 7, 2006 10:32pm
Logix

what principle or law obliges the owner of a website, whose stated purpose is trade, to be bound by “free speech” for political purposes?”

I have no idea–enlighten me.

No there is none. Now what was your point again?
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January 7, 2006 10:40pm
ZenTiger

Free speech debate aside for the moment,

Don’t you find it a tad interesting that TradeMe withdraws this item, but alledgedly allows anti-Bush and pro Al-Qeda stuff to be flogged?

Lucky we can use free speech to advertise this fact so that individuals can use free choice in not providing Trade Me with further business.

Although there are likely a large bunch of lefties now keen to buy anything from Trade Me.

There’s a book for sale there called “fiddling while rome burns”. You might want to pick up a copy.
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January 8, 2006 12:01am
err..

“What they don’t have a right to do is accept money for a service and then cease to provide that service without explanation.”

Just to point out, this argument is largely bullshit. TradeMe doesn’t charge listing fees on general sale items, they only charge for aditional marketing services like extra photos, gallery listings or increased visibility on listings pages.

You only pay as a seller if you make a sale.

Therefore I really can’t see what you’re complaining about. TradeMe gets to choose what they want to sell. Full stop. They pay the server bills, they decide if the traffic a given item is attracting is worth their return on it.

In the case of a matchbox with some attached comedy value I doubt they feel it enhances their quality of service to their customers. Fundementally, the reason TradeMe is very good vs larger services like Ebay is that the signal to noise ratio is considerably improved – less commercial and dealer listings, less general “You are bidding on a picture of an XBox 360” type bullshit.

If they choose to keep it that way it’s their choice. If you want to start a “Free speech trading service” you’re quite welcome, but IMHO I suspect it won’t win you many converts if that’s your only unique selling point.
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January 8, 2006 12:33am
ZenTiger

That point justifies any action they care to take, but doesn’t necessarily evade the hypocrisy of the action, given my comment above.

Like Benson-Pope, the lie about the action becomes more significant than the action itself.

Not having the full details only allows for conjecture unfortunately: it appears that TradeMe did not show the courtesy of an email notification (even a form letter style email) to say that the item had failed their own selective standards blah blah blah, so its gone.

I’ll have to check their policy statements. I’m looking to have a piece of gorse that survived the burning, a written statement from the Fire Chief saying “if you didn’t know, then all is cool” and a concrete post that works as a wind meter. If it’s moving about, there is a light breeze. If it’s steady, it’s good burning conditions.
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January 8, 2006 8:46am
Murray

Acutally err Trademe charges for various opitions from a gallery listing at $0.45 up to $20.00 for a home page listing.

In this case they did indeed take money. So your claim indicates you are either lying or uninformed either of which makes your high handed position one of politically motivated grandstanding rather than objective observation.

By making an offer of providing the service and having the offer accepted (within the terms and conditons as set out by Trademe) Trademe has entered into a contract and are bound by that contract.

In withdrawing the auction and providing an explaination that was clearly untrue they have violated that contract and are not operating in good faith. The claim that they can do anything they like with site is untrue. As a comerical operation they are bound by certain regulations and by the contracts they enter into as well as their own rules.

To make it clear so you can’t make up your own little faux-facts to suit as is is your habit. Trademe claimed the following; they doubted the item existed and/or that the reserve was unrealistic and/or that people were unlikely to bid on it and/or it was time wasting and of no interest.

They repeated this explaination multiple times to several people.

The auction was clearly for a physical item as it included a photograph.

The auction was clearly not over priced as it had a $1 no reserve starting price.

The auction was clearly NOT time wasting as in a matter of less than 24 hours it had recieved over 850 hits indicating a very high degree of interest.

The auction was clearly not unlikely to attract bids has it had already been bid on by several people.

Consquently the claim that it was a comercial decision is, in your words “bullshit”. Trademe had collected payment for the listing, Trademe also stood to collect a minimum payment on completion of the auction a sum which was increasing with each bid and by withdrawing it they lost this additional revenue. Throwing away income seems less than capitalistic to me.

Trademe has been given an oportunity to respond to these questions repeatedly and has failed to do so, in fact Trademe has become evasive and is now stonewalling all enquiries.

Clearly Trademe is acting in bad faith.

Just clearly you’re talking out of a hole in your ass. No change there.
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January 8, 2006 9:14am
Logix

Murray,

How about reading Trademe’s Terms and Conditions:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/STRUCTURE/HELPDOCS/DEFAULT.ASP?help_id=143

Section 4.2.m seems relevant:

Listings are not pre-screened for content. Trade Me reserves the right to remove any listing that it deems unsuitable or in breach of the terms and conditions.
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January 8, 2006 10:26am
Murray

Way to focus blondie. Who ever said they prescreened?

Trademe removed a listing claiming it was in breech of specific rules. It was not in breech of those rules and Trademe has in fact now acknowledged this.

Consequently Trademe has misled a number of people including the Trader. This would be bad faith.

They claiming something that wasn’t true. It’s called a “lie”.

Now correct if I’m worng here but aren’t you lefties still trying to get your panties out of your collective asses after claiming (wrongly) that Bush lied therefore the world is ending?

Now pay attention, trading in bad faith is in fact not lawful.

As Trademe has acknowledged that they pulled it becuse they didn’t approve of the content while having hosted other auctions similar in nature but with a different political leaning then this is nothing to due with trading or comercial activity, it is censorship.

Now are you going to claim that censorship is a principle that you approve of?

No mealy mouthed toing and froing here, do you approve of political censorship? It’s a priciple that does not acknowledge individual circumstances to suit your personal political desires.
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January 8, 2006 11:16am
Logix

What part of:

“Trade Me reserves the right to remove any listing that it deems unsuitable ”

are you having trouble understanding? There is NO obligation on them to provide ANY reason you find satisfactory whatsoever. The site is privately owned.

Murray. Are you are trying to draw some kind of moral equivalence between Bush’s claims about Iraq? Claims were both widely thought to be false when he was making them, and then subsequently proven to be so. Claims that were used as a pretext for a war, in which the death toll alone is in the many tens of thousands, and you want to draw comparison with a sodding gorse bush set on fire and a private website owner exercising his legal rights??? Methinks you are overeaching just a little.

As a private individual you have every right to either express or NOT express whatever pleases you. As a business owner you can even extend that right to the the manner in which your business operates. This is not “political censorship” this is simply an individual acting within their rights. Real political censorship is when some official body uses it’s powers to interfere with the personal right to free speech.
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January 8, 2006 11:43am
ZenTiger

So we are agreed then. Selling satirical items concerning Brash, Bush and Al Qeda are fine. Selling an item poking fun at the Greens is just not on. The owners of the site have every right not to have a sense of humour, or to be rampantly Greenie. Unless of course, they inadvertently breech the trading act, which will no doubt be discussed in full here. It may impact on the way people view their organisation.

As for Logix’ claim that business owners can control the manner in which their business operates: as a small business owner, I disagree on degrees, given some of the compliance, bureaucratic and slanted employment laws that have curtailed my expansion and placed unfair obstacles in my way. I prefered the business environment in Australia, irrespective of what the “studies” show.

As an aside, it looks like there is a market to create a “merchandise” section in a blog, with a paypal link or similar.
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January 8, 2006 12:07pm
Logix

As for Logix’ claim that business owners can control the manner in which their business operates:

I claimed no such thing. What I did say was that an individual’s right to private speech, extends to over any property or business they may own. That right may be expressed actively, like the BodyShop’s S59 petition, or passively as in Trademe’s action removing this auction. (And even that right to “free speech” may be curtailed by other obligations, for example you may want to put a large political sign on your land, but TransitNZ may deem it in breach of the rules that they administer.)

You are perfectly free to agree or disagree with what Trademe has done and I never for an instant suggested otherwise. But equally the same right must be extended to Trademe. And to force the owners of the website, to have it used to express an opinion that they clearly disagree with….well that WOULD be political censorship would it not?

Political censorship can take two forms, forcing someone not to say something they want to say; or forcing them to say something they do not want to say. What then is your rational for forcing the owners of Trademe to let their website be used for a purpose with which they disagree?
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January 8, 2006 12:32pm
nigel201065

Trade Me has another problem on there hands by the look of it. In todays Herald there is an article about stolen goods and their refusal to take down the site saying they can not or will not untill they have a police prosecution even though the same guy has sold over 1000 cell phones and the DVD’s being sold now were special imports
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January 9, 2006 12:09pm
Spam

And then there was TradeMe’s handling of dealings with ‘scambusters’. An interesting (if one-sided) story….
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January 9, 2006 12:46pm
nigel201065

I think people are slowely coming to the conclusion that Trade Me is turning into the Cash Converters of the new millenium. There must be someone out there who is more intune with the law who would be able to tell me whether living of the profits of a crime was illegal in NZ
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January 9, 2006 2:50pm
WindUp

I guess trademe really has no way of knowing if accusations of someone selling stolen property are true or malicious, so I agree that they should wait for the police.

I don’t have to put up political party hoardings in my front yard either.
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January 9, 2006 5:14pm
Logix

Trade Me has another problem on there hands by the look of it. In todays Herald there is an article about stolen goods and their refusal to take down the site saying they can not or will not untill they have a police prosecution even though the same guy has sold over 1000 cell phones and the DVD’s being sold now were special imports

The postion of Trademe and presumably sites like Ebay, is somewhat anomolous. Licenced Second Hand Goods dealers must put all new stock into “quarantine” until the local police have cleared them for sale, thus avoiding this problem.

The difficulty here is obvious, the internet only business model really has so far not included any way to check on the legitimacy of the seller, save for the “feedback” mechanism the site operates. One prediction: TradeMe will soon have police staff working full-time vetting their listings.
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January 9, 2006 5:49pm
err..

“Acutally err Trademe charges for various opitions from a gallery listing at $0.45 up to $20.00 for a home page listing.”

Which bit of “TradeMe doesn’t charge listing fees on general sale items, they only charge for aditional marketing services like extra photos, gallery listings or increased visibility on listings pages.” was beyond your ability to comprehend? Of course they do. But that doesn’t affect that fact that placing a listing on the site is absolutely free unless it’s for a house, car or one of a few other product categories.

If you don’t want to give them money for your listing there’s most certainly nobody putting a gun to your head.
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January 10, 2006 12:05am
Kiwi Bloke

I would give in Err because Logix is always right. Don’t you know that by now?

How about this product:

http://generation-xy.blogspot.com/2006/01/marketing-disasters-4-green-organic.html
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January 10, 2006 12:31am
Peter

What courtesy email? I bid on it and didn’t receive any notification from TM that it had been withdrawn.
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January 10, 2006 12:47am
Murray

err as always you you’re showing us just how much of dick head you really are, you claimed Trademe had not taken any money when in fact they had.

What part of taking money for a service and then not providing it do you not understand?

We’ve seen you you perform the most bizare contortions here time and again to try and justify any postion counter to that taken by anyone you indentify as having a different political viewpoint to you own.

It’s is obvious to all here that you have no priciples you believe in, you have no actualy convictions other than political ones and will say virtually anything to attack those not of you leaning.

You just a rabid little attack poodle for the left. You lost us all at yap yap yap.
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January 10, 2006 7:03am
err..

Murray, it’s OK. We all know you’re a bit slow, you don’t have to do your usual defensive rabid rant about how other people are engaged in “contortions” just because you failed to actually read more than the first line of the post in question.

I said two things:

1) TradeMe don’t, as claimed above, charge for listings. They just don’t.
2) They do, however, offer OPTIONAL marketing fees for your auction at a cost.

However, given that typical cost for a modest TradeMe sale is about 45c for a gallery listing I find it somewhat laughable that you’re managing to froth quite this much. I know you rabid righties love frothing every time somebody “steals” tiny amounts of cash from you, but don’t you think this is taking it a bit far?

TradeMe’s terms of service allow this. If you do not like those terms of service, don’t use the service. Please, quit crying about 45c you big baby.
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January 10, 2006 9:58am

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