The EBay auction I blogged about earlier turns out to be blocked for a bunch of people — including myself, when I check it from home. EBay has voluntarily blocked German IP addresses from accessing auctions of Nazi memorabilia. Now, the item in question is an Enigma machine, which is not exactly prime fetish material, but I guess it counts under German law. It’s interesting how wide EBay’s net is, though. I’m in Worldcom IP space at home — I wonder if EBay blocks all of Worldcom? Or if not, why the chunk of IP space I’m in?
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If it’s any consolation, they’re also blocking access from where I am, too – my current IP address resolves to something ending in .mindspring.com.
It’s also blocked from my work IP address – ending in .fame.com.
Basically, I think ebay must have a very small list of “IP addresses we know aren’t anywhere near Germany”, and only let those through.