If they are not charging for the bid (chance to win) but for the bandwidth when submitting a bid from the web page, then they get around this. They can demonstrate that by having another channel for bids, like email messages formatted Majordomo command-style.
Make this easily accessible, and it will be hard to argue that they are not an auction site. However, it can still be arcane (and slow) enough that the majority of the public still won't use it. Again, no one's gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Make this easily accessible, and it will be hard to argue that they are not an auction site. However, it can still be arcane (and slow) enough that the majority of the public still won't use it. Again, no one's gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.