BidRivals

Unlike other online auction sites like eBay or TradeMe, BidRivals is a bidder-only site for popular items such as MacBook, Nintendo DSi or 40" Sony Bravia TV. The big difference is that in BidRivals every single bid costs the bidder money (roughly NZ$1.00 each). It is required for someone to buy bid package from the site (e.g. NZ$20 for 20 bids) before they start any bidding. So why would anyone want to participate? Well, the items in BidRivals are always started with a 1c or 2c price tag, and each bid will only raise that by another 2c. For example a Sony Bravia TV is asking for 2c to begin with; if we assume after 1000 bids in total the auction stops and the winner has only placed 100 bids for it, then the total cost for the winner would be 100 x $1.00 + 1000 x $0.02 = $120. Of course that sounds like a bargain for a TV which may cost over $1500 in the shop!

But there is a catch. Every bid would also increase the length of the auction for roughly 4-8 sec. That means there is no official end time for an auction! As long as the price looks attractive (which they always will be), some random people can come in and place a bid, then the auction will extend and continue to attract further bidders to do the same. Since each bid only change the price of the item by 2c, it creates an incentive for previous bidders to bid more, even thou each bid actually costs them real money. What will happen to bidders who have spent hundreds of dollars to bid for something but eventually they lose to others? Well, they get nothing except a lesson I suppose.

No doubt this is a great way to make a lot of money for the site. I have seen a 13" MacBook being bid continuously for more than a day now (and it is still going on at the time of writing) at the price of almost NZ$300.00. Yes it is still a very cheap deal because normally the 13" MacBook is selling for NZ$2000.00 in this country. However, $300 price tag = 15000 bids = NZ$15,000 income for the site! The owner of the site does not even have to own any of the items they are auctioning right now because as soon as the auction finishes, they could just buy them at retail price and send them over to the winner.

So what are we seeing here? Gambling, period. How is this different from lottery when everyone is buying a ticket for NZ$6.00 hoping to win a million out of it? How can we afford not to regulate this type of online business? This type of lottery business model exists in many other forms before, but packaging it as a legit online auction business for consumer items is way too unethical. Especially if they intend to allow some people to win goods with a really low price as part of their word-of-mouth marketing scheme, then it will mislead a lot of consumers to think this is a really good idea to buy cheap stuff. Not to mention we never know if they would or would not manipulate any of the auctions. I urge the NZ Govt to take this matter seriously, before we either see more of these sites appear, or all a sudden they disappear with the money they collect from their members.

Section 92A

According to the newspaper, a new re-worked draft of Section 92A as part of the Copyright Amendment Act 2008 is returning. Without a doubt that the new draft has bits that are significantly better than the old one, like the introduction of a third party Copyright Tribunal to handle the infringement allegation between copyright holders and ISPs; and also the possibility of imposing fine instead of disconnection to the accused ones etc. But why were we opposing Section 92A in the first place - was it only because of the details of the implementation of the law?

Without repeating what a lot of people have said and debated already regarding how copyright has been misused to attack online sharing, I recommend policymakers of this country to watch this presentation from Professor Lessig which was given last year here in New Zealand. Then try to answer this question raised by him: why do we want to criminalize our children for what they do normally online (which we did the exact same thing offline before the Internet comes along)?

Obesity

Officially New Zealand is ranked number 3 in the world for having the fattest population, just behind Mexico (2nd) and the US (1st) from the OECD's new obesity report.

Why are people getting so fat? Either they don't know the consequence when they eat (maybe they don't have a mirror) or they know but they don't care enough or don't have the will to change. Of course genes defect can always be a possibility too. But whatever the cause of this, as a country we are suffering heavy costs associated with obesity.

What do we do about this? So-called experts suggest that we should impose taxes to junk food or sweet drinks; other insists we should ban advertisements of unhealthy food. Sure there are more cries for better education, better infrastructure for walking and cycling, or encouraging the parents to have meals with their children more often. To be honest, I don't think any of these would solve the problem but instead they just create business opportunities for some selected industries. The worst part is that it penalizes normal people who may want to eat junk food from time to time. I mean what is the problem here: unhealthy food or people not controlling themselves?

Maybe we need to ask ourselves, is obesity as bad as alcoholism or drug addiction? Yes this is a tough question with lots of viewpoints to consider, but if we don't change our social acceptance and perspective on people being overweight, we will never solve this issue at all. I totally agree with airline companies to charge extra for overweight passengers, or insurance companies to charge higher premium for these higher risk people. On the other hand we should have equivalent clinics or associated programs like AA for them. We don't care about those who don't care about themselves, but we do care about those who want to change. The quicker we can divide among the overweight population (i.e. separating the savable ones with the hopeless ones), the more effective we can solve this problem with appropriate policy and incentive mechanism.

I hope the government will be sensitive about this and act sensibly, instead of focus too much on the fast food chains or soft drink companies.