EBay today announced changes to its auction fee structure and is introducing new feedback rules to try to make its system friendlier to both buyers and sellers. The company is cutting the listing fee by up to 50% and compensating by increasing its commissions on sold items. The biggest shakeup will occur for sellers of low-priced items. For items under $25, eBay is raising the commission from 5.25% to 8.25%. This threatens the relatively strong market for used video games and music CDs.

One important change to sellers is that the gallery feature, which previously had an attached fee, is now entirely free. The premium listing features Gallery Plus, Picture Pack, and Feature Plus will continue on with discounted fees. The news broke during a conference held in Washington with 200 of eBay's top North American sellers. The changes apply to North America (beginning February 20), and additional changes are forthcoming for Germany and the United Kingdom.

Doug Clarke: C.C. failed as ‘The Man,’ so Carmona can’t

Well, isn't this a fine kettle of chowdah? As the actor John C. McGinley says to Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) in "Platoon" when he's asked to lead a small band into the jungle one more time, "I got a bad feeling about this one, Skip." The Cleveland Indians are, for the third time in these American League playoffs, going to have to send a boy out to do The Man's job. No usual boy, this Fausto Carmona kid, but still a boy when it comes to this grown man's game of major league baseball. On Thursday night, C. C. Sabathia — ostensibly The Man and in the hunt for the Cy Young Award along with his mound opponent, the estimable Josh Beckett — took the hill in a situation that called out, nay, begged for a strong stomach, if not utter brilliance, from two men. One came running, the other didn't even bother to answer the bell.

It's a walkout!

When the United Auto Workers walked off the job at General Motors, one UAW local president told me he lost a bet. “I didn't think they'd walk out," says Art Baker Chairman of UAW Local 652 in Lansing. Given the progress that the two sides made since Friday (they came to a basic understanding on a big healthcare deal) you'd think Baker was the smart money.

But in hindsight, here's another perspective. If this deal is really supposed to be the “historic" or “transformational" or “landmark" contract (feel free to fill in your own superlative description) that has been ordered up by every industry wag in Detroit, then a strike was a foregone conclusion. First, even if UAW President Ronald Gettelfinger can live with a slew of big concessions, he needs to strike up a bit of Kabuki to show his members that he hasn't just caved to management.

JEFF WOLF: NASCAR deserves slap for decision at Fontana

When a driver runs afoul of NASCAR's laws, he is summoned to its rolling traffic court parked in the infield where one-sided justice often is handed down.