But Marc Marot, former chairman of the Resale Rights Society, which calls for a levy on secondary site transactions to allow artists to claw back profits made by touts and fans, said: "The music industry believes that sites such as Seatwave are in fact swamped by organised brokers".
And on VRBO, a HomeAway site, transactions take place directly between the homeowner and the guest, which can present a problem if a homeowner fails to respond in a timely manner or misrepresents the home, or a guest's check gets lost in the mail on its way to the south of France.
The company will take a cut from Amazon purchases made within the shop's Wi-Fi zone, but it will get nothing from off-site transactions, or from shoppers with 3G devices (which do not require Wi-Fi .Worrying though it is, the deal may push publishers to abandon digital-rights management (DRM), notes Matteo Berlucchi, head of Anobii, a literary social-netWi-Fi .Worrying
The site combines transaction mechanisms, such as direct orders and a request for quot (RFQ) process with industry directories, content and community features.
Andale estimates that just 4percentt of the sellers on eBay generate 80percentt of the site's transactions.
But when Fabrica tried to sell "Iranian Living Room" on its Web site, with transactions processed through PayPal, the orders were initially blocked.
"By ignoring it, they end up building their sites as transaction engines, where research is secondary," rather than providing a wealth of information online that might increase in-store sales.
But it bears saying that every electronic commerce site processing transactions with Oracle's 8i database is a SQL Server software sale Microsoft did not make, and every Web page running on Sun's Solaris operating system is one not running on Windows 2000.
But even the sites where transactions can be completed are far from easy to use.
Professor West found that last year, 25percentt of state and federal Web sites offered transactions, like tax filing and vehicle registration renewal.
