For those of you unaware, eBay recently made a significant change to their service: they now allow the sale of downloadable product. If you’re a band, you can sell your music. If you’re a programmer, you could sell your code. If you’re an architect, you might sell plan files to build a home.
When eBay made this announcement, I was curious and waiting to see how it would be used. The service has only been in effect for about two months now, but here’s one indication of where things might be headed (Link):
This auction is for all 5 complete sets of building plans that have been used to build these homes.
Download 3 Page Sample House Plan Here 260 KB File
Download Full Sample House Plan Here 1.4MB File
View slides of Plan#6212-1500 Sq ft Main Floor on each house
optional Basements
Garages on all plans
3+ bedrooms – 3+ Baths
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This is what you will get from winning this Auction:The PDF file download locations emailed to you which contain
11+ pages of House drawings details and specs for each house
more than 55 pages total in PDF Formats
+After payment Immediate access by email to download the PDF files for instant review
Cabinet Details, Section Views, Elevations, Foundation Plans,
Stair Details and Electrical Details Framing Plans
Roof Layouts and Details
Please see our other auctions if you want the DWG files for modification or if you want us to print and ship the plans to you
Also Complete Materials Lists
Winning auction bid? Three dollars and twenty-five cents.
In fact, this has always been possible, eBay rarely enforced the non downloadable product policy.
Possible, but not allowed. And that meant people moving mostly illegal content instead of legitimate product… at least when I went looking.
In particular however, it’s the auctioning of CAD data that is of interest to me (for obvious reasons). I’ve never seen a CAD file for a product available for auction. I’ve considered it, which is why I’ve previously gone looking for downloadable files. But even this auction isn’t for a 3D CAD file; just the 2D plans.
The 3D files I see for sale on the net are usually not CAD. They’re mostly polymesh files depicting real products (trademark/patent violation and all) being sold to architectural firms for use in presentation graphics. They’re also not exclusive (makes sense). I’m thinking more along the lines of that new patent auction site.