One of the things long-noticed in international relations is the importance of third-party monitoring on commitment and compliance (Elinor Ostrom, Chayes and Chayes, etc.). Third-party monitoring is also useful in domestic elections. In fact, during the recent debacle in the U.S. elections, other countries were somewhat surprised that the U.S. didn't already utilize a service that many other countries take for granted, i.e. third-party monitoring. Third-party monitoring is just another instance of the peer-to-peer meme, so it came as no surprise that a third-party reputation management system, RapLeaf, emerged for eBay. What did come as a surprise is that eBay not only rejected the system, but actively prevents people from using it. eBay is falling into the industrial-era proprietary-control kind of thinking that one would think a network era company would avoid. Perhaps, as they say, power corrupts?