EBay to halt auctions hosted by outsiders

EBay Inc. said Tuesday it will discontinue by year’s end the section of its site that allows users to participate in live auctions hosted by other companies.

The company said the move will not materially affect its business – though millions of users patronize eBay’s partner auction houses.

EBay’s vice president of seller experience Jim Ambach said maintaining and improving the seven-year-old Live Auctions platform falls outside the company’s focus on boosting listings, improving buyers’ experiences and making the site safer from fraud. “We need to make sure our resources are aligned with our priorities,” Ambach said in a statement Tuesday.

In conjunction with eBay’s announcement, five-year eBay partner LiveAuctioneers.com said it plans to launch an independent online marketplace of art, antiques and collectibles for its 700 auction house clients.

•Comcast Corp., under federal investigation for interfering with the traffic of its Internet subscribers, said Tuesday it wants to develop a “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” for file sharing.

The announcement expands on Comcast’s new policy on file sharing: It said last month that rather than singling out such traffic and blocking some of it, the company will move toward a system that treats all types the same.

File sharing is mainly used to illegally swap copyright works such as movies, but it’s also emerging as a cheap way to distribute legal video. One of the companies in this business, Pando Networks Inc., is joining Comcast and supporting the “Bill of Rights.”

The document would codify “best practices” for Internet providers to deal with file sharing traffic, which can place substantial loads on the networks of cable companies. It would also clarify what controls consumers should have over peer-to-peer file sharing applications on their computers.

•After a dismal first-quarter earnings report, analysts and investors are questioning whether Wachovia‘s chief executive, Ken Thompson, could be in trouble at the top of the nation’s fourth-largest bank.

So far, the board at the Charlotte-based bank is sticking with Thompson. But he will face a tough crowd next week at Wachovia Corp.’s annual meeting.

That’s where he will have to explain a $393 million first-quarter loss and major dividend cut to investors already rankled by a share price that has dropped 55 percent in the past year.

Shares in Wachovia traded about $25 a share Tuesday, compared with $57 a year ago.