What BS!
The idea of selling items over an electronic network were being shown back in the 1880s over TV to housewives at home. (the concept of TV was invented in 1873 It just took 52 years for the technology to catch up so John Logie Baird could make the first working one in 1925)
Baird Television
http://www.mztv.com/baird.html
This should be filed with the guys that tried to patent the AND & OR gates back in the 1980s
Get a grip and read the patent before you go commenting on it. It's easy to demagague the language chosen by the media (selling items over an electronic network) while ignoring what was actually patented.
The claim reads:
A system for presenting a data record of a good for sale to a market for goods, said market for goods having an interface to a wide area communication network for presenting and offering goods for sale to a purchaser, a payment clearing means for processing a purchase request from said purchaser, a database means for storing and tracking said data record of said good for sale, a communications means for communicating with said system to accept said data record of said good and a payment means for transferring funds to a user of said system, said system comprising:
a digital image means for creating a digital image of a good for sale;
a user interface for receiving textual information from a user;
a bar code scanner;
a bar code printer;
a storage device;
a communications means for communicating with the market; and
a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means, said computer adapted to receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale, incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record, receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface, store said data record on said storage device, transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means, store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.
Now that is a far cry from patenting "selling on the net" much less your television example.