Specific and narrow obligations upon on-line marketplaces known to be used by high-volume sellers of stolen merchandise are also included to benefit legitimate online businesses.

These on-line marketplaces are intended to allow companies to exchange not just bids and prices but blueprints, electronic spreadsheets and even digitized training videos.

They reap the investments other companies must make to join the on-line marketplace.

Better World Books sells collected books through 53 on-line marketplaces, including Amazon.com, Ebay, and their own online e-commerce site, betterworldbooks.com.

Professional sellers took notice, causing many of them to close their bricks-and-mortar businesses and focus their attention completely on internet sites and the future of the on-line marketplace.

In that same span of time, the E-book will have become a serious presence in the on-line marketplace.

Although it became very popular and a national force in the on-line marketplace, GEnie was not allowed to grow.

To work, an on-line marketplace has to be targeted and run by people who really understand the industries they are in.

Mr. Cotsakos said the company hoped to combine Telebanc's deposit products with its own brokerage service to create a one-stop on-line financial marketplace.

But today's Web technology is comparable to the dial telephone, he said, and advances will very likely change the on-line marketplace.