The internet must be getting old: Ebay has given up its idealism. Although scarcely a teenager, the auction site has taken a turn towards middle-aged cynicism - in ways that could profoundly affect its business model.

Two weeks ago, the company shocked millions of users by radically rewriting the constitution of the democratic republic of Ebay, founded in 1995 not just as an auction site but also as a social experiment in online self-government. For most of those 13 years, Ebay has been run largely as a self-policed island, a place where order was preserved less by real world laws than by norms and customs and expectations and reputations that were almost entirely virtual.