I side with Yann on this one. You're paying for 
space to hold an auction. So long as you are 
holding a legitamate auction, you should be able 
to tout your website or business if and however 
you so choose to do so. (Obviously if Yann wanted 
to have a banner of someone naked to promote his 
site, US law - if not other country's law as 
well - would have something to say about that. 
^_^ But he doesn't.)

I don't know *when* any clause barring an 
invitation to someone's online store went into 
Ebay's rules. As far as I have ever known, the 
only disallowed advertizing regarding Ebay is 
when a seller lifts e-amil addresses off Ebay to 
do mass mailings. (Actually, it's disallowed to 
even do it with one address - you know the 
writing of "I have a copy of item XYZ too and saw 
you were outbid, would you like to buy mine?")

Of course, I'm beginning to come of the opinion 
that the whole damn human race is just plain too 
anal. >_<  This happens to be a perfect example.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac