[117830] in Cypherpunks
Seattle Times: Policing eBay
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (damaged justice)
Sun Sep 12 09:40:54 1999
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 09:21:49 -0400
From: damaged justice <frogfarm@yakko.cs.wmich.edu>
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[1]Freeman Welwood [2]Apply Online - seattlemortgage.com [3]Ad Info
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Posted at 08:45 p.m. PDT; Saturday, September 11, 1999
Policing eBay
by Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press
SAN JOSE - Don't try to sell illegal items on eBay. Unfortunately for
jokesters and criminals, an online auction is one of the least
anonymous places to try to pull a fast one.
"If an investigator calls, we tell them don't bother with a subpoena.
We give them names, addresses, telephone numbers, credit-card numbers,
whatever we can," said Robert Chesnut, a former federal prosecutor now
working for eBay.
Tucked among the Depression-era sherbet glasses and aging Sonny and
Cher albums on Internet auction sites are an amazing array of items -
some of them illegal, and other simply just cranks.
Toy kidneys can be sold, but real ones are illegal. So are babies,
child pornography and dirty underwear. Clean underwear, however, is
legal, Chesnut said.
The company's reporting has led to several fraud prosecutions, and
eBay has worked with Secret Service agents, postal inspectors, New
York Police Department detectives and other investigators.
The world's leading Internet auction site, eBay hosts thousands of
legitimate auctions daily.
But eBay's high profile also lends itself to a number of crank
proposals, which can often generate a few bids before being discovered
by eBay officials and pulled.
One recent example: an auction for a young man's virginity. (The
seller did not respond to an Associated Press e-mail query.)
And earlier this week, more than 75 human kidneys and several babies
were posted for auction at eBay after one seller's hoax made national
news. The company has suspended all of the kidney and baby dealers
from their site, and referred them to law enforcement.
"Certainly there's room for people to be funny on the Internet, but I
think people need to exercise good judgment. There are transplant
patients waiting years for a kidney. To them, this is not a joking
matter," said Steve Westly, eBay's vice president of marketing.
Many of the would-be kidney sellers contacted by The Associated Press
said they were joking. However, Ian Thomas of Pass Christian, Miss.,
said he wasn't kidding when he posted an auction that began: "Health
conscious, fully functional kidney, 30's male with daily intakes of
springwater, vitamins and exercise."
"For me, this is no joking matter," he said. "I hope more people do
try to take it more seriously, for ultimately it does bring more
awareness to this whole donor issue."
Rodrigo Sales, co-founder & CEO of San Bruno, Calif.-based
Auctionwatch.com, said the bizarre and illegal sales are affecting all
online auction sites, but that internal regulators at each site can
keep them from getting out of hand.
"Both the auction companies and the users themselves take an active
role in policing their sites," he said. "For the most part, the
community tends to be very self-regulating."
Earlier this year, eBay banned the sale of guns and ammunition after
people tried selling a missile, a bazooka, a Russian-made rocket
launcher and other military weapons.
The growing list of prohibited items at eBay also includes skulls,
human remains, live animals, counterfeit items, false identification
documents, explosives and police badges.
Even so, there have been dozens of odd items put up for auction
recently.
In April, a group of engineers attempted to auction themselves as
"high-priced, professionally trained cybergeeks" for $3.14 million.
The group unexpectedly stopped its own auction without comment, but
not before receiving a number of bids.
Earlier this week, Priceman.com, a Houston-based site that provides
product price comparisons, tried to auction nearly half of its equity
for at least $10 million before eBay stopped the auction over
questions of legality.
Copyright © 1999 Seattle Times Company
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