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eBay's Ill-Timed Lifetime Achievement Webby
theodp writes "eBay CEO Meg Whitman will accept a special Webby Lifetime Achievement Award next month on behalf of the eBay Community, which has 'permanently changed the way people connect, discover and interact with each other.' Perhaps by then, people will have forgotten how eBay enabled buyer 'Blazers5505' to hook up with sellers like 'oneclickshooting' just weeks before the worst mass shooting in modern US history, prompting eBay to issue a gun-parts-don't-kill-students-guns-and-ammo-do statement that showed little evidence of its celebrated commitment to social consciousness. CEO Whitman, who received $11.1M last year for her leadership efforts, has kept a low profile since tooting eBay's trust-and-safety horn for Wall Street analysts two days after the Va. Tech rampage."
Ebay didn't kill anyone, sheesh. If he hadn't gotten the parts there, he would've gotten them somewhere else. What next, a story on how McDonalds is supporting criminals by allowing the to buy lunch there?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see the hypocrisy.
Cho bought holsters and empty ammunition clips off of eBay, something they stated while refuting the rumors that any actual ammo or guns had been purchased. eBay expressed their regrets that any item purchased on their site was related to the shootings in any way, and contacted law enforcement and offered their assistance. How is this not committed to social conciousness?
Who are we going to crucify next in our crusade against anyone and anything that might have contributed to the VA Tech shootings?
Oxygen?
-"Law enforcement officials confirm that Cho Seung-Hui was seen to have been breathing during the video sent to the NBC. It is unclear what role the earth's atmosphere may have played, but the investigation is looking at every angle.
'We can not exclude the possibility that oxygen in the earth's atmosphere had a catalytic effect on Cho,' chief of Police Jurkfashe Eidjit stated to the press, 'We will be investigating this very thoroughly.'"
Shoes?
-"In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, police discovered numerous articles of clothing, including shoes, in the dorm room of Cho Seung-Hui.
'We are deeply disturbed by the presence of these articles,' investigator Stew Piddington stated, 'It is clear that Cho surrounded himself with many horrifying items, such as shoes.'
Companies such as Nike, Reebok and New Balance deny the claim that shoes had any influence on the shooter."
Or how about NBC?
-"In a shocking new development, CNN reports that the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, exclusively watched MSNBC.
'We've said for years now that MSNBC is a corruptor of our youth,' a CNN spokesman stated at the press conference, 'But now we have definitive proof.'
MSNBC PR representatives were quick to deny the corrupting influence it had upon Cho, but public opinion has turned against them. The MSNBC offices were burned down by an angry mob this morning in a display of solidarity with the mourning families of Virginia Tech.
'We can't let evil institutions such as these continue to propogate messages of violence and hatred,' one of the crowd stated, 'There's no telling what might become acceptible in our society if these unethical businesses aren't stopped.'"
Seriously, there were a lot of factors involved in the shootings, but trying to attack ebay as though they had personally furnished Cho with his weapons is ridiculous.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Recent information indicates that it will be necessary to also ban hammers from sale on Ebay, to avert future criticism along these same lines.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
What's your point, twerp? That somehow Ebay doesn't support your gun control agenda and is therefore bad in some way? Get a life.
If the jerk didn't get a gun, he would have just run over a crowd with his car, or he would have built an ammonium nitrate bomb. Evil and crazy men will do evil and crazy things.
Quite frankly the situation might have been ameliorated to some degree if concealed carry were legal on college campuses (VTech). Then a legally carrying civilian might have been able to stop some of the slaughter.
Why the Ebay smear?
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
is this for real? EBay has made HUGE differences. They have moved auctions to the web in a big way. Now, you may blame e-bay for selling the weapon, but then why not blame the steal worker who dug the iron as well? Or the farmer who provided the food to the steal worker so that they can live. EBay did not even sell the gun. They simply provided a means to it being sold. If your logic says that everybody who is connected is guilty, then you have blood on your hands.
And yes, e-bay, the gun maker, the steal worker, and the gun did not kill. Cho did. And he could have done more had he made IED and used them. Are you going to stop selling gas or other fuels for that potential?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yup, same guy. If it's necessary to give him a soapbox, perhaps you could at least remove the dishonest framing of these pieces as news?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Yes, because technical quibbling over terminology is really looked down upon here at Slashdot.
See you later folks, I'm off to go steal music through the tubes.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Holy crap, that is a pretty trollish summary.
Admittedly, EBay has problems. But EBay didn't shoot anyone in Virginia.
Furthermore, they didn't cause Cho to go haywire. The fact that they made it easy for him to get magazines is not a problem -- it's a sign of how the internet has changed how people interact with eachother -- which is exactly the reason why EBay got a webby.
Mediums for exchange of information and property are not bad. People who use them for bad purposes are bad.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Gee, would it be possible to compose a more inane, hysterical post? I kind of doubt it. Every rhetorical flourish we decry from the the censors and prohibitionists we despise is reprised here--but since it is about GUNS and EBAY, well, were just supposed to swallow it?
They're correct about the whole guns don't kill people thing. This is Slashdot, so I'll make a technology analogy, even though people here tend to be far more political than technical. We like getting on Microsoft's case when they fix a bug, pointing out that there are far more existing bugs that they didn't fix. Hackers (or crackers, if you must) will exploit any available means to gain access to a system, so patching one hole in a system with many doesn't do a whole lot.
The same thing happens with gun law restrictions. Do you really think that if this guy wouldn't have been able to buy ammo on Ebay that he wouldn't have gone on a shooting rampage? He would have just found a different way of doing it, whether it be with a hunting shotgun, a sword, or a fertilizer bomb. Keep in mind that while I'm in favor of concealed carry, it doesn't mean I think that people should be able to access semiautomatic firearms without a significant (1 month?) waiting period.
I know that comparing the shooting to a system being hacked isn't all that accurate, but I'm trying to make a generalized point. There are many things out there that have both good and bad aspects, but that doesn't mean that we should focus only on the bad and ignore the good. Doing so is shortsighted and kneejerk, similar to all the save-the-children and ban toothpaste from airplanes crap. Be consistent in your criticism of this stuff.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
but it sure does seem that Slashdot's articles have been increasingly more "reactionary" or, at least, provocatively worded.
I mean, it's one thing to specialize your content for a particular audience, it's quite another to "pander" to them.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Add slashdot editor/submitter to personal block list for posting story that is nothing but flamebait. And only a day after I was praising digg for stealing our idiots. Looks like they missed a few.
To imply that Ebay is responsible in anyway for Cho's deranged killing spree is dishonest and contemptible. It's not like Ebay or Paypal are firearm friendly to begin with.
....Says the hypocrite selling pet supplies on the net. Wow, you are just so elite.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Slashdot is apparently now accepting terrible editorialization of news stories.
It is well known that eBay does not know its buyers and sellers. It cannot filter out scammers and fraudsters. Expecting it to filter out murderers is even more insane -- so insane that I can only speculate that this is not what the poster even has in mind. I assume, then, that the poster's complaint is that eBay allows these items to be listed in the first place.
Apparently, the poster is extremely fond of gun control. That's fine. You're entitled to your opinion. Choosing to capitalize on a tragedy to motivate a witch hunt in the name of your ideologies is another matter entirely. eBay allowed listing of these parts in full and complete compliance with state and federal laws -- laws which eBay has, in general, gone above and beyond the call of duty to satisfy.
This witch hunt smells to me of exactly the same bullshit we went through after 9/11, when people looked for anyone and anything to blame, and when highly questionable "solutions" were pushed through the legislature with little thought or caution. And now after Va. Tech, we've got the usual crowd of people utterly unable to accept a world in which tragedy is a reality, attempting to blame anyone and anything for allowing this to happen. eBay gets blamed for allowing Cho to purchase magazines, even though these magazines were readily available elsewhere. Video games get blamed for allowing Cho to "train" for the murder. And, of course, the right of the People to keep and bear arms gets blamed for giving him the freedom to own firearms in the first place. Of course, the second amendment is hardly the only victim in the aftermath of all this: the first amendment has also suffered considerably, with people getting arrested for having highly laughable "warning signs," like violent writing.
Frankly, these school shooting do not scare me. I fully accept that someday, it could be me among the dead in such a tragedy -- or my wife, my sons, or my daughters. But, eventually, my name will be among the dead for one reason or another. I refuse to live what days I have left, be it 100 years or be it a week, gripped in fear about when the curtain will drop on my life. And so what scares me far more than school shooters and terrorists are the people who are unable to do this; people whose fear is so profound that they will not only undermine their own lives in a futile attempt to stop death, but they'll demand that you undermine yours as well, ironically by undermining the very rights that literally millions of people have voluntarily stepped into the line of fire to protect.
So, in conclusion, I do not find Cho to be a terribly threatening in the grand scheme of things -- not nearly so threatening as folks like Jack Thompson or, apparently, the author of this post, who attempt to inflame the matter with laughable policy suggestions that curtail our freedoms and do nothing to maker us safer.
The ignorance of the writer does track with the general ignorance of the subject by those hellbent on banning guns. Generally a gun banner is someone who doesn't know anything about firearms, doesn't WANT to know and most especially wants to wallow in the fear their ignorance produces. They are also highly likely to be unstable people projecting their own instability onto the public at large.
This is a stupid thread inspired by a stupid press article on a stupid subject. eBay is not in any way responsible for facilitating lawful commerce in lawful products. Cho bears sole responsibility for his insane rampage, nobody has to share the guilt with the possible exception of whoever made the decision to keep his court judgement of mental unfitness out of the instant check system. But even there it is doubtful he could have been prevented from going on a killing spree, there is always homemade explosives, poison gas, car bombs, black marget weapons, etc.
Democrat delenda est
Spoons and spoon makers are responsible for numerous people being fat, without spoons they couldn't shovel in the lard it would simply run through their forks. Anyone supporting spoon companies is directly responsible for fat people and should be ashamed.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I know it's not a big deal. It certainly doesn't bother me when folks call magazines clips, but just in case anyone out there wanted to be informed what the difference is:
A magazine is enclosed. All the bullets are inside of it. These are the things you see on TV.
A clip is a length of metal retainer that bullets slide onto. It holds them in a row and feeds into (my opinion) antiquated weapons. Picture: http://www.swissrifles.com/ammo/comparison.jpg
There are also belts (like rambo used) and drums (which is a neatly folded belt in a box)
I bought my magazines on ebay. The ones that came with my pistol are expensive and I wanted cheap ones for when I practice (ten dollars each vs 35 dollars each). I fail to see the issue here. I can buy magazines in town without any problems anyway. Some psycho guy could easily make a bomb or buy illegal weapons. Yeah, this time he used legal means to get armed. It's worth considering that the recent mall shooting and all the school shootings occurred in gun free zones, that some school shootings have been stopped by legal gun-owners, and that there are plenty of reasonable complaints to make against ebay without this silliness.
eh, whatever.
I'm not a gun nut. I don't own any weapons. I think of the NRA as an organization that tends toward paranoia, and which attracts more than its share of fringe, radical elements. But I am completely behind the rights protected by the 2nd Ammendment. The reasons the founders put that in the Bill of Rights still exist today.
If some people want to ban guns, their path is clear: an ammendment to the Constitution. They are perfectly welcome to try getting such a thing passed.
Notice how Slashdot went nuts when a school board put a kid in a "special school" for making a game map of his school but then goes after EBay because somebody shot up a school after buy holsters and empty clips.
,his family, his roommates?
Both are cases of fear of those that are not like you.
I will bet big money that the person that wrote the summary really hates all guns. I am also willing to bet they don't hunt or shoot targets for fun. There for their mistrust of anyone that has anything to do with guns. They are all gun nuts waiting to shoot up a school. They are differnt from them and are not to be trusted.
BTW I really am not a gun person. I don't hunt or own a gun myself.
The school board members probably don't game. They know that the kids at that shoot up the school in Colorado played violent video games and that the young man that shot up VT made maps for a violent video game. They may or may not know that they where not of VT. They may also know that the September 11th terrorists used a video game "Flight Simulator" to practice their attack. People that play violent video games are differnt from them so they do not trust them.
BTW the last FPS I played I think was Quake. I am not really into FPS but I do love Flight Simulator. I also really dislike games like GTA. I find them distasteful and will not play them myself.
It is easy to hate the stranger. Those that are not like you. It is dangerous to trust the stranger. These are rules that go back to the cave man days. What scares me the most is most "Open minded" people have this exact same view but they just don't see it.
I have no idea how we can get rid of this trait. It is the core of racism and all other forms of prejudice. Probably the best we can ever hope to do is to admit that we all have it and to not let it rule our lives.
The simple truths are just this. The vast majority of gun owners will never shoot up a school. The vast majority of gamers will never shoot up a school.
The real questions about the VT shooting are a lot more harder.
Why didn't the laws on the books stop him from buying the gun in first place?
And the really sad question is just this.
What in his life made him so unhappy that this seemed like a good idea? How can a person feel so unloved and alone that going around and killing a large group of innocent people and then killing himself is a good idea?
Where where his friends
Ebay has no blame or guilt in this.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm all for hating eBay for the genuinely annoying things they do, as well as their , their questionable exclusion of Google Chuckout and other non-Paypal payment gateways, but blaming them for some random nutjob buying something which isn't even against the TOS to list - or illegal to purchase - is really clutching at straws.
How is the VT event in any way remotely relevant to this Lifetime Achievement award, or - for that matter - how is the Webby award even newsworthy?
gunbroker link
This is an eBay-like setup for people to sell guns across the internet. Before the anti-gun hyperventilators (like the submitter) start, guns can only be shipped to a Federal Firearms License holder (or a C&R, but that's a special case that I won't go into). You then go to them and have a federal background check performed on you, and you pick up your gun.
Many computer nerds I know often buy rare machineguns this way. (no, not semi-auto Democrat-newspeak "assault weapons", real belt-fed working machineguns like MG-42s and M2HBs as well as full auto assault rifles like the M16)
Occasionally, a 105mm howitzer (includes 20 rounds free!), RPG, or 20mm anti-aircraft cannon will show up on gunbroker as well. Yes, private citizens can easily own WORKING assault rifles, frag grenades, machineguns, howitzers, smart bombs, and anti-aircraft cannons. No legal citizen-owned machinegun, mortar, bomb, howitzer, or grenade has ever been used in any crime. Ever.
It's also interesting to note that there's no explicit regulation prohibiting you from owning, say , a nuclear-armed cruise missile - it's just you can't find anyone willing to sell them to you.
Seems that if you can blame eBay for a nutjob killing people, then you can blame eBay for scam artists ripping people off. But why stop there? Blame eBay for deaths caused by drunk drivers who bought cars, furries who bought stuffed animals, and trolling Slashdot submitters who bought new computers.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's getting difficult to keep track of all the companies I'm supposed to be morally outraged at... I'm surprised that Slashdot permitted it through and tagged it so benignly, clearly someone has a political point they wanna make... Do people really blame Ebay for school shootings now? Perhaps we should get rid of all technology that enables violence and violent thoughts to be conveyed... --Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
As an amusing note, probably due to the amount of ammunition expended, news programs were claiming that the Clinton weapons ban that expired would have prevented him from killing so many people because of the "high-capacity" magazines. They didn't seem to realize that it's quite easy to carry a satchel full of loaded 10-round (legal during the ban) magazines and exchange them quickly with some practice-- which is what Cho did.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Ok he got magazines, not filled, but empty magazines, get over it people!
Seriously, Ebay has changed the way we interact. Why are we quibbling over this? Oh yeah people want to shame ebay for this and blame it on anyone other than the student who commited the murder. They didn't tell him to do it, they didn't pull the trigger, this is one sale out of a couple million?
Ebay and the founders deserve this award, hell they deserve another award for taking an idea from the dot com bubble and making a couple billion dollars off of it (kudos to them for that). Trying to throw dirt on them now is petty as hell, and Kdawson needs to figure out if he wants to keep posting biased and muck racking summaries or if he wants to actually post interesting news.