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."

Comments

Laughable

[MeanderingMind]

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.

Re:Laughable

[dr_dank]

'We are deeply disturbed by the presence of these articles,' investigator Stew Piddington stated

If you want to be an investigator, changing your name from something that starts with "stupid" is a good first move.

Re:Laughable

[Jerry Beasters]

Wrong. Actually the text specifically allows for BOTH the right to bear arms AND have a well regulated militia. Both at the same time. Language at the time was very specific, and the way it was written taken in the context of the language used clearly shows a right of both private citizens to have weapons and also for them to create a well regulated militia.

Please don't only post things you heard from somewhere without doing some further research actually closely looking at the language.

In case you forgot it:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Having studied this type of legal language, it is saying that a well regulated militia is necessary and furthermore as a consequence the right of the people to bear arms must not be infringed. The first comma denotes a pause while the second denotes a separate idea. The right of the people to bear arms is a separate idea, that flows from the need for a well regulated militia. There is nothing remotely in the language that requires them to be a member of a militia, but to have one the people must have arms anyway. The first part is there simply to provide a further reasoning. It was already assumed that all people should have the right to bear arms and that simple point was not really questioned much if at all.

If you can't real it correctly you can't understand it correctly, and obviously you can't.

Dear editors...

[Otter]

I read that and wondered if the same guy has been submitting all the recent stories along this line: "[Company] is going to be participating in [some event]. I wonder if people are going to bring up [some random issue that I will now hold forth upon]?"

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?

Arguably the dumbest ./ topic ever

[coltrane679]

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?

I hate to say it....

[StressGuy]

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.

Re:I hate to say it....

[Moridineas]

Well said..

I still highly enjoy slashdot but I have to say, I've noticed myself at times...buying into the world view too much. That is to say, I read slashdot and I feel like everything is going wrong--big corporations getting more powerful, government getting more powerful, losing civil liberties, everywhere in the world (not just Europe, but China, Iran, etc too!) being better than the US, etc etc. A large portion of things posted here now seem to become some kind of an anti-SOMETHING. Cellphone technology becomes a fight over why America is so backward, etc etc etc. It's kinda damn depressing.

And then I read other news, and you know--talk to other people who don't just self-flagellate all day--and it's kind of eye opening. I don't know if it's me or slashdot, but it's been feeling to me lately like the slashdot editors especially are those bitter, negative, unhappy kids in highschool who blame everyone else but themselves for their unhappiness and hate the kids who AREN'T unhappy the most (all the while totally sure of their superiority).

I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling..

Re:I hate to say it....

[exley]

It's not even the pandering that bothers me -- I expect that here at Slashdot. What's annoying to me is the blatant editorializing, which we seem to be getting more and more of from the submitter and/or one of the editors these days. This has, of course, been an annoying factor to varying degrees here on Slashdot in the past (our old friend Michael is a good example), and you have to expect some of it since no one is going to be completely unbiased.

This submission is really raising the bar on that front. We already knew that he got gun parts off of eBay, and this submission adds absolutely no new information to the discussion. I really don't care what some random Slashole thinks about Cho getting some of his stuff off eBay. I can form my own dumbass opinions, thanks.

Hey, awesome

[Wuhao]

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.

Re:Nice flamebait

[The Warlock]

How the hell do these stories make it to the front page? Geez, at least Digg has a "bury" option.

Re:Nice flamebait

[Reality Master 101]

Ebay didn't kill anyone, sheesh

In all fairness, the submitter didn't imply eBay killed the students, he's only implying that Meg Whitman killed them. :)

Re:Nice flamebait

[Jaysyn]

See that "Firehose" link at the top of your browser? Click it.

Human nature in action.

[LWATCDR]

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.
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 ,his family, his roommates?

Ebay has no blame or guilt in this.

Gunbroker.com is ebay for arms and ordnance.

[thumper666]

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.

Re:Quibbling perhaps, but illustratitive

[codered82]

Why is it that a certain segment of the gun-owning populace immediately jumps to the conclusion that there's some grand-scale movement to try to completely ban guns every time limitations on gun ownership are brought up?

A death (of our rights to own firearms) by a thousand cuts is still a death...

Put another way. Take a personal liberty away in one swoop and people will complain. Slowly erode it over a period of decades and the 'shortsighted' among us will say "it is just a little cut, get over it". Then you wake up one day and realize that it is all gone and wonder to yourself how you got there.

"Those Who Would Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither." -Franklin