posted on September 17, 2000 05:21:11 AM
The quoted sections below come straight from the article. My comments are my own opinions.
"The items came to the company's attention after the national victims' rights organization Parents of Murdered Children complained, eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said Friday.
"This was the first time a crime scene photo of a minor had been placed on eBay," he said. "It was also the first time, that we are aware of, of a coroner's photo being placed on the site."
Harrumph! I've seen similar items listed for well over a year now.
" The photo was moved to eBay's adults-only site about a month ago, he said. EBay employees later saw a reference to several, more graphic, pictures, including autopsy photos, available through the same seller, he said. The photos were removed from the site, but not before one was sold."
Typical. Sweep it under the rug then if someone complains about a lumpy rug it gets removed, then the disavowing of knowledge. Hypocrocy at it's worst.
"EBay has since modified its user policy to specify the company has discretion to remove items such as morgue and crime scene photos, Pursglove said. He said it is difficult for the online auctioneer to filter the hundreds of thousands of items posted on the site each day. "
Difficult because they won't spend a small part of their profits to "do the right thing", which WOULD generate an amount of good press that no amount of money could buy, IMO. Instead, they continue to ask us, the users, to police their site for them.
"But Frank Parish, a Houston attorney and board member of Parents of Murdered Children, said he thinks the company could do a better job of screening items posted on the site.
"We're not talking First Amendment, we're talking good taste," he said. "
Yes, they could do a better job. But will they ever wake up and see that doing the right thing might just POSITIVLEY EFFECT their bottom line? Higher personal responsibility brings higher rewards. Pushing the problem off onto others or simply saying that we "just can't screen everything" is no excuse, IMO. A moderate pro-active program with a staff hired to exclusivley look for these things would be the greatest PR and return on investment that ebay could make.
I learned long ago through the martial arts that if you use the knowledge you have gained yet do not take personal responsibility for your actions then you are nothing more than the schoolyard bully. The absence of forethought before acting makes us worse than animals, because we have the capacity to reason but shirk our responsibility to our fellow human beings due to laziness. This is the saddest point of all: if we treat everyone else that way, what does that say about how we treat OURSELVES?
posted on September 17, 2000 05:49:28 AM
"Only a venue"
This is not only a lie - It is an unworkable idea.
Like building a toll road and saying there are no rules go as fast as you like either way in any lane.
posted on September 17, 2000 05:58:58 AM
I agree with you wholeheartedly, Sword013. Rules are not worth the ether/paper they are written on if nothing is done to enforce them. Ebay can't monitor the items on their site? Try won't...unless they are eventually forced to.
Personally, I don't know how someone could put pictures like that up for sale and be able to live with the knowledge that they are trying to profit from the exploitation of someone's brutally murdered child. I don't get that at all...
Edited to add: I see that eBay is changing its terminology to fit the occasion here. In the past they I do believe they have said they can't monitor their site for infringing items. Now, apparently, it is too difficult to do so. Perhaps it is too difficult because they have a staff of flunkies trying to decide which canned response is appropriate to send out in reply to each inquiry instead of hiring people with half a clue to peruse the site looking for such things.
[ edited by debbielennon on Sep 17, 2000 06:07 AM ]
posted on September 17, 2000 08:08:24 AM
Personally, I think that eBay policing the site itself is unworkable as well - sellers complain enough about VERO's, can you imagine the cry if eBay employees were tasked with running hundreds of searches a day? There's no way that a single employee or a group of employees could bring up every auction that came up from a search to see if it really was compliant. There are 5 MILLION items on eBay!
The responsibility lies with the sellers who are listing items against policy: if a person drives down the road drunk and hits somebody, is it his fault or is it the fault of the city because they didn't hire more cops to drive up and down every street?
posted on September 17, 2000 08:33:07 AM
"There are 5 MILLION items on eBay!"
Glenda ... that's the same company BS that eBay told me when I reported some illegal items, only I got the "we're bigger than New York" and "we get 30,000 new members everyday" crap when I didn't accept the 5 million item argument. After that, I said goodbye and hung up - you're dealing with those same idiots that spin the big wheel to see which canned response they will use to reply via email and it is a frustrating waste of time!
It may be unreasonable to ask them to police their site, but it is certainly not unreasonable to expect them to take action about illegal auctions that someone has been reporting to them for weeks, and that violate their own written rules prepared by their own lawyers. After all, they do this when one member files a complaint about another member's legal auction.
posted on September 17, 2000 08:47:53 AM
Here's the math. Somebody check my figures:
5,170,251 items presently on ebay.
Average # items ending or added per day: 738,607.
Allowing 30 seconds for an ebay rep to review each auction, total hours required per day: 6,155.
Assuming employees work 40-hour shifts and, review is done around the clock, 7 days a week, total employees required: 256
Cost per day for hourly wages alone (no SSI, unemployment taxes or benefits) at $5.25/hour: $53,760
Divided among the 738,000 items ending/added per day, additional cost per item for hourly wages alone: about seven cents. I don't know what ebay's average gross sales per day is, so I couldn't figure out the cost per dollar of auction sales would be. Maybe somebody here has that info.
Now it's "only seven cents," right? Let's tack on another 2 cents for SSI, unemployment, and benefits, and another 2 cents for things like computers, desks, office space, utilities, and other supporting "stuff." So we're talking 12 cents per item listed.
Unfortunately, even twelve cents has to come from somewhere, and you can bet it's not going to come from shareholder dividends. So ebay must look to....sellers and increase listing fees accordingly. At the present listing fee rate, the increase would be anywhere from 6% (for items over $5) to 50% (for items up to $9.99).
Consider this: Ebay's already demonstrated its wacky "review" process through Vero and protected species auctions, ending auctions where the item is clearly manufacturer authorized for resale and auctions with e.g. the word "tortoiseshell" when the item is clearly NOT of real tortoise shell. Twelve cents gets you somebody for minimum wage when McDonald's is paying more than that. Do you really want somebody who's not bright enough to work at McDonald's reviewing your auctions? I don't.
Although I agree the situation is nasty, I don't think a blanket review process will do anything but cause more trouble. And we'll be expected to pay for the privilege.
posted on September 17, 2000 08:48:16 AM
If eBay had employees who reviewed every auction, and they were able to check 30 auctions per hour, by my calculations, this would currently require about 1,000 full time employees.
But I'm sure that no one would have a problem with eBay doubling their fees to pay for this...
Also, I think this quote hits the nail on the head:
"We're not talking First Amendment, we're talking good taste"
I think that about half the crap sold on eBay is in poor taste. I'll volunteer to be the thought police.
posted on September 17, 2000 09:00:36 AM
macandjan~ APT analogy! I hope it isn't copyrighted because I just printed it out to tape to my computer monitor!
posted on September 17, 2000 09:52:33 AM
Out side of listing crime fotos adult item and so on which should be in an area were descretion is required another words warned before you enter.
Good taste is a personal matter, each has there own Idea of what is exspetable to them what shocks or upsets one will not another.
when I was in school and in radio I was always told remember this is a business here you play what sells to the public no matter if you like the music or storys reported on.
for personal likes and dislikes you have two things you could do one when your home play the music you concider to be in good taste or start your own radio station
ebay too is one of these cases.
if you feel that at least half the item on ebay are in bad taste you really only have two things you can do since ebay is public world wide domain.
You can go open your own auction site with only items you aprove of or you can open your own store on the street and sell just what you think is good taste.
in a world of many billions of people good taste has a veried meaning.
go ahead and try it on your own with a limited sense of good taste. you will find fast your sales wont be as good as one who sells for mass appeal.
we have laws to attemp to protect all from what the majority beleave to be the nastest and the wrost of taste.
but I would say with as many items as ebay has in and out of there site daily its pretty good and not at all 50% in bad taste.
posted on September 17, 2000 10:13:45 AM
Why would it require so much in the way of human resources to monitor the site? A well-designed piece of software could do most of the searching. Isn't that the method used by that super-secret spy agency (whose name I forget) to monitor e-mail traffic world-wide?
posted on September 17, 2000 10:30:36 AM
If ebay's human beans can't tell the difference between artificial and real tortoiseshell even when the auction is worded so that there can be NO question, how do you suggest a search engine can do better?
What words or phrases would you suggest it search for?
Try this. Search on "ivory". You'll get about 18,000 listings. Now determine which words you need to add to your filter so that you don't get e.g. masks from e.g. the Ivory Coast, Ivory Soap, anything colored ivory, the song "Ebony and Ivory" (whoops - endangered wood in that one too), French ivory (an early plastic)....I stopped after the first of 362 pages.
posted on September 17, 2000 11:18:30 AM
Sorry, I may be wrong, but I don't not see the problem as one of monitoring the auctions, but more of monitoring who is listing the auction.
