Psycho killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?
EBay recently stopped a Wisconsin land auction owned by a gentleman named MIke Fisher. The asking price for the 40 acre property was $250,000 but Fisher had only received one small bid. The reason EBay stopped the auction? It used to belong to Ed Gein, the infamous serial killer who has been featured in several movies including "Psycho" and "Silence of the Lambs." You see, Gein skinned people and made suits out of them. The property for sale was where police discovered all sorts of body parts and people-clothing. Why did EBay stop the auction? Because it violated their policy of not selling items associated with murder.
EBay actually restricts quite a few things. They stop the obviously illegal like drugs and alcohol, yet also stop things such as screen savers with multiple celebrity images, movie prints, police badges, teacher's editions of textbooks. The most interesting category of blocked items are ones which are deemed offensive.
To whom ? Presumably EBay.
I understand why they have some rules. No one wants to go to court and I'm sure that they experience their share of lawsuits anyway. I am sure that they are being reasonable in their application of their rules. I have never, for instance, heard of EBay using their product sale policies solely to benefit themselves in some advantageous way.
It bothers me though that a company can make these determinations. EBay is not an American company, it is a global one. When Internet companies make subjective determinations, whether they're about offensive material or verboten domain names, they're making a statement about right and wrong, proper and improper, and then extending that moral blanket across the Western World. That worries me a little, although I have not the slightest suggestion for an improvement.
Posted on April 11, 2006
