CRIME WATCH
Kidneys, livers, and babies for sale. A 17-year-old offering his virginity to the highest bidder. Rob Chesnut, associate general counsel at eBay, has seen a lot of weird stuff in his first year at the world's largest online auction site. And there's undoubtedly more to come.
Part district attorney, part arbiter of taste, Chesnut wields the gavel against auctioneers who try to sell either illegal goods or legal items - such as firearms - that the site deems inappropriate for public auction.
From his cluttered office in eBay's gleaming San Jose headquarters, the former federal prosecutor tries to stay one step ahead of whatever strange salables eBay users will put under the hammer next. His directives are posted on a page titled "Is my item allowed on eBay?" Continually updated, the contraband list includes such colorful collectibles as human remains, live animals, police badges, fake IDs, dynamite, bazookas, and soiled underwear. New underwear is just fine, though.
Chesnut doesn't do much real-time surveillance of eBay's site - with 3.5 million auctions a day, the beat is simply too big to patrol. Most of his time is spent following tips from postal inspectors, police officers, and eBay users from around the country.
"I couldn't begin to anticipate some of the things that may happen," Chesnut says. "But ideally I think about the potential issues that might come up and write a rule about them before they happen."
In fact, well in advance of the widely publicized posting of a kidney last August, Chesnut foresaw that someone might use the site to sell body parts. The offering turned out to be a hoax, but after the national media ran the story, more than 75 human kidneys and several babies were put up for sale. Chesnut was prepared - officials at eBay quickly suspended the auctions and turned the names of the would-be sellers over to law enforcement. Of course, that didn't stop overzealous auctioneers: Some of those banned from eBay simply returned under a new username. The site now requires would-be sellers to fork over a credit card number before posting an item.
Despite the ever-growing number of restricted items, the former prosecutor thinks eBay's policies are, if anything, too tolerant. "If we only sold the items that Rob Chesnut thought were good, we'd be a smaller Web site," he says.
MUST READ
Silent Scream
Spy vs. Spy
Superhuman Hearing
Tracing Paper - with Lasers!
Kozmo's High Hopes
Ask Dr. Bob
Tails of the City
People
Jargon Watch
Beatnik's Remix
Digital Do
eBay's Top Cop
Scoring a Grammy
The Thing Network
Seeing Digital
Raw Data
