Ebay : Draped in Secrecy in Draper, UTAH

Funny thing about Ebay, the Scientology-styled Uber-Internet company. They have a compound. They are cloaked in secrecy. They are headquartered far away from prying eyes.

You'd think that with politicians in their pocket and DMCA laws remaining weak, they wouldn't be hiding. They hide anyway. Any phone number you can find will get you a recorded message. Employee names are hard to find. Aside from a publicist trained to say "WE ARE JUST A VENUE," nobody is on record about anything.

Fact is, even as they pocket millions every day through bootlegs and stolen merchandise, they don't want to talk about it and keep such a low profile even WIKIPEDIA allows them invisibility.

EBAY's secret compound is in the obscure town of Draper, Utah. But if you check Draper, Utah in Wikipedia, THERE IS NO REFERENCE TO EBAY AT ALL. Shhhhhhh.

How fortunate for Ebay, that they choose to locate themselves among Mormons, who are known to be a clannish, secretive lot. They're the ones with the polygamy, and "magic underwear," and cultists who RULE small towns outside of Salt Lake City.

How fortunate for Ebay, that they can be virtually all-white, with maybe a few hapless Pakistanis being their "monkey with a script" stooges. The stooges are only there to help the company make money. If you're a seller and you need help setting up your account, you can get through to a toll-free number where one of them will happily give you technical advice if it puts money in Ebay's pocket.

If you cross them up, pretend to want technical advice, and instead tell them about a pervert seller, or a bootlegger, or someone else flagrantly violating eBay rules, you'll get a pause, and, from the script: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Not to worry. I will forward this to the appropriate division."

And nothing happens. Ask "Why can't YOU shut down this auction" and you get, "Thank you for bringing this to our attention...your complaint requires investigation...it must be sent to the proper division." Ask to be connected to that proper division and you get "It is against our policy..." Ask to know how often the seller has been warned or suspended and you get "It is against our policy to discuss other members."

Ebay, like Google and Amazon and the other billionaire bullies, holds all the power. They control their arrogance only regarding things that are absolutely against the law (like selling guns by mail). A lot of their so-called rules (no selling of stinking knickers, no selling of digital download books or music or movies, no selling of chloroform) are mostly for show: "We can't patrol our site, we rely on people reporting items." Except, ha ha, they have the excuse "we're very busy," if a reported item stays up to completion.

Yes, they picked the right location, hiding in "DRAPER."