In this case, this bill is supported by California pawnbrokers. It is likely the pawnbrokers already have regulations like this in place and want to burden everyone else with them in order to eliminate competition. For once Ebay may be doing something good by fighting this bill.
I'm with my husband at the national E-bay convention in New Orleans, believe it or not. I haven't been to any of the sessions that might deal with the law, and so I don't know if anyone here is talking about this.
My husband would know better than I how the Pawnbrokers fought the bill, but the way I remember it was that they united and lobbied that the customers were legal buyers and had no reason to submit to fingerprinting - as well as convincing the lawmakers that their income would be improved if the pawnbrokers weren't harmed. (I hate the implications of that sort of lobbying, but understand that campaigns must go on....)
Ebay is an unbelievably diverse bunch of buyers and sellers. But, I can imagine them uniting to convince California that if their income goes down, the tax incomes for the State would go down - not to mention the problem of all the other resalers and those they support going on the unemployment lines.