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Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

arstechnica.com

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Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#91

Post by legitster »

Sanzig wrote: post #13

Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. Unlike eBay, Amazon goes to great lengths to sow confusion about what it sells versus its marketplace participants. The average user thinks that when they…

Amazon used to have a rule that all sellers had to have a US business address. So you at least had importers stateside who could deal with product liability questions.

They got rid of it to compete with Wish.com et al who had huge product selections. But the product quality on Amazon has been awful ever since then.

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#92

Post by ceejayoz »

graphe wrote: post #74
ceejayoz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSDs don't tend to market themselves via description/pics as "great for child porn" though. The likelihood of a towel rack spy camera being used for ill purposes is substantially higher than an SSD.

This didn't say it was great for child porn either. Both cameras and storage classify under “create and store child sex abuse material.”

Sure, but hidden cameras whose marketing appears intentionally designed to hint at spying on bathrooms is not the same as "cameras and storage".

Your argument is like going "GHB and ibuprofen are both drugs!" and claiming they're the same as a result. No.

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#93

Post by tyingq »

tzs wrote: post #83
metadat wrote: post #4

Is there an archive snapshot of the Towel bar Cam product page as displayed by Amazon? Kinda wondering what the product actually looks like, and how Amazon allowed it to be presented. Edit: whoa, @navels how'd you do that?! Thank you, amazing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230527030738/https://www.amazo... The product reviews are creepy. -- Rest of my comment for posterity: There's an image in TFA, though it's only a…

The "Customers who bought this item also bought" for it is interesting...it seems to be all women's bathing suits.

"It puts the lotion on its skin"

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#94

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

neilv wrote: post #40

I'd expect Amazon product safety people to know what these are. Spycams have been widely advertised for decades, often overtly targeted specifically for use of spying on women. For example, pretty early in Web history (before WiFi and then IoT were popular), "X10" cameras were advertised heavily: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kuan/x10.html

I mean it's a spy camera that only makes sense in a bathroom. There's even a showerhead one sold on Amazon.

I'm not even sure it's humanly possible to look at one of these and not realise the primary use case is criminal.

The only conclusion I'm left to draw from this is either that no actual review takes place, or that the review is merely there to ascertain "is this product literally illegal right now?"

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#95

Post by voytec »

Sanzig wrote: post #13

Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. Unlike eBay, Amazon goes to great lengths to sow confusion about what it sells versus its marketplace participants. The average user thinks that when they…

> Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (...) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens.

They've also been happy with making it harder for the customer to choose a particular seller (especially one w/o Amazon Storefront site)

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#96

Post by isk517 »

neilv wrote: post #40

I'd expect Amazon product safety people to know what these are. Spycams have been widely advertised for decades, often overtly targeted specifically for use of spying on women. For example, pretty early in Web history (before WiFi and then IoT were popular), "X10" cameras were advertised heavily: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kuan/x10.html

Holy crap, that one that flat out says 'We are not responsible for what you do with this camera'. Usually that is something they slip into the fine print, not make the main point of the advertisement.

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#97

Post by toast0 »

space_fountain wrote: post #45
Sanzig wrote: post #13

Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. Unlike eBay, Amazon goes to great lengths to sow confusion about what it sells versus its marketplace participants. The average user thinks that when they…

And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer. It's pretty new for something like Amazon to exist with the ability to market (through product recommendations), handle payments, and handle shipping logistics for a product that they need never even see. It means it's easy for manufacturers like this to basically get away scot…

> And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer.

I don't think it's wise to try to end the wild west. At the end of the day, we've been able to send money overseas and get things of questionable quality practically forever; some of the earliest writings are complaints about quality of foreign sellers. It's unreasonable to expect a courier to accept full responsibility for the packages it delivers, and it's usually not feasible to take effective action against a foreign seller.

It might be reasonable to require a registered agent for a seller who is realistically subject to the legal jurisdiction(s) where products are warehoused/shipping originates though. It's generally pretty easy and inexpensive to find registered agents for incorporation requirements, but I imagine if there were real consequences for registered agents of products being warehoused, costs would be real as well. If that drives people to Aliexpress, so be it?

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#98

Post by Sanzig »

isk517 wrote: post #86
Sanzig wrote: post #13

Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. Unlike eBay, Amazon goes to great lengths to sow confusion about what it sells versus its marketplace participants. The average user thinks that when they…

I've had to explain to my father so many times that just because you've bought something off of Amazon does not mean that you bought it from Amazon. They really should have a separate store front for 3rd party sellers.

Honestly, given that it seems like tons of retailers are trying to follow Amazon's lead with a marketplace system, I think we need a consumer protection law to require companies to make it very clear to consumers when they are buying from third party sellers. The issue is rampant. Here in Canada, CBC did an investigation about Best Buy's marketplace listings on their online store [1]. It's greed, pure and simple: these large retailers are willing to mortgage their reputation for some risk-free sales commission and absolve themselves of any liability by blaming their marketplace sellers.

[1] https://youtu.be/Gdc9_uPETIE

Re: Judge: Amazon "cannot claim shock" that bathroom spycams were used as advertised

#100

Post by chias »

metadat wrote: post #4

Is there an archive snapshot of the Towel bar Cam product page as displayed by Amazon? Kinda wondering what the product actually looks like, and how Amazon allowed it to be presented. Edit: whoa, @navels how'd you do that?! Thank you, amazing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230527030738/https://www.amazo... The product reviews are creepy. -- Rest of my comment for posterity: There's an image in TFA, though it's only a…

Dear courts, do this one next https://www.amazon.com/Bathroom-Shower-Security-Cameras-Outd...

The product description is... wild.

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