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Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

law.justia.com

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Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#11

Post by swyx »

hobo_in_library wrote: post #6
TutleCpt wrote: post #2

All right, which one of you is going to go through the trouble of explaining what this is about?

First para really does the job: "Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of [blah]. Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, navigates Amazon.com on the user’s behalf, sending browser screenshots to Perplexity’s…

no, it does not, you have to actually RTFA if you are going to try to TLDR a court proceeding. literally 3 paras down:

> the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded for further proceedings. The Ninth Circuit held that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims because Perplexity did not “access” Amazon’s computers within the meaning of the CFAA or CDAFA; instead, the access was performed by the user employing the Assistant as a tool. The court found that the district court erred in its analysis of the equitable factors, which favored Perplexity, and concluded that an injunction was not warranted under these circumstances. The disposition was to vacate the injunction and remand.

perplexity won on appeal. if you stop at first para you are part of the problem

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#12

Post by swyx »

binarymax wrote: post #4
TutleCpt wrote: post #2

All right, which one of you is going to go through the trouble of explaining what this is about?

If you read the first couple paragraphs it’s very self explanatory

then you will have missed the third para which reverses the decision from the first two para. jesus christ how many people on HN only read first paras

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#14

Post by Legend2440 »

TL;DR Amazon is mad that Perplexity's agents can browse Amazon logged-in, with a username/password provided by the perplexity user.

Amazon argues this is against the CFAA because they do not authorize such use. They sued and got a preliminary injection. Perplexity appealed and got the injunction thrown out.

The case hasn't actually been to trial on the merits yet and is still undecided.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#16

Post by gz5 »

Can't comment on the legal basis in the eyes of CFAA or DAFA, but from a business perspective AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads, which is a large part of their revenue.

Meaning, even if merchants would have a difficult time moving from Amazon to an AI native version of Amazon, this is still a threat.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#17

Post by Terr_ »

I remember when I (naively, but not alone) thought that the Personal Computer would let us--consumers, individuals--express our own agency and priorities and control, a kind of democratized capital mini-factory anyone (or group) could tailor to their own needs.

Nowadays it feels more like "Visitors shall think what our brain-stream tells you to think, or be guilty of contempt of business model."

Is there any important legal difference between what's happening here versus a bunch of friends running a "share and notice favorite deals" collective via plugin+server?

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#20

Post by LPisGood »

metayrnc wrote: post #8

> Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, na…

My understanding of the case law on this subject is that courts are extremely wary of letting terms of service violations rise to the level of federal crime. It essentially endows anyone with a domain name into an authority which can create federal law on demand.
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