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

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

#91

Post by [deleted] »

hamdingers wrote: post #25
gz5 wrote: post #16

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.

This is my read of the situation too. Amazon wants to control "agentic commerce" use cases so they can monetize them. A generic agent using amazon.com undermines that effort, so they're trying to use the courts to prevent it.

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by theturtletalks »

hamdingers wrote: post #25
gz5 wrote: post #16

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.

This is my read of the situation too. Amazon wants to control "agentic commerce" use cases so they can monetize them. A generic agent using amazon.com undermines that effort, so they're trying to use the courts to prevent it.

Exactly right. With LLMs, you can go directly to the website and checkout instead of going thru Amazon so they can collect their commission.

It’s actually why I’m building an open-source, decentralized Amazon alternative that’s powered by agentic commerce and MCP-UI that brings the cart and storefront into the chat directly.

Amazon and every marketplace’s days are numbered. It’s why you see so many of them trying to push their own sort of agentic commerce protocol because they want to control commerce in the age of AI. It’s exactly why I chose MCP-UI and not their protocols.

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

#93

Post by theturtletalks »

bshaughn wrote: post #82
hamdingers wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my read of the situation too. Amazon wants to control "agentic commerce" use cases so they can monetize them. A generic agent using amazon.com undermines that effort, so they're trying to use the courts to prevent it.

Legal issues asside, I find this agentic commerce goal naive. Its like expecting me to buy a different microwave so the popcorn button works with the official amazon popcorn. Theres no way they will be able to replace the context and tooling I have setup for my own personal agents. And theres no way in hell im going to give Amazon every piece of information in my life so they are slightly better equipped to recommend…

What about an opensource agentic commerce chat where you have a vetted list of stores but can add your own?

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

#94

Post by cmiles8 »

The appeals courts overturning of Amazon’s initial win (injunction) here is interesting. It’s basically like liability in reverse. If a user is responsible for what an AI agent does on its behalf then the other side of that equation can’t say “hey this AI is doing bad things” since the AI is just an extension of the user.

Amazon tried to go after the AI and its maker but seems the court is nudging Amazon to say if you have a problem with this then go after your customers as they’re the ones doing this.

And Amazon’s customers are only doing this because the shopping experience on the website is terrible and Amazon’s own AI is a hot mess.

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

#95

Post by iforgotmypasswo »

Pattern I’m continually seeing.

User: I want to access what your business provides via AI.[1]

Business: I am not incentivized to do that. You should use our specific AI workflow and agents directly in our software.

User: That gives me a fraction of the value I get when AI has the full context for what I’m trying to do and talks to all the software and services I use.

I suspect this is an opportunity for previous also-ran companies to gain market share or new companies to break into markets.

[1] Usually something less stupid than AI buying something for someone, but to each their own.

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

#96

Post by theturtletalks »

People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things.

So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’re just trading one master for another.

It’s why I’m building an open-source, decentralized, interoperable marketplace. It’s powered by agentic commerce and we include a list of vetted stores but you can bring your own.

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

#97

Post by embedding-shape »

> In other words, the Assistant cannot operate wholly independently; it relies on direction from the user and instructions from Perplexity’s servers.

Very interesting point of view. I wonder if people feel the same when it's not browsing Amazon but hacking other companies? These agents don't do anything by themselves, so wouldn't the same be true when it comes to breaking into 3rd party computer infrastructure?

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

#98

Post by Natsu »

nonethewiser wrote: post #84
LPisGood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But didn’t Amazon cite laws that it broke (allegedly)? Not simply their ToS?

The CFAA makes it a federal offense to intentionally access a computer "without authorization" or "exceeding authorized access" so the sticky part is how far the site's ToS can go in defining what uses are authorized, lest it be a federal felony to use an ad blocker or whatever else might be forbidden in a ToS.

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

#100

Post by johndhi »

theturtletalks wrote: post #96

People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…

Sounds cool. Needs network effects of lots of highly rated stores to succeed, I think.
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