Amazon services is just an LLC?
It's one of many of their wholly owned subsidaries
Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
141–150 of 195 posts
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about an opensource agentic commerce chat where you have a vetted list of stores but can add your own?
If this is basically an MCP/api with curated data sources, then yes im interested. I think there is some legit market opportunity to try to provide this to small - medium businesses. The biggest advantage Amazon has over them is visibility, and the tooling that comes with it. If you made a squarespace plugin or otherwise that would index someone's store, then that store owner would be able to get business from the sh…
It’s exactly what it is:
https://github.com/openshiporg/marketplace
We have people using it for B2B distribution as well, opportunities are endless.
You can reach me at junaid[at]openship.org
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#143People 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’…
I've mixed opinions on that. For example, there are products like Google Shopping or Google Travel etc. They show up bunch of stores where you can buy a flight ticket or a particular product from. However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want. So i…
> However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want.
I've got enough complaints about the amazon customer and user experience that I'm not going to list them here, but returns are so easy.
I click the button, and then I don't need to print off a shipping label or even package the item back up, I just drop it off at the convenience store by my house, they scan a QR code on my phone, and take the bare item from me.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#144If web scraping is legal then hitting the public api Amazon shouldn’t also be legal?
not necessarily according to the courts. there are a number of cases where scale has been the line between permissible and not - e.g. it's fine to scrape ebay, it's not fine to build an ebay scraping business.
courts haven't always ruled that way but there's definitely precedent!
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#145Can'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.
> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads
No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference.
You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) becomes interchangeable and commoditized.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#146I'm naive on the law around this, but it seems like Amazon.com shouldn't have standing here. What Perplexity does, from my perspective, is essentially the same as when I allow Firefox, Chrome, or Safari (or any other browser software) to see my credentials and access Amazon's website on my behalf.
Your feeling turned it to be correct. Amazon lost the case in the appellate court.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#147> 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.
Illinois makes it a state crime to violate terms of service.
Sec. 17-51. Computer tampering. (a) A person commits computer tampering when he or she knowingly and without the authorization of a computer's owner or in excess of the authority granted to him or her: (1) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer network, or a program or data; (2) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer network, or a program or data, and obtains data or services; (a-10) For purposes of subsection (a), accessing a computer network is deemed to be with the authorization of a computer's owner if: (2) the owner authorizes the public to access the computer network and the person accessing the computer network complies with all terms or conditions for use of the computer network that are imposed by the owner;
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tricking customers into buying things they otherwise wouldn't is the core concept of adtech. If you insulate humans from the manipulative dark patterns (though agent intermediaries), it's possible for them to spend less, spend more efficiently, optimize out information-asymmetries that are profit centers for entities like Amazon. Of course Amazon will fight this.
Realistically the agents will inject their own dark patterns. Whoever owns the glass owns the revenue stream, for they have the ultimate power to replace anyone else's revenue stream with their own. Some TVs detect ad spots in video content and overlay ads that pay the TV manufacturer instead.
Right. Agents in the hands of consumers (truly under their control) empowers them; agents in the hands of retailers does quite the opposite.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#149It's just a harassment lawsuit. Amazon is going to lose, but they hope they could bully another company into what they want from them.
Surely Amazon have paid Trump enough to win?
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#150[deleted]