A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing • Hacker News Board

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#471

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

Accujack wrote: post #416

hhh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this would probably work , it seems insane to me that this would be the only thing to protect his listing from a completely different category of product being merged with another.

You're not wrong. Because Amazon's system is insane unless you realize it's designed only for the benefit of the corporation, not for any kind of fairness or quality.

Has there been a study on the volume of counterfeit goods flowing through amazon's marketplace?

Seems likely they are now the #1 seller of counterfeit goods globally, by a decent margin.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#472

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

binarysolo wrote: post #356

CliffStoll wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. A trademark for a common item (like a T-shirt or a voltmeter) seems to cost about $350 through the USPTO, if you do it yourself and your goods are listed in their directory. If your goods are oddball (like glass or woolen nonorientable manifolds) then you have to use a more expensive system which starts at $450 and escalates depending on how many different types of goods you're trademarking.

I'm sorry Cliff: the system sucks because there's a lot of edge case handling when they're dealing with millions of vendors selling literal hundreds of millions of SKUs. Many of them autogenerated programmatically like "I love X" shirts, and X = some dictionary list; or bots built to crosslist Target/Walmart product over to Amazon etc. for arbitrage etc. I hope someone from Amazon has reached out to you Cliff - my wi…

The system sucks because the income gained through dealing with millions of vendors selling literally hundreds of millions of SKUs is channelled into Amazon's profits, rather than people or systems to deal with the resulting problems.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#473

Post by CliffStoll » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #450

paulpauper wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the step from a hobby to a business means having to make the necessary investments, some of which may be costly and a pain in the ass, to protect one's intellectual property.

Except selling Klein bottles is a hobby, his actual business is teaching.

Oh yes, Speeder.

Thank you!

       -Cliff

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#474

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #468

danparsonson wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plot twist: the root cause is greed

Allowing trusted sellers to be hijacked is not greedy behavior. Keeping 3rd sellers happy will result in less returns, happier resellers, and greater platform usage. The root cause here is organizational failure from disempowered employees. At one point Amazon had great customer service with empowered represenatives. That's not Amazon today.

[deleted]

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#475

Post by CliffStoll » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #402

cartoonworld wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a television adaptation, "The KGB, the Computer, and Me" produced by PBS Nova in like 1992, starring Clifford Stoll as Cliff Stoll! Here is a bootlegged youtube link--it's the best I've got. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGv5BqNL164 A legend!

Thank you for the link. Amazing. And Cliff as himself ! I read the book but just could not stop watching the documentary. Next time I am in Hannover will have to take a photo in front of the flat. It got a repaint though... https://www.google.com/maps/@52.371627,9.7208921,3a,53.1y,13...

Ooh ... I visited there way back when. Down where that bike is parked there was a coin-operated cigarette machine. And they sold Benson & Hedges ciggies (which were the passwords that the hackers had chosen). Sends me way back, Belter.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#476

Post by jgrahamc » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

CliffStoll wrote: post #391

jgrahamc wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cliff... 1. I met you in Kepler's when Silicon Snake Oil came out and we talked about something and you wrote in the inside "I hear you, John". I don't know what we discussed! 2. I am now Cloudflare's CTO and if you want to avoid the dynamic IP address problem you can use Cloudflare Tunnel to connect to us (rather than us to you). https://www.cloudflare.com/products/tunnel/

Yikes! Good stuff! (Just last week I was about to bump up my Cloudflare account. This seals it!) And that Kepler's talk? Happy memories, indeed. They "paid" me for my talk by saying that I could have a copy of any book in the store. I chose the Times World Atlas (a way-big book of maps). The manager's face suddenly dropped -- and then I told 'em that I'd pay full list price if all of their employees sound sign the bo…

Let me know (jgc AT cloudflare DOT com) if you need help with Tunnel.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#477

Post by CliffStoll » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #355

CliffStoll wrote: post #116

Guess I'd better say a few things. First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening! I don't really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it's mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing. Finally, I"m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles…

You signed a copy of The Cuckoo's Egg for me, oh, maybe 30 years ago, which I still own. I just wanted to say thank you for being a positive inspiration in my life. Hot ziggitty! https://ibb.co/8jy12Z8 https://ibb.co/Nxt7V6j

Jay - that looks surprisingly like my signature. Wonder who counterfeited it...

    Cheers,   -Cliff

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#478

Post by ASalazarMX » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #330

MR4D wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you are linking to a bootleg copy of video on this thread is...ironic, to say the least.

Well, it is unavailable on Amazon... https://www.amazon.com/KGB-Computer-Me-VHS/dp/B00004Y50L https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B000JLM0RQ/ref=atv_dp...

Don't worry, I'm sure "AMVOOM The KGB, the Computer, and Me" will be listed anytime soon.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#479

Post by CliffStoll » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

capitainenemo wrote: post #375

capitainenemo wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much love, I've read your site through, often times out loud to family and coworkers. GL w/ Amazon. Minor nitpick. The link to go back to top of page at the bottom of https://kleinbottle.com/ links to index.htm and not index.html and is thus a 404. I guess you could just link it to / or ideally change to and link to to avoid a new page load.

(if anyone's wondering, now fixed )

Fixed, because of your help and advice. >Thank you!< -Cliff (who stumbles over .htm and .html files)

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#480

Post by CliffStoll » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #298

s_fischer wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess is that amazon is using the entities associated with the registered trademark as some form of proof of identity. So since there was no registered trademark for Acme Klein Bottle, there was nothing to compare the new identity to when Amvoom submitted their request. I really hope I'm wrong though because this sounds like a very lazy and flawed system.

> a very lazy and flawed system. That's how you make $100B, not by "doing things that don't scale" like handwriting thankyou notes to every customer.

Allson, your comment hits home. I like to scribble thank you notes to customers. I was brought up that way. Anyhow, sooner or later, I'll meet the person who bought that Klein bottle - so I'd like to have a good feeling ahead of time.