Amazon services is just an LLC?
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
#52Can'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.
I was chatting about something similar to this with coworkers.
When the doordash cli got announced I thought "Wow, that's amazing!"
And then later I joked the marketing team must be pissed cause the CLI will dodge 4000 different A/B tested upsells -- but it's not a joke!
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#53Funny that they aren’t targeting OpenAI and Anthropic’s computer use agents, which can do the exact same thing, and probably do it at a much larger scale given their userbases. The difference of course is that both OpenAI and Anthropic are hosted on AWS Bedrock, and Amazon is a huge investor in Anthropic to boot.
> and Amazon is a huge investor in Anthropic to boot.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#54I 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 importan…
> express our own agency
ironically a local model and Playwright/OpenClaw is pretty close
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#55[flagged]
9th Cir effectively said that the customer was using their own Amazon account and their own Perplexity account to access Amazon, with AI acting as a tool, and that the AI was doing something Amazon ordinarily authorizes customers to do: browse, search, and shop. The court said it was was concerned that Amazon’s broader CFAA theory could end up making users criminally liable for using AI as a tool. Also, Amazon doesn't care about the user, it only cares about being able to prevent Perplexity from accessing their products.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#56I'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.
You're not using "standing" correctly, you're using it more to argue about the merits of the case. Standing is about filtering out frivolous lawsuits. One has "standing" to file a lawsuit when there is reason to believe these three questions could be answered in the affirmative, if a trial were to take place: Was the plaintiff harmed? Did the defendant cause that harm? Can the court rectify that harm? It's not about…
Yeah, in this case I believe I do mean the merits rather than "standing".
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#57I wonder how this is going to affect everyone trying to make browsing / computer use agents? Is it just free reign now that ToS isn't violated according to courts?
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#58I'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.
Amazon certainly has standing for how YOU access amazon, even if it was in a regular browser.
What do you mean?
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#59> 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…
Isn't this how every agent works these days? Apple and Google are working on tool calling for apps, but that's still going to be backstopped by screen scraping for years very likely. It's a good bet that everybody's got equivalent CFAA boilerplate in their terms, so I guess all agentic automations are crimes now.
This is a civil case not a criminal one, and just because it is the same broad act does not mean courts apply it the same way in civil and criminal contexts.
And Amazon LOST at this stage in the linked appeal, with the 9th Circuit finding that they were not entitled to a preliminary injunction because they were unlikely to succeed on the “access” prong of the CFAA or CDAFA claim against Perplexity.
So, it is doubly weird to conclude “all agentic automations are crimes now” based on the case linked here.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#60I wonder how this is going to affect everyone trying to make browsing / computer use agents? Is it just free reign now that ToS isn't violated according to courts?
I don't see why it should be a gray area for me to use my computer the way I want to use my computer.