this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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"I typed in YamzWorld into the Amazon app and lo and behold there were all my products there with my pictures from my website as well," Montes-Tarazas said.

While he receives payment for sales, Montes-Tarazas said the arrangement strips away his ability to build direct customer relationships.

"I do get the sale and I do get the money, but customers never get to interact with my website, they have no ability to sign up for my mailing list. They have no idea who I am as an artist or what I stand for," Montes-Tarazas said.

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[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 10 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Weird clauses in terms of use are frequently just toilet paper when it actually comes down to enforcing them in court. You can "sue" but you might just win $1 because the judge would find that you have not suffered any monetary damages. You got paid for the item, after all, and "building a relationship with your customers" has no quantifiable and measurable value which can be proven in court, so judges default to one dollar.

There is also the aspect of whether an AI agent has the legal capacity to contract on behalf of Amazon or the buyer, and on whose behalf they contract if they do. I'm not aware of any American cases which have held that AI agents are "agents" (an entity with the legal power to act on behalf of another) within the meaning given to that word under the law of agency. The Civil Resolution Tribunal in British Columbia, Canada, ruled in Moffat v. Air Canada that AI chatbots can bind the organisation who uses them and makes them available to customers. This opinion is not binding precedent, but I think courts worldwide should use it as a template for AI agency powers. If the AI has no power to contract, then the sale is void in its entirety.

I believe Amazon would argue three points:

  1. That the AI agent has power to contract, but that the "user" of the AI is the shopper, and Amazon is merely providing the agent for the shopper to use.
  2. That if the clause banning AI agents from buying is enforceable, it voids the transaction in its entirety, and thus the seller owes Amazon a refund.
  3. That even if the AI had the power to bind Amazon, that the ability to build direct customer relationships has no proven dollar value and thus damages should be limited to nominal amounts (i.e. one dollar).
[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

"building a relationship with your customers" has no quantifiable and measurable value which can be proven in court

With utm tags in weekly news letters etc. you can pretty easily calculate traffic coming to your site and conversion rates of how many people make purchases after clicking links.

And even without utm tags you can show spikes in purchases and traffic after sending emails.

It would be easy to show data: This many people go to my site This % of those people subscribe to my mailing list. This many % of people buy after receiving the email. Average purchase is xx$.

This many people never went to my site because amazon.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world -2 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Can you prove that these people would have visited your site had Amazon not intervened?

[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Can Amazon prove they would not have? Its their burden to show that.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

No, the burden of proof is on the claimant. If you sue Amazon, you have to prove your claims to a perponderance of the evidence.

[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

And the i already told you how to calculate how much traffic and sales you have lost. (The original thing what you claimed to be impossible to calculate) If amazon would choose they could respond with that argument. Looking back at most larger piracy law cases nobody has been able to defend them selfs "those guys would not have bought the movie if we would not had let them torrent it"

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Copyright infringement is not suitable as an analogous case because the law specifies statutory damages for it, so proving damages is not typically necessary for the types of works which you are thinking of.

Let me give a detailed analysis with some concrete, but arbitrarily-chosen numbers, and then I'll show you what a lawyer representing Amazon would say to attack the argument you've presented.

Suppose you notice that 5 per cent of people whom you ask to subscribe to your mailing list actually subscribe (it is almost certain a real number would be much lower). Then, of those who subscribe to your mailing list, 10 per cent of them make a purchase when you send an advertisement to them through that mailing list. And then, of those who make a purchase, the average sale is $50, of which $20 is profit. Therefore, you argue damages of 5% × 10% × $20 = $0.10 per customer. Suppose Amazon placed 1,000 orders this way. You therefore plead damages of $100 (the fact that this is a trivial amount is not relevant to the legal analysis).

The legal method for the calculation of damages is to compare what your financial situation would have been had Amazon not done the thing they were not supposed to. Amazon will argue that had they complied with your terms of service, 0 orders would have been placed as you forbade AI agents from placing orders, and therefore the profit can be calculated as 5% × 10% × $20 × 0 = $0. After this argument is made, it then becomes your burden as the claimant to rebut it. You will have to prove what percentage of people ordered through Amazon, who would have otherwise ordered from you directly (and thus you would have the opportunity to advertise to). This is a fundamentally very difficult task. Amazon would probably propose to the court that you ask all of the customers to testify that they would have otherwise ordered from you directly, and then you can count it as ten cents per witness.

All of that notwithstanding, Amazon will still argue your damages are zero, because you have not actually lost the ability to connect with the customers they have given you, because you still have the ability to ask them to subscribe to your mailing list by including a card to that effect in the package you send them. The fact that both of us very well know that nobody will do that is not legally relevant: the action is possible and the law does not particularly care about whether it is easy or effective.

I know it's tempting to call me a bootlicker or whatever, but the fact of the matter really is that the law is not favourable to the claimant in this case. This is just a bad argument to make with no sufficient legal justification to claim anything more than a nominal amount of damages. Yes, Amazon are a bunch of assholes, but sometimes, being an asshole really is legal. The law is not a proxy for morality and the courts are not infallible guardians of justice. They are institutions that interpret fallible, imperfect, human-made rules.

[–] 0ndead@infosec.pub 2 points 12 hours ago

Jeff called, he said your next to be laid off

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Isn't this just like Doordash though? I'm not sure how these were resolved though.

In May 2021, DoorDash was criticized for unauthorized listings of restaurants who had not given permission to appear on the app.[72] The company was sued by Lona's Lil Eats in St. Louis, with the lawsuit claiming that DoorDash had listed them without permission, then prevented any orders to the restaurant from going through and redirecting customers to other restaurants instead, because Lona's was "too far away," when in reality it had not paid DoorDash a fee for listing.[73] This aspect of DoorDash's business practice is illegal in California.[73]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoorDash#Litigation_for_illegal_unauthorized_restaurant_listing

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world -1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

That's a different thing. In that case, Doordash actually blocked people from ordering from the restaurant in question and redirected them elsewhere. Had the restaurant been listed without its permission and all it did was cause a Doordash employee to appear at the restaurant, place an order on the users behalf, then go deliver it, it would be a similar case to this one.

I doubt many restaurants would have a problem with Doordash listing them without their permission if all that happened when someone placed an order, is that they get a call from Doordash (automated or not) to place a to-go order, and then someone picks it up later and pays for it.

[–] twack@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Restaurants absolutely did and do have a problem with that, and I question the authority with which you state that there are no appreciable monetary damages from amazon denying a small business additional sales opportunities.

https://www.cpr.org/2021/05/19/restaurants-are-fed-up-with-grubhub-doordash-and-others-now-theyve-got-legislators-on-their-side/

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 0 points 13 hours ago

If you think you can find a way to quantify damages in a legally sufficient way then go ahead.

[–] ProfessorScience@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting! I can't imagine Amazon would want to argue #2, though, since it seems like that would completely undercut their ability to use AI agents in this way.

I hadn't really thought about the implications of the ability of an AI agent to contract, though. That seems like really murky (and intriguing) territory; whether they can or cant, either way would have a lot of interesting implications.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 0 points 16 hours ago

It is a conditional argument. It is vacuous if the court rules that the AI is an agent that can bind a principal. If and only if the court rules that the AI agent can't contract on behalf of a principal (for the purchase of goods or otherwise), then Amazon should get a refund.