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Seems to me to be a minimum response meant to satisfy vendor outrage and hold off law enforcement investigations. The headline is very misleading and makes me

• tyingq 7y ago
  The "ramp up" is that they will report all unresolved counterfeit incidents to "the authorities" instead of just some. I don't know to what degree "the authorities" do anything about it.
• gbrown 7y ago
  It seems like permanently freezing counterfeiters out of the marketplace would be the obvious thing to do, and if Amazon lacks the technical capacity to do so or to prevent their return I’d say that’s a pretty fundamental problem.
  • ikeboy 7y ago
    The article is about reporting counterfeiters to law enforcement after they've been permanently banned.
    • freeone3000 7y ago
      The bans are much less permanent than amazon makes them seem - next day: new name, same product, same listing. Banning is quite ineffective on actually removing counterfeit items.
      • ikeboy 7y ago
        What policy do you believe would prevent new sellers from selling counterfeits while still allowing legitimate sellers? My understanding is that Amazon basically does everything they can short of inspecting every unit, which is infeasible.
        • 0xffff2 7y ago
          Stop commingling inventory. At the very least, stop commingling third party and Amazon inventory so that if I order an item that is "sold by Amazon.com" I can be reasonably sure I'm not going to get a counterfeit item.
          • ikeboy 7y ago
            That's a way to allow people to pay more for a slightly lower chance of receiving counterfeit products. It's not a way to reduce counterfeit overall. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107150, commingling doesn't significantly affect counterfeiting. My question above was "What policy do you believe would prevent new sellers from selling counterfeits while still allowing legitimate sellers?". Abolishing the commingling program doesn't do that.
            • 0xffff2 7y ago
              So your position is that Amazon itself knowingly sells counterfeit items? Otherwise I don't see how stopping commingling gives a "slight" reduction in the chances of receiving a counterfeit item when buying directly from Amazon.
              • ikeboy 7y ago
                The chances of receiving a counterfeit in general are very low. And there are some who've accused Amazon of selling counterfeits directly, so the odds there aren't 0. The relative reduction is probably large, but if it's something like one in 100k instead of one in 10k, that's a slight reduction on an absolute level.
                • 0xffff2 7y ago
                  >The chances of receiving a counterfeit in general are very low. Well, that's open for debate, and the concrete data is so scarce that it's hard to have any meaningful debate, but I thin we disagree here. >And there are some who've accused Amazon of selling counterfeits directly... Got a link for such an accusation? I've only ever seen them accused of commingling third party inventory with their own, which sometimes results in receiving a counterfeit item when buying directly from Amazon, but that's a very different thing from Amazon procuring and selling counterfeits.
  • spookthesunset 7y ago
    > It seems like permanently freezing counterfeiters out of the marketplace would be the obvious thing to do, and if Amazon lacks the technical capacity to do so or to prevent their return I’d say that’s a pretty fundamental problem. If it was that easy to "permanently freezing counterfeiters out of the marketplace", they would have done it already. Blocking somebody, especially somebody with a strong financial motive, from doing something on the internet is incredibly challenging. They'll go to great lengths to route around your block using all kinds of fun exciting methods. Methods might include creating a new account with a different business & address, taking over the account of a dormant but reputable seller, and probably a huge list of other things I can't even think of right now. But seriously. Blocking or banning people on the internet is almost impossible. If they have the will, they'll find a way back onto your site.
    • gbrown 7y ago
      I reject that entirely - we're talking about giving people access to a selling platform, not a social website which depends on maximum user growth and minimal barrier to participation. Amazon has prioritized growing the number of sellers, but they're in complete control of who they allow to sell on their platform, and what they require from sellers prior to beginning. You seem to be accepting, uncritically, the argument of "platforms" everywhere who don't want to be held responsible for what their "users" do. I don't agree with that perspective generally, and I think it's especially silly with respect to a web commerce company like Amazon.
      • spookthesunset 7y ago
        You can reject all you want, but the reality is that it is almost impossible to block people on the internet. You cannot change this fact no matter how much you wish it were so. This is probably why amazon wants to get law enforcement involved. Those folks can stop the people behind the fraud....
        • gbrown 7y ago
          > "is almost impossible to block people on the internet" That doesn't actually mean anything though; the modern internet isn't some homogeneous medium people choose how to interact with, it's a federation of privately managed networks and services. Amazon can control exactly what is required for people to become sellers on their network, and it sounds like they may actually be starting to do just that.