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I’m not entirely convinced that Shopify should be involved in IP enforcement. Amazon, despite all their claims to the contrary, acts as a retailer. When shoppin

by amluto 4y ago

I’m not entirely convinced that Shopify should be involved in IP enforcement. Amazon, despite all their claims to the contrary, acts as a retailer. When shopping at Amazon, Amazon is helping you find products and even makes it look like Amazon is selling them. Shopify, in contrast, stays in the background. For the most part, unless I recognize the checkout flow or see the shoppay option, I, as a customer, don’t even know that Shopify is involved in a transaction. I’m not buying, in any material sense, from Shopify.

theturtletalks 4y ago
It's MC/Visa that's forcing Stripe and therefore Shopify to "police" for trademarked goods. MC/Visa are effectively determining what people can and cannot sell online. If the US accused you of selling trademarked goods, the burden of proof is on them. With MC/Visa, good luck getting a chance to even provide proof.
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  That’s an even bigger antitrust issue, because processors shouldn’t be policing Shopify without doing it to Amazon.
  - amluto 4y ago
    It’s not antitrust because it’s not (as far as I know) against the law. That being said, I think that VISA and MasterCard should be required to act as common carriers and to serve any lawful business (where lawfulness is determined by courts, not by VISA and MC).
    - mchusma 4y ago
      I agree here. Dealing with visa/Mastercard is the worst.
- tebbers 4y ago
  Exactly this. The Financial Times just had a good exposé on this recently about Visa and MC and the adult industry. The processors shut a huge amount of sites down because they refused to process their payments any more because some hedge fund bro who was anti-porn knew the MC CEO. They completely control commerce online. https://www.ft.com/content/cff23e36-b507-4717-8830-8b06741c8fd5 https://www.ft.com/content/cff23e36-b507-4717-8830-8b06741c8...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The unholy duopoly MC/Visa has absurd amounts of power. Just look at how bad anything in the adult sector has it with them - instead of the card networks requiring multi-factor authentication to combat PII theft and "post-nut regret" fraud, they rather raised fees on merchants or cut them off entirely. Or how they acted as police, jury and executioner in the Pornhub case - the allegations were indeed severe, but they should have been dealt with by the courts and not a payment processor.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
I wanna bet Shopify’s legal department, and their budget for lawsuits, may disagree with your opinion. I have to imagine running a huge online store backend or payment processing system has huge fraud departments. If their platform allows fraudulent activity to run rampant (i.e. no checks on intellectual property, etc.) then many companies will go after them for diluting their brand and other types of legal matters. They can get money out of Shopify but they’re not going to get anything out of someone selling fraudulent product. I agree with others in this thread - they should provide a layer of actual humans to help shop owners. And have a process for dealing with AI/ML gone rogue - like the address verification system in this example - where a set of humans can override and make sure a shop owner can continue to operate. Heck send someone to PR to help validate addresses every month.
- amluto 4y ago
  An actual sensible legal regime could be a bit like the CDA safe harbor, or at least more like what CDA safe harbor should be. If an intermediary like Shopify provides services to its clients, does not help users choose which of its clients to work with, declines to exercise discretion as to which clients to work with, and cooperates with court orders, then it should be immune to claims that it chose the wrong clients.

by amluto 4y ago

theturtletalks 4y ago

It's MC/Visa that's forcing Stripe and therefore Shopify to "police" for trademarked goods. MC/Visa are effectively determining what people can and cannot sell online. If the US accused you of selling trademarked goods, the burden of proof is on them. With MC/Visa, good luck getting a chance to even provide proof.

arrosenberg 4y ago
That’s an even bigger antitrust issue, because processors shouldn’t be policing Shopify without doing it to Amazon.
- amluto 4y ago
  It’s not antitrust because it’s not (as far as I know) against the law. That being said, I think that VISA and MasterCard should be required to act as common carriers and to serve any lawful business (where lawfulness is determined by courts, not by VISA and MC).
  - mchusma 4y ago
    I agree here. Dealing with visa/Mastercard is the worst.
tebbers 4y ago
Exactly this. The Financial Times just had a good exposé on this recently about Visa and MC and the adult industry. The processors shut a huge amount of sites down because they refused to process their payments any more because some hedge fund bro who was anti-porn knew the MC CEO. They completely control commerce online. https://www.ft.com/content/cff23e36-b507-4717-8830-8b06741c8fd5 https://www.ft.com/content/cff23e36-b507-4717-8830-8b06741c8...
mschuster91 4y ago
The unholy duopoly MC/Visa has absurd amounts of power. Just look at how bad anything in the adult sector has it with them - instead of the card networks requiring multi-factor authentication to combat PII theft and "post-nut regret" fraud, they rather raised fees on merchants or cut them off entirely. Or how they acted as police, jury and executioner in the Pornhub case - the allegations were indeed severe, but they should have been dealt with by the courts and not a payment processor.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

I wanna bet Shopify’s legal department, and their budget for lawsuits, may disagree with your opinion. I have to imagine running a huge online store backend or payment processing system has huge fraud departments. If their platform allows fraudulent activity to run rampant (i.e. no checks on intellectual property, etc.) then many companies will go after them for diluting their brand and other types of legal matters. They can get money out of Shopify but they’re not going to get anything out of someone selling fraudulent product. I agree with others in this thread - they should provide a layer of actual humans to help shop owners. And have a process for dealing with AI/ML gone rogue - like the address verification system in this example - where a set of humans can override and make sure a shop owner can continue to operate. Heck send someone to PR to help validate addresses every month.

amluto 4y ago
An actual sensible legal regime could be a bit like the CDA safe harbor, or at least more like what CDA safe harbor should be. If an intermediary like Shopify provides services to its clients, does not help users choose which of its clients to work with, declines to exercise discretion as to which clients to work with, and cooperates with court orders, then it should be immune to claims that it chose the wrong clients.