6 ms·

Brands upset Buy For Me is featuring their products on Amazon without permission

106 points by spenvo 9mo ago

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
Could someone explain to me - for the seller what's the downside? Isn't this just more sales? Isn't that positive?
- District5524 9mo ago
  Losing brand control (IP) and lack of control over your sales channels is a big problem for traders who want to comply with dozens of regulations, exclusions and restrictions required by manufacturers, other sellers, trademark owners etc. The article also mentions means tax and customs compliance problems, but this also affects other trade law related issues, like competition law problems (antitrust). It is surprisingly easy to breach these even for tiny sellers. You don't want exposure to these kinds of sales. It is never just selling, it is always also complying with lots of new laws, And rest assured, Amazon bots will not work that out for you. And now, these guys have to scrutinize the email orders as for their source because all the compliance process they have built in their webshops or wherever they advertised, will simply be bypassed by Amazon bots. Terrible idea.
  - ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
    Thank you!
  - pjc50 9mo ago
    Doesn't Amazon incur compliance problems then? If they become the actual "importer of record".
- crote 9mo ago
  Small brands put a lot of energy into their sales experience and aftersales support. They are trying to get repeat customers. Amazon leads to one-off sales, with your product becoming indistinguishable from hundreds of different stores. There is no reason to return to your store, because the customer isn't even aware they bought from your store! And it can get nasty real quick if you are the only seller and Amazon messes up. A negative review of your product due to bad handling by Amazon means you are now being held responsible, in the eyes of the community. A widely-spread "I bought a $500, it was packaged poorly arrived broken, and they refused a replacement/refund" can easily kill a small company - especially if they try to do aftersales and conclude that the complainer never ordered from them - who then of course shows pictures seemingly proving the opposite...
duxup 9mo ago
Is this like when food delivery places started offering fake web sites for local restaurants without their permission? This seems like the same play.
- trollbridge 9mo ago
  Yep. Up next: Amazon will mark the items up 15%.
  - duk3luk3 9mo ago
    No - the obvious play here is for Amazon to undercut the original vendors by 15%, sell at a loss until all of the sales go through Amazon, and then pressure the vendors into cutting their pricing and becoming suppliers subservient to and dependent on Amazon, allowing Amazon to become a middle-man dipping into the revenue stream.
    - maccam912 9mo ago
      But then brands could buy their own products back for cheaper and just get a real life infinite money glitch?
      - gus_massa 9mo ago
        It looks like a good idea, this works better for refrigerators than pizza.
      - dpark 9mo ago
        Don’t worry. If Amazon decided to undercut by selling at a loss, they would absolutely put it in their ToS that retailers cannot exploit this loophole and they would sue to enforce their ToS.
        mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
        These manufacturers never signed any ToS, and the most Amazon could do to retaliate would be to de-list the product that they never asked to be listed in the first place.
pwdisswordfishy 9mo ago
Overtones designed to stoke outrage aside, this is very much in line with what the original vision of the Web was about. Amazon's tech here is acting as the user agent. (It happens to be that this UA that operates on/with the data that is supplied by some far-off website (the vendor's) is a UA that is itself presented in a web browser and accepts commands that way, and ferries them off the user's local device instead of processing the commands in right there e.g. with a native binary.) This is a win for user control over how they interact with content on the Web.
- AlexandrB 9mo ago
  Crazy take. If you could control the UA I would agree with you, but this "user agent" is totally controlled by Amazon. So it's not a user agent at all - it's in fact an Amazon agent and the inevitable direction here is that Amazon will use this leverage to make itself more money, likely at the expense of the user.
  - bastawhiz 9mo ago
    I agree, even if you say that my browser is a user agent using Amazon that's also a user agent, it's a real stretch to say that it's giving me any control at all. My browser speaks TLS and HTTP for me. Maybe it talks if I'm low vision. Maybe it adjusts the page to be more visually appealing. What is Amazon doing? They're using the same interface that I am. They're completing an identical transaction to me. I'm maybe sure I could sit down with a sufficiently large piece of paper and a sufficiently advanced calculator and crunch the numbers to speak TLS (for a packet or two, at least). Not enough to complete a transaction, though. But I can confidently place an online order. There's no control that Amazon can offer. In fact, they're essentially just giving me a rebranded interface to perform the same action I can perform on another page. Just because it's a service doesn't make it a user agent.
- lovich 9mo ago
  If user agents didn’t exist and were invented today, with the same implementation and use pattern that they currently do, would anyone call them a user agent? I’m fairly confident that 95%+ of human users on the internet don’t even know what a user agent is, and it’s controlled by parties other than the user. It’s not a win for user control if only a extremely small niche of users are able to take advantage of it
haliskerbas 9mo ago
This is like inverse drop shipping.
krater23 9mo ago
When Amazon can buy stuff on your own website thats out of stock for wholesale prices without your knowledge, it's time to get your shit together. Your shop software is at least misconfigured. When you really lose trust from your partners because officially announced things Amazon does, like adding your products to their shop system, then your partners have no trust in you at all. When you don't want that Amazon sells your products, cancel the orders you get from them. Add a link to the real shop and a explaination why to the cancel mail. It could all be so easy. And this are just the things everyone could do. Delivering doubled prices to AI crawlers would be a advanced thing.
- hirsin 9mo ago
  "Amazon announced it" in some back alley press report and certainly not in a proactive outreach way to tell these folks they were listing their products. At the very least there's a trademark issue here because these sellers in no way gave Amazon permission to reuse the images and descriptions of their products. If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me"
  - gitonup 9mo ago
    Reminiscent of the Vogon plans for the highway through Arthur Dent's house being on display in Alpha Centauri for 50 Earth years.
    - Lio 9mo ago
      > “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.
  - poizan42 9mo ago
    Using images of something you are selling is nominative use of the trademark. Whether their actual listings contains something that falls outside the nominative use test I don't know. But at the end of the day you can't stop someone from reselling your stuff no matter how much you hate it, that has been clearly established by the First Sale Doctrine. > If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me" The comparison here would be that you are selling tickets to a party outside your house, which I don't think anyone would bat an eye at if the local newspaper announces?
internet101010 9mo ago
Most manufacturers have restrictions on where retailers can sell their product for exactly this reason. The fact that Amazon is doing this is just going to result in a lot of unnecessary billable hours. Another reason they do not allow it is because if something is popular Amazon will make their own private label version. Completely irresponsible behavior.
- userbinator 9mo ago
  Those are only in the case of specific contracts, but Amazon did not enter into any contract with the manufacturers. Seling something you bought is completely legal and perfectly normal.
  - pdpi 9mo ago
    If they’re passing on my own address and payment details, are they _actually_ selling something they bought? Using an agent of some sort to figure out where to put how to pass the payment information seems more than a little irresponsible too, maybe illegally so.
    - nradov 9mo ago
      Which specific law do you think is being broken here?
Lazare 9mo ago
Odd story. If you strip out the "Amazon" and "AI" stuff, the core seems to be that there's a tech company offering a service called Buy For Me which crawls various merchants who operate their own storefronts, lists the products they find for Buy For Me's users, and have a button the users can press which...buys the product. Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine? You're a merchant, you're selling pencils on the internet, people are buying your pencils from you. And historically the way this might have been built would be something like a desktop application that users install, and which then goes and loads websites, displays them, fills in payment info, etc. Which of course is exactly what the web browser does already. And all of the complaints about how it should be opt-in also feel odd. If you install WooCommerce and put a storefront up on the public internet, you've pretty obviously opted in to "selling your products on the internet". You don't need to tell Firefox that it's okay for people to use it to buy your stuff! Of course, this isn't a desktop app, it's agentic AI run by Amazon, which certainly makes it feel different, but I'm not entirely sure how different it should make our analysis. But also, the story raises a bunch of interesting questions and then doesn't answer any of them: > Chua also received at least several orders for products that were either out of stock or no longer existed on her website. How exactly did this happen? The story is that the orders are being placed through the normal storefront, right? So how exactly? Or: > Gorin sells wholesale through a password-protected section of her website, where retailers must submit resale or exemption certificates so orders are properly exempted from sales tax. She said she was still able to complete a “Buy for Me” purchase of a product pulled from her wholesale site despite never opting into the program — a scenario that could expose her business to tax liability if individual shoppers were able to place tax-exempt orders. Gorin also worries that surfacing wholesale pricing could undermine profit margins, allow competitors to undercut her prices or bypass minimum order requirements designed to keep wholesale sales viable. That's just begging for an explanation. Is Amazon is somehow using stolen credentials to obtain price information? Or is Goren mistaken and the info isn't password protected at all? (And if not, why not?) I'd also be interested in unpacking a bit more the legal and contractual implications of agreements like Mochi Kids has signed. The brand apparently doesn't allow its products on Amazon, and doesn't allow partners like Mochi Kids to sell on Amazon, but...Michi Kids isn't? Mechanically someone is buying the products at retail and effectively relisting them. Which...I dunno, feels legal? Is any agreement actually being violated here? Does the brand have a course of action? Does Mochi Kids have an actual legal obligation to opt out? Does Amazon have a legal obligation to let vendors opt out? Is Amazon legally buying anything from Mochi Kids, or is the customer the person using Amazon? Given the payment info being used is the customer's, I'm not sure Amazon has a commercial relationship with the brand or the vendor? And so on. It feels like too much of the story is being carried by it being about Amazon and AI, which means the author felt fine just glossing over the details.
abeyer 9mo ago
Given that the feature this replaces/competes with was called "Shop Direct"... I'm really sad this one couldn't be "Slop Direct"
crackhead69 9mo ago
Bet these merchants already agreed to this by signing up for Amazon MCF with Shopify. Evil amazon dont list my products but pls still fulfill my orders.
- bayesnet 9mo ago
  But this is literally the point of MCF: third-party logistics for selling off-Amazon. All these brands chose not to sell on Amazon for one reason or another and yet, without explicit opt-in, were being surfaced on a marketplace they didn’t want to be on. If I send a video through gmail that doesn’t mean I want it on YouTube.
kayson 9mo ago
Wouldn't this be violating copyrights left and right? Presumably most of these listings have pictures and I'd be surprised if Amazon were asking permission to reproduce them. Would the same apply to item descriptions...?
- otterley 9mo ago
  No. The producer of a good has no copyright in images made of that good by someone else. Ordinarily, the photographer holds the copyright to an image, unless it was a work for hire. So if I buy a thing, take a photo of it, then use my photo to accompany a listing for that thing, the manufacturer of that thing has no recourse in copyright law.
  - bramblerose 9mo ago
    Unless the design of the object is copyrightable (which it often is!) in which case the photo is a derivative work.
    - otterley 9mo ago
      The design of an object is not copyrightable in the USA, at least. There are design patents, but taking a photo of an object that has a patented design is not a derivative work. Copyright and patent are different IP subject areas entirely. (IAAL, not legal advice.)
- ehhthing 9mo ago
  Search engines would have been violating copyright for the last 20 years.
  - autoexec 9mo ago
    Much of the internet is copyright violations. If copyright were enforced as written the internet as you know it would stop existing. Our draconian copyright laws are designed to protect the power and profits of a small number of industries and unless they see profit in going after the countless violations that go on every single day they just look the other way while extorting easy targets with fat wallets. The last thing they want is to piss off enough powerful people that laws get changed and their racket gets disrupted.
saghm 9mo ago
> Through “Buy For Me,” customers were placing orders for Chua’s products on Amazon.com to be fulfilled through Chua’s Shopify account. Chua’s products have since been removed — she contacted Amazon at branddirect@amazon.com to opt out, per the company’s FAQ page for sellers — but Chua said other small online merchants like herself could be unknowingly opted into Amazon’s “Buy For Me” program. It seems pretty likely that no one would even know that this exists in order to opt out of this until at least some purchases have been made. This isn't even "opting out" in the traditional (and already user-hostile) way of doing something by default that's orthogonal to what the user signed up for; it's a lot closer to the whole "shadow profile" thing Facebook does where the account exists without anyone signing up in the first place.
gherkinnn 9mo ago
Remember when AI was supposed to cure cancer? It is scumbags expanding on their nasty ways. Now watch the vampires at Amazon extend their undercut-and-absorb techniques on every single web shop, whether the operators like it or not.
SilverElfin 9mo ago
Didn’t Amazon send a cease and desist to someone for doing almost the same thing? I think they had some kind of browser plug-in that could shop for you on Amazon.
userbinator 9mo ago
What a bunch of BS. Once I buy a product I can resell it elsewhere. That's how ownership works. I do not need "permission" for this, beyond that guaranteed by the legal system, and exceptions such as export restrictions notwithstanding. There is a term for this that currently eludes me (first sale doctrine is a similar concept but not exactly.) If I was a seller, I'd probably find this a good thing --- Amazon is effectively giving me more customers for free.
PeterStuer 9mo ago
I am a bit confused here. First this reminded my of the traditional news sites trying to opt out of Google search, but with the very big difference that unlike Google's users never consuming the original site adds or subscriptions, in this case it is still your product sale, just through a new channel. And yes. I do see how it can be a slippery slope leading to dependence on (paid) Amazon ranking and being roped into their (exploitative) ecosystem. I can also see how this could cut into franchise or exclusive territory deals, or how this can disrupt your marketing campaigns. But in the end, is this really different from people selling your products, new or used, on eBay? And would the actions needed to stop this maybe be worse than the actual disease? I can see both sides. Not sure which eay I lean.
donatj 9mo ago
I feel like all Amazon is really doing here is reselling the product, and that seems ... fine to me? Buy from the seller, sell to the user. Seems pretty reasonable. You can resell things you buy from shops legally, not just wholesalers.
- jonhohle 9mo ago
  Are these business upset when Google lists their products in search results? What if Amazon placed a retail order for x00 units, would they not be fulfilled? Couldn’t they just resell them on Amazon under first sale doctrine?
araes 9mo ago
After reading through the Shopify website, this story's confusing. This is kind of what Shopify advertises. Like, it's basically their service. Initially read this, and thought they were some other retailer with quasi-direct sales, and Amazon was scraping, and then listing stuff like it was on Amazon. Yet, Shopify from [1] and [2]: [1] https://www.shopify.com/marketing https://www.shopify.com/marketing [2] https://www.shopify.com/channels https://www.shopify.com/channels Their spiel is "Unify your marketing ... all from one place." and then they go on to list Target, Walmart, eBay, and ... "Amazon". (also Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat) "Sell everywhere people scroll, search, and shop" It's literally their business. That's what you pay them to do. "Sync your product catalog to the leading marketplaces, then easily manage and fulfill every order in one central place." Couple things that are "maybe" honestly wrong. Maybe opted out of Amazon as a partner, inside Shopify? Also, inventory not actually being updated and communicated to Shopify / Amazon correctly? The way this site reads it seems like you could find out you have some influencer spokesperson and your products are on Walmart shelves somewhere and not even realize it.

106 points by spenvo 9mo ago

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago

Could someone explain to me - for the seller what's the downside? Isn't this just more sales? Isn't that positive?

District5524 9mo ago
Losing brand control (IP) and lack of control over your sales channels is a big problem for traders who want to comply with dozens of regulations, exclusions and restrictions required by manufacturers, other sellers, trademark owners etc. The article also mentions means tax and customs compliance problems, but this also affects other trade law related issues, like competition law problems (antitrust). It is surprisingly easy to breach these even for tiny sellers. You don't want exposure to these kinds of sales. It is never just selling, it is always also complying with lots of new laws, And rest assured, Amazon bots will not work that out for you. And now, these guys have to scrutinize the email orders as for their source because all the compliance process they have built in their webshops or wherever they advertised, will simply be bypassed by Amazon bots. Terrible idea.
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
  Thank you!
- pjc50 9mo ago
  Doesn't Amazon incur compliance problems then? If they become the actual "importer of record".
crote 9mo ago
Small brands put a lot of energy into their sales experience and aftersales support. They are trying to get repeat customers. Amazon leads to one-off sales, with your product becoming indistinguishable from hundreds of different stores. There is no reason to return to your store, because the customer isn't even aware they bought from your store! And it can get nasty real quick if you are the only seller and Amazon messes up. A negative review of your product due to bad handling by Amazon means you are now being held responsible, in the eyes of the community. A widely-spread "I bought a $500, it was packaged poorly arrived broken, and they refused a replacement/refund" can easily kill a small company - especially if they try to do aftersales and conclude that the complainer never ordered from them - who then of course shows pictures seemingly proving the opposite...

duxup 9mo ago

Is this like when food delivery places started offering fake web sites for local restaurants without their permission? This seems like the same play.

trollbridge 9mo ago
Yep. Up next: Amazon will mark the items up 15%.
- duk3luk3 9mo ago
  No - the obvious play here is for Amazon to undercut the original vendors by 15%, sell at a loss until all of the sales go through Amazon, and then pressure the vendors into cutting their pricing and becoming suppliers subservient to and dependent on Amazon, allowing Amazon to become a middle-man dipping into the revenue stream.
  - maccam912 9mo ago
    But then brands could buy their own products back for cheaper and just get a real life infinite money glitch?
    - gus_massa 9mo ago
      It looks like a good idea, this works better for refrigerators than pizza.
    - dpark 9mo ago
      Don’t worry. If Amazon decided to undercut by selling at a loss, they would absolutely put it in their ToS that retailers cannot exploit this loophole and they would sue to enforce their ToS.
      - mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
        These manufacturers never signed any ToS, and the most Amazon could do to retaliate would be to de-list the product that they never asked to be listed in the first place.

pwdisswordfishy 9mo ago

Overtones designed to stoke outrage aside, this is very much in line with what the original vision of the Web was about. Amazon's tech here is acting as the user agent. (It happens to be that this UA that operates on/with the data that is supplied by some far-off website (the vendor's) is a UA that is itself presented in a web browser and accepts commands that way, and ferries them off the user's local device instead of processing the commands in right there e.g. with a native binary.) This is a win for user control over how they interact with content on the Web.

AlexandrB 9mo ago
Crazy take. If you could control the UA I would agree with you, but this "user agent" is totally controlled by Amazon. So it's not a user agent at all - it's in fact an Amazon agent and the inevitable direction here is that Amazon will use this leverage to make itself more money, likely at the expense of the user.
- bastawhiz 9mo ago
  I agree, even if you say that my browser is a user agent using Amazon that's also a user agent, it's a real stretch to say that it's giving me any control at all. My browser speaks TLS and HTTP for me. Maybe it talks if I'm low vision. Maybe it adjusts the page to be more visually appealing. What is Amazon doing? They're using the same interface that I am. They're completing an identical transaction to me. I'm maybe sure I could sit down with a sufficiently large piece of paper and a sufficiently advanced calculator and crunch the numbers to speak TLS (for a packet or two, at least). Not enough to complete a transaction, though. But I can confidently place an online order. There's no control that Amazon can offer. In fact, they're essentially just giving me a rebranded interface to perform the same action I can perform on another page. Just because it's a service doesn't make it a user agent.
lovich 9mo ago
If user agents didn’t exist and were invented today, with the same implementation and use pattern that they currently do, would anyone call them a user agent? I’m fairly confident that 95%+ of human users on the internet don’t even know what a user agent is, and it’s controlled by parties other than the user. It’s not a win for user control if only a extremely small niche of users are able to take advantage of it

haliskerbas 9mo ago

This is like inverse drop shipping.

krater23 9mo ago

When Amazon can buy stuff on your own website thats out of stock for wholesale prices without your knowledge, it's time to get your shit together. Your shop software is at least misconfigured. When you really lose trust from your partners because officially announced things Amazon does, like adding your products to their shop system, then your partners have no trust in you at all. When you don't want that Amazon sells your products, cancel the orders you get from them. Add a link to the real shop and a explaination why to the cancel mail. It could all be so easy. And this are just the things everyone could do. Delivering doubled prices to AI crawlers would be a advanced thing.

hirsin 9mo ago
"Amazon announced it" in some back alley press report and certainly not in a proactive outreach way to tell these folks they were listing their products. At the very least there's a trademark issue here because these sellers in no way gave Amazon permission to reuse the images and descriptions of their products. If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me"
- gitonup 9mo ago
  Reminiscent of the Vogon plans for the highway through Arthur Dent's house being on display in Alpha Centauri for 50 Earth years.
  - Lio 9mo ago
    > “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.
- poizan42 9mo ago
  Using images of something you are selling is nominative use of the trademark. Whether their actual listings contains something that falls outside the nominative use test I don't know. But at the end of the day you can't stop someone from reselling your stuff no matter how much you hate it, that has been clearly established by the First Sale Doctrine. > If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me" The comparison here would be that you are selling tickets to a party outside your house, which I don't think anyone would bat an eye at if the local newspaper announces?

internet101010 9mo ago

Most manufacturers have restrictions on where retailers can sell their product for exactly this reason. The fact that Amazon is doing this is just going to result in a lot of unnecessary billable hours. Another reason they do not allow it is because if something is popular Amazon will make their own private label version. Completely irresponsible behavior.

userbinator 9mo ago
Those are only in the case of specific contracts, but Amazon did not enter into any contract with the manufacturers. Seling something you bought is completely legal and perfectly normal.
- pdpi 9mo ago
  If they’re passing on my own address and payment details, are they _actually_ selling something they bought? Using an agent of some sort to figure out where to put how to pass the payment information seems more than a little irresponsible too, maybe illegally so.
  - nradov 9mo ago
    Which specific law do you think is being broken here?

Lazare 9mo ago

Odd story. If you strip out the "Amazon" and "AI" stuff, the core seems to be that there's a tech company offering a service called Buy For Me which crawls various merchants who operate their own storefronts, lists the products they find for Buy For Me's users, and have a button the users can press which...buys the product. Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine? You're a merchant, you're selling pencils on the internet, people are buying your pencils from you. And historically the way this might have been built would be something like a desktop application that users install, and which then goes and loads websites, displays them, fills in payment info, etc. Which of course is exactly what the web browser does already. And all of the complaints about how it should be opt-in also feel odd. If you install WooCommerce and put a storefront up on the public internet, you've pretty obviously opted in to "selling your products on the internet". You don't need to tell Firefox that it's okay for people to use it to buy your stuff! Of course, this isn't a desktop app, it's agentic AI run by Amazon, which certainly makes it feel different, but I'm not entirely sure how different it should make our analysis. But also, the story raises a bunch of interesting questions and then doesn't answer any of them: > Chua also received at least several orders for products that were either out of stock or no longer existed on her website. How exactly did this happen? The story is that the orders are being placed through the normal storefront, right? So how exactly? Or: > Gorin sells wholesale through a password-protected section of her website, where retailers must submit resale or exemption certificates so orders are properly exempted from sales tax. She said she was still able to complete a “Buy for Me” purchase of a product pulled from her wholesale site despite never opting into the program — a scenario that could expose her business to tax liability if individual shoppers were able to place tax-exempt orders. Gorin also worries that surfacing wholesale pricing could undermine profit margins, allow competitors to undercut her prices or bypass minimum order requirements designed to keep wholesale sales viable. That's just begging for an explanation. Is Amazon is somehow using stolen credentials to obtain price information? Or is Goren mistaken and the info isn't password protected at all? (And if not, why not?) I'd also be interested in unpacking a bit more the legal and contractual implications of agreements like Mochi Kids has signed. The brand apparently doesn't allow its products on Amazon, and doesn't allow partners like Mochi Kids to sell on Amazon, but...Michi Kids isn't? Mechanically someone is buying the products at retail and effectively relisting them. Which...I dunno, feels legal? Is any agreement actually being violated here? Does the brand have a course of action? Does Mochi Kids have an actual legal obligation to opt out? Does Amazon have a legal obligation to let vendors opt out? Is Amazon legally buying anything from Mochi Kids, or is the customer the person using Amazon? Given the payment info being used is the customer's, I'm not sure Amazon has a commercial relationship with the brand or the vendor? And so on. It feels like too much of the story is being carried by it being about Amazon and AI, which means the author felt fine just glossing over the details.

abeyer 9mo ago

Given that the feature this replaces/competes with was called "Shop Direct"... I'm really sad this one couldn't be "Slop Direct"

crackhead69 9mo ago

Bet these merchants already agreed to this by signing up for Amazon MCF with Shopify. Evil amazon dont list my products but pls still fulfill my orders.

bayesnet 9mo ago
But this is literally the point of MCF: third-party logistics for selling off-Amazon. All these brands chose not to sell on Amazon for one reason or another and yet, without explicit opt-in, were being surfaced on a marketplace they didn’t want to be on. If I send a video through gmail that doesn’t mean I want it on YouTube.

kayson 9mo ago

Wouldn't this be violating copyrights left and right? Presumably most of these listings have pictures and I'd be surprised if Amazon were asking permission to reproduce them. Would the same apply to item descriptions...?

otterley 9mo ago
No. The producer of a good has no copyright in images made of that good by someone else. Ordinarily, the photographer holds the copyright to an image, unless it was a work for hire. So if I buy a thing, take a photo of it, then use my photo to accompany a listing for that thing, the manufacturer of that thing has no recourse in copyright law.
- bramblerose 9mo ago
  Unless the design of the object is copyrightable (which it often is!) in which case the photo is a derivative work.
  - otterley 9mo ago
    The design of an object is not copyrightable in the USA, at least. There are design patents, but taking a photo of an object that has a patented design is not a derivative work. Copyright and patent are different IP subject areas entirely. (IAAL, not legal advice.)
ehhthing 9mo ago
Search engines would have been violating copyright for the last 20 years.
- autoexec 9mo ago
  Much of the internet is copyright violations. If copyright were enforced as written the internet as you know it would stop existing. Our draconian copyright laws are designed to protect the power and profits of a small number of industries and unless they see profit in going after the countless violations that go on every single day they just look the other way while extorting easy targets with fat wallets. The last thing they want is to piss off enough powerful people that laws get changed and their racket gets disrupted.

saghm 9mo ago

> Through “Buy For Me,” customers were placing orders for Chua’s products on Amazon.com to be fulfilled through Chua’s Shopify account. Chua’s products have since been removed — she contacted Amazon at branddirect@amazon.com to opt out, per the company’s FAQ page for sellers — but Chua said other small online merchants like herself could be unknowingly opted into Amazon’s “Buy For Me” program. It seems pretty likely that no one would even know that this exists in order to opt out of this until at least some purchases have been made. This isn't even "opting out" in the traditional (and already user-hostile) way of doing something by default that's orthogonal to what the user signed up for; it's a lot closer to the whole "shadow profile" thing Facebook does where the account exists without anyone signing up in the first place.

gherkinnn 9mo ago

Remember when AI was supposed to cure cancer? It is scumbags expanding on their nasty ways. Now watch the vampires at Amazon extend their undercut-and-absorb techniques on every single web shop, whether the operators like it or not.

SilverElfin 9mo ago

Didn’t Amazon send a cease and desist to someone for doing almost the same thing? I think they had some kind of browser plug-in that could shop for you on Amazon.

userbinator 9mo ago

What a bunch of BS. Once I buy a product I can resell it elsewhere. That's how ownership works. I do not need "permission" for this, beyond that guaranteed by the legal system, and exceptions such as export restrictions notwithstanding. There is a term for this that currently eludes me (first sale doctrine is a similar concept but not exactly.) If I was a seller, I'd probably find this a good thing --- Amazon is effectively giving me more customers for free.

PeterStuer 9mo ago

I am a bit confused here. First this reminded my of the traditional news sites trying to opt out of Google search, but with the very big difference that unlike Google's users never consuming the original site adds or subscriptions, in this case it is still your product sale, just through a new channel. And yes. I do see how it can be a slippery slope leading to dependence on (paid) Amazon ranking and being roped into their (exploitative) ecosystem. I can also see how this could cut into franchise or exclusive territory deals, or how this can disrupt your marketing campaigns. But in the end, is this really different from people selling your products, new or used, on eBay? And would the actions needed to stop this maybe be worse than the actual disease? I can see both sides. Not sure which eay I lean.

donatj 9mo ago

I feel like all Amazon is really doing here is reselling the product, and that seems ... fine to me? Buy from the seller, sell to the user. Seems pretty reasonable. You can resell things you buy from shops legally, not just wholesalers.

jonhohle 9mo ago
Are these business upset when Google lists their products in search results? What if Amazon placed a retail order for x00 units, would they not be fulfilled? Couldn’t they just resell them on Amazon under first sale doctrine?

araes 9mo ago

After reading through the Shopify website, this story's confusing. This is kind of what Shopify advertises. Like, it's basically their service. Initially read this, and thought they were some other retailer with quasi-direct sales, and Amazon was scraping, and then listing stuff like it was on Amazon. Yet, Shopify from [1] and [2]: [1] https://www.shopify.com/marketing https://www.shopify.com/marketing [2] https://www.shopify.com/channels https://www.shopify.com/channels Their spiel is "Unify your marketing ... all from one place." and then they go on to list Target, Walmart, eBay, and ... "Amazon". (also Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat) "Sell everywhere people scroll, search, and shop" It's literally their business. That's what you pay them to do. "Sync your product catalog to the leading marketplaces, then easily manage and fulfill every order in one central place." Couple things that are "maybe" honestly wrong. Maybe opted out of Amazon as a partner, inside Shopify? Also, inventory not actually being updated and communicated to Shopify / Amazon correctly? The way this site reads it seems like you could find out you have some influencer spokesperson and your products are on Walmart shelves somewhere and not even realize it.