EBay Sues Amazon, Alleging Sellers Were Illegally Poached
fortune.com
fortune.com
75% because I'm just recalling based on some forum posts I read around the time they launched, which of course I might be mistakenly remembering or interpreting incorrectly.
Yes, you do.
> Breaking a contract or ToS is enough.
Breaking a legally binding commitment in a contract is breaking the law which makes it binding, and breaking a contract otherwise isn't sufficient for legal recovery; breaking a ToS is only sufficient for success in a civil suit if and to the extent some law makes it so.
And most importantly, civil law is still a series of well defined laws. You can't pursue a civil case on a whim, there needs to have been some law that was broken. As somebody else also mentioned breaking a contract or a ToS would only be a civil violation if breaking the contract or ToS specifically violated some civil law. There is no civil law that makes breaking a contract or ToS inherently unlawful.
Can't you sue civilly for breach of contract? I don't think many people would consider breaking a contract to be breaking the law, even though there are laws governing contracts.
[1] - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpand...
"The Amazon employees acknowledged they were breaking eBay’s rules and actively tried to avoid detection, the lawsuit says."
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18250970
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#C...
That said, Amazon deserves this suit - remember, this is the same company that routinely sues former employees for non-compete, & pays wearhouse employees to favorably post on social media. They deserve a taste of their own corporate BS lawsuit
Many years ago, I use to shop ebay and always dreaded the clumsy checkout process (among other things including the issue of trust). I don't know if it's improved... To me, that's the core issue. Companies like eBay, Walmart and others want to compete on the same level as Amazon but they don't do enough to improve services (customer service, shipping, checkout, UIs, etc).
Instead of competing on overall value, they turn to "IP" lawsuits, poaching and general bullying.
There's a flipside too. Large companies tend to have an advantage but in this case, eBay isn't small. They can improve in many ways but like Sears... they are stuck in a specific and closed mindset.
I give Amazon lots of credit for being free-thinking and innovative. They started with books and somehow managed to get into cloud services in a huge way. They don't corner themselves. Ebay needs to think outside of their comfortable box because, down the road, consumers will need the competition.
personally i've never used one click purchasing on amazon, and their checkout still feels better than ebay's.
the real irony is:
> (among other things including the issue of trust)
when amazon is comingling inventory and generally confusing people about who they're purchasing from.
>> me: (among other things including the issue of trust)
> sigstoat: when amazon is comingling inventory and generally confusing people about who they're purchasing from.
I was referring to sellers being allowed to include their own JS and Flash on listings[0] and the high-profile hacking cases along with ebay's response[1,2]. Sellers were also allowed to include 3rd-party templates to list their items (which can lead to yet another attack vector). This may still be happening but like I said, I abandoned ebay some time ago.
Also, when purchasing on ebay, you're always dealing directly with a seller. It's a marketplace, a bazaar. It's their business model (but like I said, it can mutate into something else). Unlike Amazon (where you always "feel" you're dealing with a single company - comingling aside), on ebay you never feel like you're dealing with a single entity.
As a result, I always felt on high alert: investigating sellers, viewing their reputations, etc... it's time-consuming and an effort. It constantly forces me to question... to trust.
[0] https://hacked.com/biggest-hacks-breaches-2014/
[1] https://www.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2015-16/W/3482/Team...
[2] https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/02/18/ebay-scripting...
Their messaging system, and they permitted the messages. How is this Amazon's fault?
eBay is taking the ridiculous stance that it's TOS provides liability to the customer for using their service wrong. If I made a website with a TOS that said "Anyone who browses to this website and fails to click the 'get lisence' button in the footer on EACH PAGE owes me $1 Million Dollars!", I'd be laughed out of court trying to enforce it.
A C&D like this is pretty standard fare between competing businesses. If you sell widgets and WidgetCorp sells widgets, you are completely allowed to try and poach their customers, but WidgetCorp is allowed you prevent you from doing that in their store. Furthermore, if the accounts were specifically created for this purpose it's a clear violation of the TOS and there may potentially be damages there, or even possible criminal charges (thanks to the wonderful CFAA - ack).
In your example, it'd be reasonable for WidgetCorp to trespass you from the store if you're trying to compete on their property. However, I believe it would be unreasonable for Widgetcorp to try to sue for the revenue of the sales that were successfully made before they trespassed you.
That it's even possible to try to sue for something like this is a sad reflection of how much our laws have interfered in normal market operation, and enabled companies to try to create ways to legally sidestep competition. You can't inform our users you could offer them a better deal. It's against our terms and services! We sue!
"The Amazon employees acknowledged they were breaking eBay’s rules and actively tried to avoid detection, the lawsuit says."
Would you consider it unethical to solicit in a neighborhood with no-solicitation signs? What about standing in a competitor's store and advertising your store to their customers?
The store example is fairly close, except that physical trespass would create a major disruption and interfere with the regular operation of the business. More appropriate would be a person standing outside on a public sidewalk handing out fliers advertising better prices at a nearby store than the ones inside the store customers were about to enter. And no, I don't think anybody would find that unethical.
And the discussion is not about what Amazon did. Rather, it is about how they did it.
And this conversation about ethics. The law, let alone terms and services, do not define ethical behavior or the lack thereof. For that matter laws, and especially terms of service, can themselves be unethical - one might argue that in the latter they are quite often unethical.
This is almost literally what the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was created for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
> And this conversation about ethics.
You're the one who keeps bringing up technicalities. I think the ethical implications are pretty clear when you access a system to specifically use it in a way that the owner asked you not to.
In addition to being clearly unethical for me, it also is quite possibly illegal due to the CFAA, under the wording "exceeds authorized access".
I don't find the violation of an arbitrary rule to be unethical in and of itself. Action and probabilistic consideration of consequences is what matters. For that mouthful on the end what I mean is that e.g. running a red light, even when nothing bad happens, could still be considered unethical depending on the probabilistic consideration of possible outcomes. Amazon's intentions and actions were positive and productive. Nobody was directly hurt or harmed in any way whatsoever, and there was really no chance of anybody being hurt or harmed in any way. Seems 100% on the up and up to me.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/rebooting-computer-cri...
This is a really weird perspective. Not all "competition" is the same; there are such things as fair competition and unfair competition. Having your employees seek work at a competing factory to sabotage its operations is definitely a kind of competition, it's just the unfair kind.
I think the most reasonable real life metaphor for this scenario would be a for-sale bulletin board on private property where people put things up for sale, and the owner of the land where the bulletin is placed takes a cut of all sales. The owner of this property also wanted to try to protect their profits and so made people sign a piece of paper stating 'I won't inform other users about better deals'. Amazon signed it and then told the sellers about better deals anyhow.
In my opinion the behavior that was both unfair and unethical was eBay trying to prevent fair competition for their users.
Amazon has no right to use Ebay's systems however it chooses and against Ebay's wishes, full stop. Ebay has every right to forbid that its systems be used for anything it dislikes, including as an advertising platform for its competitors.
If you disagree, and still think that Amazon should be able to exploit Ebay's systems to give "basic information to people"; then you must agree that I should be able to hack your computer to play audio loops giving the people around you "basic information" about how your ideas are wrong.
If Amazon wants to advertise, it needs to restrict itself to avenues that are legitimately available to it, such as Google adwords, etc.
For competition to work, the competitors need to have something like "bodily integrity." One competitor shouldn't be able to "infect" another to weaken it. We want the competitors to focus on strengthening themselves, not weakening others.
Amazon could add in their terms, 'You may not speak negatively of Jeff Bezos on our software.' and it's completely meaningless. They could close any accounts that do as much, but they could do that for any reason they want already - making the term rather pointless. And the same is true here. eBay tried to shove in ridiculous anti-competitive rules in their terms. Amazon didn't care. So now they're adding just another chip on the mountain of lawsuits they're already involved in as a spiteful hail mary.
That hacking aside is a red herring.
> Sites can put whatever they want in their terms of service. This does not make them law, and in many cases the clauses are in no way enforceable.
Sites are owned by particular people and organizations, and they have a right to set the terms (withing reason). It's just a like a landlord who puts a term in their contract saying you can't exercise your right of free speech by yelling your opinions through the wall of your apartment at 3AM.
> Amazon could add in their terms, 'You may not speak negatively of Jeff Bezos on our software.' and it's completely meaningless.
That term is not meaningless, even if it's in bad taste, and I think that's the fundamental point of our disagreement.