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.
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.
This is probably why amazon wants to get law enforcement involved. Those folks can stop the people behind the fraud....
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.
This isn't just "people on the internet", though. These are people who have some sort of physical presence that they ship goods from, and have some interaction with the financial system so they can accept payment. There are finite ways that they can do this, and that provides a way to actually identify the person across account signups in order to keep them blocked.
No, it's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than, say, trying to block someone from HN who is determined to keep creating new accounts using VPNs, proxies, whatever.
I would think you would report them to the authorities... which seems like what they are doing
My understanding is that Amazon basically does everything they can short of inspecting every unit, which is infeasible.
I actually prefer the current chaos to something like Youtube where they have given rights owners an (practically) unappealable veto over everyone's content. Yes, I know that 98% of the strikes are probably correct, but some are completely bogus and others are exploiting fair use correctly.
One of the first things we would lose with a Youtube style agreement is the doctrine of first sale.
I do think they could enforce an insurance requirement which would help pay out civil judgements, at least.
By the way, YouTube claims are easily disputed in almost all cases, with the exception of UMG which has a contractual right to veto counternotices. Otherwise, YouTube responds to disputes reasonably, in my understanding. This wasn't always the case, many of the favorable policies are only a few years old, such as holding revenue in escrow until a dispute is resolved.
But they could also just enforce stricter rules around reviewing and approving sellers. While not having the threat of legal action it is something they have much more control around.
As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread 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.
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.
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.
This is nothing unique to Amazon, by the way. I could show you lawsuits against Walmart and Costco for selling counterfeits. Every massive retail company that doesn't buy 100% from the manufacturer is going to eventually have some leaks. You buy from the grey market, vast majority of the time you get legitimate cheaper product, occasionally someone scams you.
Oh, and Apple famously sued Mobile Star LLC claiming that they had sold Amazon counterfeit products through Vendor, which was "sold and shipped by Amazon.com".
Links to all above cases:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6173730/daimler-ag-v-am...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4495986/apple-inc-v-mob...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/8418854/williams-sonoma...