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TL;DR Amazon is mad that Perplexity's agents can browse Amazon logged-in, with a username/password provided by the perplexity user.

Amazon argues this is against the CFAA because they do not authorize such use. They sued and got a preliminary injection. Perplexity appealed and got the injunction thrown out.

The case hasn't actually been to trial on the merits yet and is still undecided.

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> Perplexity's agents can browse Amazon logged-in, with a username/password provided by the perplexity user.

Grok Bots can do the same.

cURL can do the same if you're in some utility closet and downloading ebooks and papers from a local network. Wonder how illegal that would be? It's also acting as the agent for a user.

what's next? suing Chrome because it logs in to amazon on my behalf after i give it my amazon credentials?

Well, publishers did once try using this law to sue adblockers.

But they lost, using an adblocker isn't a violation of the CFAA. They also tried a legal theory under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision and lost again.

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