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Having had periods of fairly active selling on eBay, I can say eBay has done as much as anyone to get sellers to leave their platform.
Who doesn't want to pay 20% commission?
I'm sure no one would ever admit it, but I'm like 75% positive Amazon did the same thing on Etsy when they launched Amazon Handmade.
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.
What law was broken?
Maybe violating the eBay terms of use? They are pretty explicit about not trying to lure people to buy from you outside of eBay, iirc.
What happens when a corporates violates another companies terms of use aggressively to promote competition?
The eBay terms of use are not law. Breaking those kinds of agreements is a civil matter. The lawsuit is alleging serious criminal things, like fraud, in addition to breaking the terms of use.
Fraudulently creating accounts for the purposes of performing activities known to be against the ToS prior to even creating the account.
"The Amazon employees acknowledged they were breaking eBay’s rules and actively tried to avoid detection, the lawsuit says."
Yeah, but is that actually criminal fraud according to the law?
As debacle notes [0], the CFAA is a hell of a drug. [1] I could certainly see a case that this is "exceeding authorized access", with "authorized access" being defined by the rules established by the ToS when the account granting access was established.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18250970
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#C...
Yes, this is the accusation in the court docs. They agreed to eBay terms knowing they were going to violate them by soliciting other users to sell off platform.
Yeah, I was trying to understand this too. Seems like the Amazon employees broke the EBay terms of service and general business ethics but which law?
It's a civil suit, so you don't have to have broken the law. Breaking a contract or ToS is enough.
> It's a civil suit, so you don't have to have broken the law.
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.
No, this is not at all how civil law works. The main difference between a criminal offense and a civil offense is that a criminal offense will be pursued by the government, whereas pursuing a civil offense is the burden of the 'victim'. And civil cases tend to involve relatively small sums of money where the defendant will often just have to pay off the suffered loss - jail time is not a possibility, whereas criminal cases often involve punishment which can include jail time.
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.
> 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.
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.
Only if it broke a relevant law. And each state's laws contract law tend to vary and are generally very obtuse. Here [1] for instance is California's state laws on contract. And even then you generally need to show damages, or a failure to deliver on a contractual obligation that resulted in less than promised.
[1] - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpand...
So, for a term of a contract to have force, is it necessary to have some sort of penalty in the contract for breach-of-contract, involving e.g. some required payment, so that you can then sue for failure to pay the penalty? (Which I would assume is mostly equivalent to e.g. failure to pay for goods transferred or services rendered.)
Didn't they do this to Angie's List too? Awful ethics.
If a start-up did this, we would just call it "growth hacking".
Lawsuit complaint document available here: https://cmportal.scscourt.org/Portal/DocumentViewer/Index/Q9...
This suit is frivolous - in a free market sellers and platforms should be free to do as they please, including pitching an alternative platform.
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
I don't understand the issue here. Seems to me that in free market, Amazon has the right to reach out to perspective partners wherever they may doing business. Ebay, likewise, could do the same.
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.
This post is a little ironic on the pro-Amazon front, what with the complaining about Ebay's checkout process while Amazon holds the one-click-buy patent...
the patent expired last year. ebay could've had some version of it ready to roll out automatically within seconds of whatever expiration time was approved by the legal department.
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.
> sigstoat: the real irony is:
>> 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...
Good news! EBay doesn’t allow active content anymore. So no JavaScript.
I think you can, I assume they were using the ebay platform, messaging sellers is probably against the ToS.
Why should the court reward eBay's poor business controls?
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.
They are not equivalent situations. There's a concept of binding. When the Amazon employees created their accounts, that's when they agreed to the ToS. Importantly, it's before they took the actions for which Amazon is being sued. No one agreed to a ToS to visit your website.
You're holding up a massive straw man.
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).
Asking the courts to enforce a cease and desist seems fairly reasonable (perhaps a bit heavy handed), but I absolutely disagree with the idea the courts should impose monetary damages on Amazon for using eBay's website 'improperly'.
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.
I don't understand how some people are saying this would be an unethical action. This is competition, which is how better services end up being provided to users, and for better prices. It's not competing that's unethical, and is what leads to monopolies, price fixing, and other anti-competitive behavior. If they don't like Amazon "poaching" users of their site, then they should offer even more desirable terms to their users.
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!
> I don't understand how some people are saying this would be an unethical action. This is competition, which is how better services end up being provided to users, and for better prices. It's not competing that's unethical, and is what leads to monopolies, price fixing, and other anti-competitive behavior. If they don't like Amazon "poaching" users of their site, then they should offer even more desirable terms to their users.
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.
Providing basic information to people is about as fair a notion of competition as there is.
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.
Let me put it simply and clearly:
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.
You're setting up quite the extreme straw man. Amazon was using the site in a 'normal' fashion to do something that eBay did not want. This has nothing to do with hacking or other sorts of nonsense. 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.
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.
> You're setting up quite the extreme straw man. Amazon was using the site in a 'normal' fashion to do something that eBay did not want. This has nothing to do with hacking or other sorts of nonsense.
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.
I don't think anyone would be saying anything had Amazon been calling or mailing these sellers. The fact that they were using the eBay platform and known to be working against the ToS could push it into unethical.
"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 thing you're ignoring here is that Amazon was working to the genuine benefit of the sellers, and eBay's behavior is something aiming to indirectly 'harm' their users insomuch as they aim to prevent information users would likely want to see from being given to them.
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.
You say more appropriate, but Amazon did "virtually enter" the eBay store to attract these customers. If they had put up billboards or web advertisements or hell even handed out fliers, there would be no basis of complaint or unethical behavior.
I don't think this metaphor works, either legally or ethically. Legally 'virtually entering' a site is not illegal, regardless of whether the owner wants you there (though this can turn to things that are illegal). Ethically we get back to the same point as I think motivation is crucial. Amazon's motivation here is to provide information to sellers that these sellers would almost certainly want to see. eBay's motivation is to try to keep their seller's ignorant of more fruitful opportunities.
But they did not just load up eBay.com and start chatting. They logged into the site -- aka, entered a protected and authorized space. And it is illegal to enter a protected space if the owner does not want you there. This is why the no-solicitation example is relevant. In this case, eBay says, you are authorized to enter this store (authenticate into the site using your account and thereby gain access to tools like messaging) as long as you follow these rules (terms of service). You agree to follow these rules before entering the store (when you create your account), so eBay grants you access. You then proceed to knowingly break those rules.
And the discussion is not about what Amazon did. Rather, it is about how they did it.
Entering a "protected space" in the digital domain is not illegal whether or not the owner wants you there, unless there is a specific law that is broken in the process. Similarly, breaking terms and conditions is also not inherently unlawful, again unless there is a specific law that is broken in the process of breaking those terms. They are not inherently protected.
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.