Skip Navigation

Posts
3
Comments
23
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Copyright infringement is not suitable as an analogous case because the law specifies statutory damages for it, so proving damages is not typically necessary for the types of works which you are thinking of.

    Let me give a detailed analysis with some concrete, but arbitrarily-chosen numbers, and then I'll show you what a lawyer representing Amazon would say to attack the argument you've presented.

    Suppose you notice that 5 per cent of people whom you ask to subscribe to your mailing list actually subscribe (it is almost certain a real number would be much lower). Then, of those who subscribe to your mailing list, 10 per cent of them make a purchase when you send an advertisement to them through that mailing list. And then, of those who make a purchase, the average sale is $50, of which $20 is profit. Therefore, you argue damages of 5% × 10% × $20 = $0.10 per customer. Suppose Amazon placed 1,000 orders this way. You therefore plead damages of $100 (the fact that this is a trivial amount is not relevant to the legal analysis).

    The legal method for the calculation of damages is to compare what your financial situation would have been had Amazon not done the thing they were not supposed to. Amazon will argue that had they complied with your terms of service, 0 orders would have been placed as you forbade AI agents from placing orders, and therefore the profit can be calculated as 5% × 10% × $20 × 0 = $0. After this argument is made, it then becomes your burden as the claimant to rebut it. You will have to prove what percentage of people ordered through Amazon, who would have otherwise ordered from you directly (and thus you would have the opportunity to advertise to). This is a fundamentally very difficult task. Amazon would probably propose to the court that you ask all of the customers to testify that they would have otherwise ordered from you directly, and then you can count it as ten cents per witness.

    All of that notwithstanding, Amazon will still argue your damages are zero, because you have not actually lost the ability to connect with the customers they have given you, because you still have the ability to ask them to subscribe to your mailing list by including a card to that effect in the package you send them. The fact that both of us very well know that nobody will do that is not legally relevant: the action is possible and the law does not particularly care about whether it is easy or effective.

    I know it's tempting to call me a bootlicker or whatever, but the fact of the matter really is that the law is not favourable to the claimant in this case. This is just a bad argument to make with no sufficient legal justification to claim anything more than a nominal amount of damages. Yes, Amazon are a bunch of assholes, but sometimes, being an asshole really is legal. The law is not a proxy for morality and the courts are not infallible guardians of justice. They are institutions that interpret fallible, imperfect, human-made rules.

  • No, the burden of proof is on the claimant. If you sue Amazon, you have to prove your claims to a perponderance of the evidence.

  • Can you prove that these people would have visited your site had Amazon not intervened?

  • If you think you can find a way to quantify damages in a legally sufficient way then go ahead.

  • That's a different thing. In that case, Doordash actually blocked people from ordering from the restaurant in question and redirected them elsewhere. Had the restaurant been listed without its permission and all it did was cause a Doordash employee to appear at the restaurant, place an order on the users behalf, then go deliver it, it would be a similar case to this one.

    I doubt many restaurants would have a problem with Doordash listing them without their permission if all that happened when someone placed an order, is that they get a call from Doordash (automated or not) to place a to-go order, and then someone picks it up later and pays for it.

  • It is a conditional argument. It is vacuous if the court rules that the AI is an agent that can bind a principal. If and only if the court rules that the AI agent can't contract on behalf of a principal (for the purchase of goods or otherwise), then Amazon should get a refund.

  • Weird clauses in terms of use are frequently just toilet paper when it actually comes down to enforcing them in court. You can "sue" but you might just win $1 because the judge would find that you have not suffered any monetary damages. You got paid for the item, after all, and "building a relationship with your customers" has no quantifiable and measurable value which can be proven in court, so judges default to one dollar.

    There is also the aspect of whether an AI agent has the legal capacity to contract on behalf of Amazon or the buyer, and on whose behalf they contract if they do. I'm not aware of any American cases which have held that AI agents are "agents" (an entity with the legal power to act on behalf of another) within the meaning given to that word under the law of agency. The Civil Resolution Tribunal in British Columbia, Canada, ruled in Moffat v. Air Canada that AI chatbots can bind the organisation who uses them and makes them available to customers. This opinion is not binding precedent, but I think courts worldwide should use it as a template for AI agency powers. If the AI has no power to contract, then the sale is void in its entirety.

    I believe Amazon would argue three points:

    1. That the AI agent has power to contract, but that the "user" of the AI is the shopper, and Amazon is merely providing the agent for the shopper to use.
    2. That if the clause banning AI agents from buying is enforceable, it voids the transaction in its entirety, and thus the seller owes Amazon a refund.
    3. That even if the AI had the power to bind Amazon, that the ability to build direct customer relationships has no proven dollar value and thus damages should be limited to nominal amounts (i.e. one dollar).
  • I've had some people complain about not being able to easily park a large car which made me want to ask why they are driving such a high-difficulty car if their driving skill is low.

  • I would not be surprised if Meta advertised such a thing to prospective employees as a legitimate benefit of the job. A built-in VR goon cave with 30 TB of material available. Limit 1 hour per person, bookings required 6 months in advance. Sessions subject to monitoring for security and training purposes. May contain trace amounts of Zuck.

  • The symbol in question:

  • Not The Onion @lemmy.world

    U.S. House Speaker calls Portland naked bike ride [protest] ‘most threatening thing I’ve seen yet’

    www.oregonlive.com /portland/2025/10/us-house-speaker-calls-portland-naked-bike-ride-most-threatening-thing-ive-seen-yet.html
  • That's the dual state for you. The normative state applies to all actions by Trump and his goons, everyone else is subject to the prerogative state. This case is just the normative state being used to protect the prerogative state.

  • The Supreme Court ruled that district courts can only grant relief to the parties of the case. So the district court is powerless to protect those who don't file a case before it, with one exception, which is a class action. That's why the DC public defender wants to change the case to a class action, because that is the only way they can get the board to stop enforcing against everyone.

  • More specifically, the Supreme Court ruled that the court can't enjoin an agency from enforcing the rule in question, except against the actual named parties to the case.

    So if John Doe and Jane Roe sue an agency and want an injunction, the court can only order the agency to not bother those two people. It cannot order the agency stop doing the thing altogether to all people, even in one area only. That requires a class action.

  • The Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. CASA that district courts don't have the power to issue nationwide injunctions to enjoin government agencies from enforcing policies nationwide. Instead, they say that a case needs class action status in order for a court to issue nationwide relief.

  • Damn, even school shooters get to work from home now.

  • politics @lemmy.world

    White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say

    www.washingtonpost.com /health/2025/05/29/maha-rfk-jr-ai-garble/
  • News @lemmy.world

    White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say

    www.washingtonpost.com /health/2025/05/29/maha-rfk-jr-ai-garble/
  • I do not disagree with you on the reasons why women have fewer children. I think there is also a significant cultural shift in the number of children women were supposed to have. In pre-industrual Europe, women were expected to be quickly married and then have lots of children with their husband. Women today can enjoy long careers and fulfilling lives without marriage or a family while such options were not available to women of the past.

  • In the past, people had several children because most would die before adulthood. The 20th century population boom is because better sanitation and healthcare reduced child mortality but it takes at least one generation for women to adapt and have fewer children.

  • Somalia does not have a functioning state apparatus to enforce any of its laws in most of the country

  • Nooo not the billionaires!

  • I'm pretty sure Somalia does not have paid maternity leave