Comment by Legend2440
12 hours ago
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.
> 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.