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International Amazon websites named in U.S. ‘infamous markets’ listing for counterfeit items

Foreign Amazon sites named in U.S. 'notorious markets' list for counterfeit goods

Peter Endig | AFP | Getty Images

A handful of Amazon’s overseas websites have been added to the US government’s annual “Notorious Markets” list due to concerns that they may host counterfeit goods.

The USTR (United States Trade Representative) office released its review of the infamous markets in 2020 on Thursday. The list includes e-commerce websites and companies that are believed to facilitate the sale of counterfeit goods, and to commit intellectual property violations or piracy.

Amazon websites in the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy were named in the report. Complainants against the overseas websites alleged that the process of removing counterfeit products from Amazon is slow, even for companies participating in its trademark protection programs. They also argued that Amazon does not thoroughly scrutinize third-party sellers in its market or make it clear to brands and consumers “who is selling the goods”.

Amazon denied the sales agent’s report, which did not include Amazon’s US website, citing its extensive programs and tools designed to stop counterfeiters.

“Amazon’s inclusion in this report is a continuation of a personal revenge against Amazon and nothing more than a desperate stunt in the last days of this administration,” an Amazon spokesman told CNBC in a statement. “Amazon is doing more against counterfeiting than any other private organization known to us.”

USTR officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos during his four-year tenure. Bezos owns the Washington Post, which Trump has criticized for its unfavorable reporting on his administration. Amazon has also claimed it did not win a Pentagon cloud computing deal that could be worth up to $ 10 billion due to attacks by Trump against the company and Bezos.

Amazon websites were first added to the USTR’s Notorious Markets list in 2019. The American Apparel & Footwear Association asked the sales representative in 2018 to add some Amazon websites to the list.

In addition to Amazon, the other companies featured on the list include Chinese e-commerce website Pinduoduo, South American e-commerce company Mercadolibre, and file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.

Amazon has stepped up its counterfeit containment efforts as the third-party market has grown. The marketplace now accounts for more than half of the company’s total revenue and is home to millions of third-party providers.

While it continues to be an important component of Amazon’s business, the market has also faced a number of issues related to the sale of counterfeit, unsafe, and expired goods. In 2019, Amazon started mentioning counterfeit products as a risk factor in its annual filing.

The company has prosecuted counterfeiters in court, launched various programs to search for and detect sales of counterfeit goods, and in June set up the Counterfeit Crime Division, composed of former federal attorneys, investigators, and data analysts, to break down the website for fraudulent activity.

As a result of this and other efforts, 99.9% of the pages viewed by customers on the site never had a valid forgery report, the spokesman said.

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This $100 Moroccan Trellis Rug Is The New Amazon Coat

This $100 Moroccan Trellis Rug Is The New Amazon Coat

I call it the carpet. I own one. So two close friends. A favorite cousin. Some members of my group are talking. Lots and lots of social media friends. Thousands upon thousands of people who leave reviews on retail websites. In this way, it’s like the home décor version of the horror movie “The Ring”: first you buy The Rug and seven days later you discover that there is everyone else in the world, too.

Tanya Underwood-Best and her husband Tim Best came to The Rug via a detour. They wanted to travel, see the world and introduce their two young children to different cultures. When an apprenticeship opportunity opened up for Mr. Best, 44, in Hong Kong, the family left their row house in Philadelphia.

The only question: how do you fit your new apartment in Repulse Bay with a comfortable landing spot for your daughters Winnie (4) and Lettie (8) who are both aiming for ballet flats?

“I found the rug online when we were in Hong Kong and actually bought it from Overstock US,” said Ms. Underwood-Best, 43, a writer. “I couldn’t find anything locally that wasn’t cheap or prohibitively expensive.”

As it turns out, the rug she shipped around the world has become a staple in many American households. Its growth is a seemingly organic phenomenon. The design, most commonly referred to as the “Moroccan grille,” comes from Rugs USA, a company with headquarters in New York and distribution centers in New Jersey and California. It is loosely inspired by vintage hand-woven Berber carpets, the imperfections of which underscore their status as folk art. It’s available in 10 colors and 34 sizes at various home decor retailers such as Wayfair, Overstock.com, and Amazon, which currently has more than 16,000 reviews.

Krishna Gil Marshall of Santa Monica, California said the first time she noticed the carpet was when an ad surfaced on Instagram. “I follow a lot of dogs, designers and travelogues where the algorithm has probably taken me,” said Gil Marshall, also in her early forties. “The funny thing is that I try not to be too gaudy with my decor and get one-offs from Etsy.”

When Sarah Tackett bought the rug with her boyfriend for her Brooklyn apartment, she said, “We knew we were buying a mass-market version of a beautiful rug that is common among Instagram influencers, but it turned into a running joke it did there are only four carpets in the world anyway. “

One of those Instagram design curators, Amanda Terry, who borrows from @therusticredfox, calls her style “modern farmhouse”. She bought the rug in gray from Amazon because with two cats, two dogs and two young children she needed something durable that still had personality.

That kind of personality can be found in a unique vintage Beni Ourain Berber rug, made from the soft sheep wool that grazes in the high Atlas Mountains and made popular by design publications like Domino and Elle Decor, but it costs thousands of dollars. The Rugs USA version is available for around $ 100.

Speaking from the Kennedy Airport cargo terminal picking up an incoming shipment of vintage carpets, Nathan Ursch said he understood the appeal of the production version, which has become one of Rug USA’s best-selling designs.

Mr Ursch, who owns the Breuckelen Berber boutique carpet shop with his wife Brin Reinhardt, specializes in the sale of vintage Berber carpets. “People always” discover “them,” he said. “In the 1950s, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright used Berber carpets to soften the strict lines of their work. The carpets are warm but imperfect and create a contrast. “

Omri Schwartz, General Manager of the Nazmiyal Collection in Manhattan, sees little aesthetic appeal in The Rug. “What makes Berber carpets of all 17 tribes so special is their lack of symmetry,” he said. “The variations give you a feeling for the personality of the craftsman. The more you look at it, the more it starts to develop. This version – it’s flat, there is no sense of movement. It should be bought and then disposed of. “

Unsurprisingly, Koorosh Yaraghi, founder and president of Rugs USA, had a different mindset. The appeal of The Rug is that “it’s an accessible Moroccan-inspired motif,” he wrote in an email, “with a unique look that compliments any interior style, at an affordable price, and with a power-borne synthetic material which makes it durable for high traffic areas and daily use. “

In other words, it is meant to capture the unique spirit of a handcrafted textile that might have been acquired on an adventurous trip to an open air market. But it’s also designed to be discreet enough to blend in with furniture and endure the punishment of children and pets.

While lacking many of the properties of its reference, the carpet does contain interpretations of traditional Berber fertility symbols. “I would just say be careful,” warned Mr. Ursch the haunted parents who make up the carpet’s primary population. “There might be some unexpected babies in your future.”

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Parler sues Amazon for withdrawing assist after U.S. Capitol riot

Parler sues Amazon for withdrawing support after U.S. Capitol riot

John Matze, Parler CEO, will join CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 2, 2020.

CNBC

The social network Parler is suing Amazon for discontinuing its cloud computing support after the deadly uprising in the US Capitol.

Parler was popular with conservatives and supporters of President Donald Trump and relied on AWS ‘cloud computing services. However, AWS withdrew its support this week after it concluded that posts on Parler “clearly encourage and encourage violence.”

In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Parler accused Amazon Web Services of violating antitrust laws.

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animations,” the lawsuit said. “It is also apparently intended to reduce competition in the market for microblogging services in favor of Twitter.”

It goes on: “This emergency lawsuit seeks an injunction against defendant Amazon Web Services to prevent Parler’s account from being closed. This is like pulling the plug on a hospital patient for life support. It will bring Parler’s business to a standstill at just that Time when it will skyrocket. “

An AWS spokesman told CNBC that the allegations have no value, while Parler did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

“It is clear that there is significant content on Parler that promotes and incites violence against others and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove such content in violation of our Terms of Use.” an AWS spokesman told CNBC.

“We’ve shared our concerns with Parler for several weeks and during that time we’ve seen a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease that resulted in us closing their services on Sunday evening.”

Apple and Google remove Parler

Parler app screenshots viewed by CNBC show users posting references to firing squads, as well as calls for guns to be brought to Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

In the lawsuit, Parler’s attorneys ask why AWS is not removing support for Twitter, which is also an AWS customer.

AWS “stated that the reason for the suspension was because AWS was not certain that Parler could properly monitor its platform for content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the lawsuit said. “Hang Mike Pence was one of the most popular tweets on Twitter on Friday night, but AWS has no plans or threats to suspend Twitter’s account.”

Twitter declined to comment.

Parler became the number one free downloaded app on Apple’s App Store after Twitter announced it was permanently banning Trump from its platform. “Conservative users fled en masse from Twitter to Parler,” said the lawsuit.

However, Apple removed Parler from the iPhone app store on Saturday, a day after Google removed Parler from its Android app store.

John Matze, founder and CEO of Parler, condemned the moves of the tech giants. In a series of posts about Parler over the weekend, he said his platform had removed the violent content and added that community guidelines do not allow Parler to be knowingly used for criminal activity.

Matze said Monday that the Parler app will be down “longer than expected” as other cloud hosting companies refuse to partner with Parler in light of press releases from Amazon, Google and Apple.

“This is not due to software restrictions. We have our software and all data ready. Rather, statements by Amazon, Google and Apple to the press about the blocking of our access have meant that most of our other providers have stopped supporting us . ” good, “said Matze.

He added, “Most people with enough servers to host us have closed their doors to us. We’ll all update and update the press when we get back online.”

Parler has transferred its domain name to Epik, which hosts the similar far-right social media network Gab. However, a hosting provider has yet to be found.

Gab, a social network known for its far-right user base and frequent hate speech, appears to be benefiting from the aftermath. On Monday, Gab CEO Andrew Torba announced that the platform had gained 600,000 new users.

– CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

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Parler accuses Amazon of breaking antitrust regulation in suspending internet hosting providers.

Parler accuses Amazon of breaking antitrust law in suspending hosting services.

Hours after going offline on Monday, social media start-up Parler filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Amazon of antitrust violations and calling for an injunction to prevent that the tech giant is blocking access to cloud computing services.

Amazon told Parler over the weekend that the service would be discontinued because “a steady increase in violent content” on the site indicated the company did not have a reliable process to prevent it from violating Amazon’s Terms of Service. Amazon said it would make sure Parler’s data is preserved so it can be migrated to a new hosting provider.

Millions of people turned to Parler after Twitter and Facebook banned President Trump following the Capitol uprising last week. Apple and Google kicked Parler out of their app stores later this week, although users who had already downloaded the app could still use it. However, the app relied on Amazon’s cloud computing technology.

Parler’s complaint was dated Sunday before Amazon suspended Parler. However, the lawsuit wasn’t filed with the court until Monday.

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western Washington District, Parler accused Amazon of terminating, rather than just banning, its account – and said it should have been given 30 days notice. It has also been argued that Amazon violated antitrust laws by teaming up with Twitter, a large Amazon customer, to start Parler just as it was gaining broader appeal. It said it had 12 million users and “expects millions more this week given the growth in recent days.”

Parler did not provide direct evidence that Amazon and Twitter coordinated the response. Instead, it cited a December press release announcing a multi-year strategic partnership between Amazon and Twitter, and cited Twitter’s own challenges in monitoring the content.

Parler said losing Amazon’s services would be a “death knell,” although other platforms popular with far-right and conspiracy theorists, such as Gab and 8chan, have managed to bounce back after being canceled by hosting providers.

David J. Groesbeck, a sole intellectual property attorney based in Olympia, Washington, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Parler. Amazon didn’t respond to an instant request for comment.

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A Canadian ‘Purchase Native’ Effort Fights Amazon on Its Personal Turf

A Canadian ‘Buy Local’ Effort Fights Amazon on Its Own Turf

“While I’m thrilled the movement is there, it is competing with a pretty strong crosswind, and those are the business restrictions that are driving newer customers into big-box and Amazon,” said Kelly. “I think the Buy Local initiatives halted some of the losses, but unfortunately it won’t be enough to keep most small retailers alive.”

Not everything is grim. One Toronto company, Stainsby Studios, was amazed at the three-fold increase in ceramic sales after being featured on Not Amazon. Another, Glad Day Bookshop, which sells a variety of LGBTQ titles, said the initiative increased Christmas sales by 30 percent.

Like many other shopkeepers, Mary Oliveira was scared when the country’s first lockdown went into effect in March. But her five-year-old chocolate shop in Toronto, Mary’s Brigadeiro, was fortunate to have an existing online presence that brought in stable income throughout the pandemic, she said.

Over the past few weeks, numerous new customers have told Ms. Oliveira that they found her store through Not Amazon, which she had been added to but had never heard of.

“We found more people were pushing to shop locally,” said Ms. Oliveira, 30, who was surprised that 27 percent of her online shoppers came through Not Amazon. “That meant we were sold out for the entire season a week ago. It has never happened before. “

In November she hired four more people and is now considering opening additional locations in Toronto. Ms. Oliveira, a native of Brazil, said the Buy Local initiative had rekindled a sense of belonging, especially when she saw the numerous shipments from Amazon while local businesses were struggling.

Ms. Oliveira said dealing with shipping delays as a small business owner is frustrating, while customers said Amazon is much faster.

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Life With out Amazon (Effectively, Virtually)

Life Without Amazon (Well, Almost)

“Ten years ago we didn’t order toilet paper from Amazon,” said Smalls. “Maybe it’ll take you so long to get over it.”

Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago, was interviewed by the New York Times in a 2012 story about customers who left Amazon. Dr. Pollack, who teaches public health, said at the time, “I don’t feel like they’re doing the way I want to support them with my consumer dollars.” He has since written critically about Amazon, including a 2018 comment titled “Better Chances for Jeff Bezos to Spend $ 131 Billion” recommending Mr. Bezos to allocate his “profits” to philanthropy rather than space. (In 2020 that number would be somewhere north of $ 180 billion.)

Dr. Pollack, reached by phone, said his criticism of Amazon had both broadened and deepened, but he was also a frequent customer now. “It’s chastening,” he said when asked to reconsider his attitude. “I use Amazon more in my life than I am comfortable with. It’s part of the infrastructure of my life just like the infrastructure of other people’s lives is, especially during Covid. “

Dr. Pollack then offered a new analysis that tried to include, or at least acknowledge, his ambivalence. “I think my own development is a symbol of why there needs to be public order solutions,” he said, citing concerns about antitrust law, Amazon’s wider role in the economy and, like its 2012 focus, the well-being of the company’s workforce. Amazon, he said, posed “an enormous collective action problem”.

The company has invaded his life inexorably. Using Amazon makes it easy to get work reimbursements. Amazon gift cards have become the de facto standard incentive for study participants (despite the concerns of some colleagues). In addition, Dr. Pollack like most people is busy.

“Amazon offers consumers tremendous value that enables us to look beyond many things,” he said. Going forward, he plans to “do the simple things that will allow me to minimize my trust in Amazon and feel good about it, but basically I won’t do the things that are less easy. And if I’m being honest, you can’t rely on me to discipline the company. “

Mr. Smalls, the former warehouse worker, offered clients like Dr. Pollack adopts a gentle, practiced attitude: Using Amazon could be like an addiction, or at least something that requires weaning. However, in an interview earlier this year, he may have been more open to the company’s habitual consumers. “Do you think you need Amazon?” he said in April, shortly after his release. “OK, what did you do a few years ago?”