Amazon Bots Cause Grief For Associate Web Sites

theodp writes "Amazon Associates and Web Services developers are crying foul over the hammering they're taking from ill-behaved bots that Amazon had subsidiary Alexa Internet dispatch to evaluate the 'quality and reliability' of their sites. Amazon fessed up and acknowledged problems exist, but points to recent Operating Agreement changes that not only give Amazon and any of its corporate affiliates the right to do so, but also to use unstated technical means to overcome any methods that are used to try to block or interfere with such crawling or monitoring. Interesting stance from the folks who called on the Senate to prosecute those who degrade the technical quality of service at web sites."

Comments

1984?

[httpamphibio.us]

I haven't read 1984 in a long time, but I don't remember big brother coming from the amazon.

;-) had to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting stance from the folks who called on the Senate to prosecute those who degrade the technical quality of service at web sites

Whoah! That'd mean Slashdot would have every senate lawyer after it right?

Maybe

[QQ2]

Maybe he's one of the boys from brazil.

Amazon Amazon Amazon....

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems every other link on the 'net is a link to some book on Amazon. All too often I'll follow an innocent looking link and find myself at Amazon yet another time.

Reminds me of that old horror movie where they try to drive away from a haunted house, but every road they take leads them back up the driveway to the place.

I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

"... called on the Senate to prosecute those who degrade the technical quality of service at web sites." Would that include the Slashdot effect?

Re:The Alexa archiver -- you can stop that one.

[execom]

Anyway, every webmasters use the W3C Link Checker (http://validator.w3.org/checklink/) in order to track their broken links. So this bot has no reason to be.