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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."
Noting comes for free. Presumably, they are Amazon Affiliates to get a cut off a sold book. You don't get anything for free. Perhaps an opportune time to do the Barnes and Noble thing?
Hehe. In fact I am filtering cookies, scripts, popups, referrer, webbugs etc.
/. works well that way ;-)
So I guess I am not very informative about my habits - which I think is my freedom to do. And if a site doesn't work that way, the site owners clearly indicate that they are not willing to accept me a s a visitor - which is their freedom.
At least
Simple 'nuff...
Just temporarily (perhaps 1 day) block ANY client's class C (not just that of Alexa's crawler) that starts generating more than X hits per second for longer than five minutes.
By doing so, you haven't taken steps to specifically thwart *Amazon's* activity, you have simply enacted a reasonably security measure to block DOS attacks. If Amazon actually dared to sue for blocking them, you'd have a HELL of a countersuit on the grounds that their 'bot triggered your DOS alarm.
Personally, I'd just block their bot and if they complain, tell them where they can stick their partner agreement. No self respecting online retailer needs their own "partners" degrading their QOS. Anyway, When I want to buy something, I use either Google, or a product-specific price-search engine (like PriceWatch). Amazon counts as my LAST choice for finding something (actually not quite true... If I need to use Google to find a product for sale, I often check Amazon first, just to get things like UPC or ISBN numbers to narrow my search).
The timing of this problem is interesting. A few years back, we had the problem of the one-click patent and the fact that Amazon used it to disrupt the christmas sales of Barnes and Noble. It seems that the one-click thing became a less pressing problem on December 26. Although I can't remember the specifics of other events, it sticks in my mind that other ploys used to disrupt competitors businesses have been timed to screw with the christmas season.
I know that the people being DOS'ed by Amazon are defined as 'affiliates', but maybe Amazon percieves 'affiliates' in the same way Microsoft percieves 'partners'; people to use and then buy or destroy. How much you wanna bet that this problem goes away after christmas? Of course, the claim will be that it was brought to their attention and it was fixed, but the timing of the whole thing is very suspicious. Perhaps this was the plan all along.
In these days of slim margins in business, maybe Amazon figures the average internet user is smart enough to figure that it their preferred site is slow, they will go directly to Amazon for their purchase and Amazon would be able to avoid reimbursement of their 'affiliate' for the sale.
Has this problem been going on, but been unnoticed for a while, or did it just start? I'm no consipiracy theorist, but the elements seem to be there for this to have been intentional and the timing is very suspicious. Why couldn't they have done this last month, or the month before if they're just checking for outdated links? Am I out in left field with this idea?
Anyway... just a different perspective and some food for thought.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Hey,
Amazon's web-bots are looking for outdated links to books that don't exist, etc.
Wouldn't a better solution be to modify the software at amazon.com, so that every time there was a book not found/out of date error, it logged the refering affiliate and HTTP_REFERER request header?
I can't see why they would need bots and suchlike for such a simple procedure...
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion