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Amazon Responds After Third-Party Sellers Put Bootleg Games on Its Store (venturebeat.com)
Jeff Grubb, reporting for VentureBeat: Over the weekend, some thrifty gamers spotted a deal on Amazon. A downloadable version of the tough strategy survival sim Frostpunk was available on the Amazon Marketplace from a third-party seller for $3, which is a 90 percent discount from the standard $30 price. But after looking into the game, some customers who dropped the three bucks had some questions. For example, why does the metadata for this version of Frostpunk refer to the DRM-free version that people can buy from GOG. [...] So I reached out to Amazon, and it provided the following statement from a company spokesperson: "Our customers trust that when they make a purchase through Amazon's store --either directly from Amazon or from its third-party sellers -- they will receive authentic products, and we take any claims that endanger that trust seriously. We strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products, and these games have been removed." That's all it would say on this.
And the sellers have been removed as well?
Well, yes. Amazon's end tail business model is pretty scummy, because it beats up on little companies without the resources to fight back. Most recently I've seen it happen to a T-shirt shop whose designs took off in Amazon marketplace: as soon as sales got above a certain threshold, Amazon duplicated the designs on their own Asia-sourced T-shirts and kicked the shop off of marketplace.
Some attorney will probably get rich someday with an IP-based class action vs. Amazon on this kind of thing, but until they do, it's best to support your favorite goods and shops directly.
Brick and mortar stores don't inspect each and every product as it comes into the store. That would be insane. Brick and mortar stores get their shipments from trusted sources and assume they won't get screwed over.The only way for Amazon to do the same would be to not allow 3rd party sellers at all.
First, unless it goes through an Amazon warehouse, the product is handled and shipped by the third party. Amazon is only the store front. Second, the third party could always provide correct samples to Amazon while then provide fake ones to the customer, unless they manually test each and every product(Would be counter to the first point). Third, if it comes to digital products, the people they hire would have to be very knowledgeable about every digital product they check. They would also need to buy multiple copies of the product through "personal" accounts to verify they're getting what the customer gets and that each time it matches up. Then, determine if the digital product they receive is correct and contact the developer/producer/etc and verify. Again, this would be for every seller of every product.