German Court: "Sharing" Your Amazon Purchases Is Spamming (reuters.com) 195
An anonymous reader writes: A court in Germany has ruled that the 'Share' links which Amazon provides to customers directly after making a purchase at the site are unlawful. The "Share" functionality provides buttons which allow the consumer to signal a new purchase via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. The court, ratifying an earlier decision made at a lower court, declared that emails initiated via the Share function constitute "unsolicited advertising and unreasonable harassment."
Interesting post, thanks (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks for the post, I'll have to check it out.
Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:4, Informative)
What do the emails look like? Is there any "speech" from the user, or do they just plug in an email address and amazon does all the "speaking"?
I assume it is like most commercial Share buttons.
Amazon pre-fills the form pretending to speak on behalf of the buyer, but that person can edit that text however he/she wants.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriouslyl? I mean...why?
I know there are some people out there who like to brag, or show off....but I can't believe that is in the majority out there, is it?
Are there really a significant enough number of people that actually 'share' some if not all of what they buy online??
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oh frankie bought mario kart 354 extreme edition? that sounds fun, ill scoop it and we can play
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"Share buttons provide a quick way to do that."
Those Share Buttons also 'share' everything they can obtain from your connection with themselves, they all do that, that's why they are called trackers.
And since they are everywhere nowadays, they'll know everything you ever did on the web, even if you never click on one in your life.
That's where Ghostery comes in.
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Interesting. Bill Gates' philanthropy is for sure conspicuous compassion.
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Bah. Posting to undo an unintended down-mod. Someone give this an upmod. Two to make up for my stupidity.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Insightful)
It's freedom of speech if you take the link, copy it into Facebook or Twitter and say "just got me one of these babies".
It's spam when a commercial entity gives you a quick means of shilling their product without stopping to think "do my friends really give a shit?" It's doubly spam if your friends email is ever provided to Amazon in this process without their consent.
Because if your friends didn't give Amazon permission to send email, pretending like you spontaneously sent the email is kind of bullshit.
No, sorry, making commercial communication appear to have been a spontaneous outpouring by consumers is a shady way of getting around stuff like opt-in.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Interesting)
But who I am kidding, most user generated content on social media sites isn't much better than this spam. I hope the kill off the rest of the "share to x" buttons out there because there's plenty of other crap beyond just Amazon or online retailers.
I had a great idea for a Facebook replacement, but it turns out there's already plenty of prior art for meeting at a pub and having a beer with friends so I don't think I can get a patent.
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It's doubly spam if your friends email is ever provided to Amazon in this process without their consent.
THIS. It is not okay to spam me just because one of your customers has me in their address book, Facebook friends, etc. and you got their permission. You did not get my permission. The amount of bullshit spam I was getting from LinkedIn, because other people installed that app and it harvested all of their contacts to send spam to, got so bad I had to block LinkedIn's IP ranges from connecting to my mail server. Some companies think it's reasonable to spam their customers and everyone they know, as if ther
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Hey, dude. Amazon didn't spam anyone. They simply helped your "friends" do it in exactly the same way that social media sites are intended to.
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It's spam when a commercial entity gives you a quick means of shilling their product without stopping to think "do my friends really give a shit?" It's doubly spam if your friends email is ever provided to Amazon in this process without their consent.
I would argue that it's spam only in the case where Amazon send direct messages to people without their consent. If they make it easier for you to do it, but their own servers don't actually get involved, I can't see the problem - then it's the purchaser who's sending the message, regardless who composed it.
I guess with the email option, it must be Amazon's servers that send the message - in which case I fully agree that constitutes spam.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Insightful)
So, basically no different from the entire rest of Facebook?
"I just ate a bag of Doritos" - I don't give a shit.
"Look at these pictures of my new puppy/baby/ocelot/car/hairstyle" - I don't give a shit.
"I just bought a new Dyson Vacuum on Amazon" - I don't give a shit.
"Sally has just changed her relationship status to emotional blackmail" - I don't give a shit.
"I just took a great big shit" - Nope, I still don't give a shit.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you not realize it isn't the quality of your friends' posts that is poor, but the quality of your friends?
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A friend is some one who organizes a rescue party as soon as he knows my plane crashed in the sahara.
If he used facebook for that, it is fine for me.
If he spams me on facebook with his last purchases I probably make a group for him alone, put him inside and remove the 'post on my timeline' or what ever ... bottom line: he is still,my friend even if he posts retarded nonsense.
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At the risk of pulling in an anecdotal counter-example, I knew someone who IRL was one of the most sleazy and manipulative bastards I've ever met. He flat out told me he was in the CS program at school despite having no interest or affinity for CS because "nerds made good targets" for his so
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"I don't give a shit." :P
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Funny)
I couldn't agree more. In fact, there's a petition to prevent people from sending one-click spam to other people. Click here [http] to sign it. It will automatically detect who your representative is from your IP address and send him a letter.
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Warning: link sends you to goatse. Not a problem for me, of course, as I use systemd with a hosts file.
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It's freedom of speech if you take the link, copy it into Facebook or Twitter and say "just got me one of these babies".
It's spam when a commercial entity gives you a quick means...
Nonsense. Is it legit if you hand write a letter to your grandma about your purchase, but spam if you use a pre-printed letter that came in the box, and you fill in a few blanks before mailing it to grandma? No? Specifically why or why not?
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Is it legit if you hand write a letter to your grandma about your purchase, but spam if you use a pre-printed letter that came in the box, and you fill in a few blanks before mailing it to grandma?
What if the retailer, at the time of sale, simply says "mind if we tell your grandma"? If the answer is "no", then she fills out the letter, including the blanks, and even mails it for you?
One difference that immediately springs to the forefront is that in the former scenarios *I* clearly mailed the letter. I filled out the form, I dropped it in the outgoing mail box.
In the latter the retailer sent it, at best, 'with my permission'.
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In the latter the retailer sent it, at best, 'with my permission'.
1) Why are you putting quotes around 'with my permission' ... what you're describing is exactly with your permission.
2) How does the retailer have your grandma's postal address?
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1) Why are you putting quotes around 'with my permission' ... what you're describing is exactly with your permission.
Because the letter I authorized based on their description of the service, and the letter that was actually sent (details buried in fine print, or perhaps not disclosed at all?) bear very little resemblance.
For example, if I order flowers to be delivered to my grandmother, and there's a box that says "include courtesy call to coordinate delivery" and I tick it, with this vision of you calling dear grams and confirming she'd be home that afternoon to receive them in person.
But instead you use that courtesy
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It is spam as you don't write a single email to your grandma but to everybody amazon or the social site considers your 'friend'.
Perhaps you start to grasp the concept of automated mass mailings to people who don't want those mails eventually.
Or do you really think a german granny sued her grandson or amazone?
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I think someone who never actually clicked the button sued Amazon.
It is amazing how many hoops people are willing to jump through trying to prove that Person A asking (or giving permission to) Person B to do something on behalf of Person A is not Person A doing it.
Next up will be a ruling claiming that social media itself is violating some law or the other because "automated list processing" instead of personally writing every damn note with quill and ink.
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Because there is a difference between one and one hundred. Even very small children who can't yet count till three intuitively understand that.
The problem with spam is the sheer volume. It's a classic tragedy of the commons: If you allow one company to send UCE, you have to allow all of them, which - due to the cost being near zero - means all of them will do it, which means e-mail becomes useless.
Actually, did someone put me into a time machine back to the early 90s? Why do I even have to explain that? I t
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Except that the way these things actually work is I, Amazon's customer, authorize Amazon to post this message to my facebook, twitter, etc account. It then becomes visible to anyone who can see my social media feeds, and automatically notifies anyone who gets notifications about activity on my feeds.
So, anyone seeing my shared purchase info, has opted in to seeing whatever crap I post to the stream, and I authorised this post.
It's an asinine thing to do, but ultimately it is not in any philosophical way equ
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But presumably it only goes to your acolytes, or whatever they're called?
Don't want to know every time Quim Cardassian buys some new knickers? Don't sign up to her list.
Re:Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:5, Insightful)
There are spam laws, you can't just pretend they don't exist.
I sure as hell don't want to use an internet where any asshole can decided that I don't get a vote in if I see their commercial speech or not.
Sorry, take your anti-government crap elsewhere. Accepting all spam as free speech is idiotic. You do not have the freedom to send me unsolicited commercial email just because you're an ass who thinks its his right.
Fuck that. The onslaught of bullshit from corporations would be impossible.
I don't give a shit about what some asshole in marketing believes is the free speech of his company.
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Yes, but it isn't some asshole in marketing sending you the message. It is someone who knows you and has bought something. They then have to actively choose to put your email into a form (or maybe it can connect to your address book, I don't know I never used the stupid thing).
Do I like it? Not at all. But I don't think it's spam. Amazon isn't going through your contacts and saying that you bought X without your knowledge. Or it's not firing off emails to random people saying a person with a purchase histo
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So its a clever way of creating the spam message. It doesn't change what it is.
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Freedom of speech means that no one has any right to your attention. And that means that you have the right to tell everyone to shut the fuck up if he tries to get your attention nevertheless.
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I don't give a shit about what some asshole in marketing believes is the free speech of his company.
Of course the solution is simple: Companies shouldn't have free speech. Free speech should be for people.
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Yup and Germany has no freedom of speech. Oh Germans will claim otherwise but their courts just told them that, no, you do not have the freedom to tell all your social media contacts what you are doing and if you do, we will harm the guy that helped you do it.
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However, I don't see why they're targeting Amazon here. As I understand it, it's the people who use that share button who are to blame.
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Advertising is not a freedom of speech issue (Score:3, Informative)
All spammers could claim the same "freedom of speech" defence.
Fortunately the world is not quite stupid enough to accept that as a valid excuse for what is very clearly unsolicited advertising.
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Fortunately German courts are not quite stupid enough to accept that as a valid excuse for what is very clearly unsolicited advertising. (FTFY)
In many countries, free speech wins over consumer protection. A notable example is the USA, where "corporations are people".
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This case is about the share button, when you buy something and the court is getting its knickers in a knot about nothing.
In German culture, it would be crude and crass for someone to put that into their social media feed or send an email. The number of people who do this kind of thing is astonishingly small. That they actually felt the need to forbid it is the odd part. Then again, it should not surprise me that they'd mandate social norms. You are not allowed to give you kid a nontraditional name.
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A german court does not do this on his own accord (would an US court?), someone sued Amazon, thats all. And the court ruled: what Amazon is doing is the same as spamming, regardless that a customer is clicking the button and a social media is distributing the 'mail' which clearly comes from: Amazon.
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Yes, what the German court ruled is that a corporation has no right to ask a customer if the corporation should do some list processing on behalf of the customer. Everyone realizes that, even in Germany, rulings at that level are about legal principles and not about the two entities named in the case, right?
Next up will be Microsoft and Google docs for providing mail merge functionality.
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From a guy who learns about court cases by reading blogs written by people with an agenda instead of reading court cases. The ruling you are referring to said nothing about corporations being people; it simply pointed out that corporations (especially corporations formed for the sole purpose of pooling money to make political speech) retain all the rights of the individual people that formed the corporation and directed the corporation to do something.
The ruling also pointed out that all the idiot employees
Re:Advertising is not a freedom of speech issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately the world is not quite stupid enough to accept that as a valid excuse for what is very clearly unsolicited advertising.
It's not unsolicited advertising. If you don't like seeing communication that the friends and contacts YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO HEAR FROM are sending out through deliberate action on their part, then you simply have poor choice in friends and are trying to blame someone else.
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After I ran out of points to upmod you with...
Re:Advertising is not a freedom of speech issue (Score:5, Insightful)
in what way is the advertising unsolicited? the receiver did not ask their friends to spam them.
You wouldn't by any chance represent a sales or marketing type, would you? I had to deal with a spammer for a while (as in, supporting his activities). Even though he was buying software to harvest emails to send unwanted and unsolicited email, he too found ways to justify his activities.
What was particularly memorable was dealing with his complaints about his spam being filtered out as being spam. He insisted and swore up and down that it wasn't. Unfortunately for him, spam filters are pretty good these days and even if *he* as the *sender* didn't feel like it was spam, the rest of the world disagreed.
So, yes, it *is* unsolicited advertising. I'm glad you don't have my email address because by the sound of things you wouldn't honor any request to quit fucking spamming me.
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It's not unsolicited advertising. It's an email from a friend that you don't give a shit about. Before Amazon provided an easy way for them to send the news of their recent order then they would have gone to their email client and sent you an email from there. You wouldn't have called that spam.
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When you signed up for a social media account and said you were interested in seeing things that your friends posted, then yes, you solicited that communication. Do you have any clue what social media is and what it does?
And if you were my "friend" and asked to be removed from my contacts list, yes, I would do that. As others have said, you have (had?) a crappy friend.
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It's not unsolicited advertising. If you don't like seeing communication that the friends and contacts YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO HEAR FROM
It must be nice living in the future. At least, I presume that's where you're EMPHATICALLY writing from, since here in the present, IMAP4 doesn't require that you Follow/Friend someone before they can e-mail you...which was one of the ways that this spam went out from Amazon.
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It must be nice living in the future. At least, I presume that's where you're EMPHATICALLY writing from, since here in the present, IMAP4 doesn't require that you Follow/Friend someone before they can e-mail you...which was one of the ways that this spam went out from Amazon.
The only time that such a message was produced in connection with a transaction at Amazon was when the person who BOUGHT the stuff at Amazon personally took the action of launching the notification to the people who follow them on social media. Amazon didn't dip into their mailboxes and spam anybody.
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So, then please explain me in your simple laymen words how a click of your friend on an Amazon web page leads to a 'mail' which you receive without involving Amazon sending that 'mail' to you?
Magic?
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Obviously people are having trouble realizing that a person can actually ask another person to do something on their behalf and that sometimes the "person" being asked is just a machine. I guess Germany doesn't have realtors or any other form of sales agent.
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In exactly what way is the ability to communicate with other humans not a human right?
Exactly what category of right is freedom of speech if not a human right?
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It is not. Sending adverts to all your friends is spam not freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is about the right to be not censored by the government to suppress political, scientific and religious opinion. It is definitely not about ones last purchase, which is just something for a narcissistic person to express their self-importance. It often helps to visualize such posts as messages or letters to all your friends. It is annoying to get all these totally unimportant messages.
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Seems like freedom of speech to me
You know what? Freedom of speech is there to protect important stuff, not bullshit like this. There is no absolute freedom of speech because there are already several forms of speech that, as a society, we deem illegal [wikipedia.org]. So if a court decides that a vendor encouraging people to advertise for them for free is spamming, then I'm happy to take that in the spirit in which it is intended and not debase the important right to freedom of speech to defend Amazon. Where your rights are actually being eroded is by thi
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No, freedom of speech means the government is not in the business of deciding what is bullshit and what is valuable (from a speech perspective).
If freedom of speech means exactly that the government has a responsibility to censor based on the content of the message, then you have truly found the Orwellian definition of it.
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But this is Germany, and European countries have different interpretations of 'Freedom of Speech': Freedom of speech in Germany. [wikipedia.org]
And, if you ask me, it is for the best. If applied in the US, it would cut some of the utter nonsense I hear everyday when I turn on the news.
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So the current Amazon Prime offering that is based on one of Phillip K. Dicks novels would be banned in Germany because of the prominent use of the swastika? Or is it only certain, government approved, uses of the the swastika that are acceptable. So Germany could restrict a movie that featured swastikas even it if wasn't promoting Nazism but they still didn't like the content?
And if Germany were truly enforcing its laws in an unbiased manner, nearly every posting on slashdot originating in Germany would be
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Sorry but after seeing articles and videos by Germans (criticising Germany's handling of migrants) censored as "hate speech", you most decidedly do not have free speech over there.
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Or they could have taken the rational approach and said that if the someone soliciting it (clicking on the button) is not associated with the company and/or has an outside relationship with the recipients, then the company is simply acting on behalf of the purchaser and then that still takes care of actual spammers.
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If the button did not exist, would the person have sent the message telling their friends about the purchase? If so, then it's hard to justify that it's spam originating from the company[1]. If not, then it's clear that Amazon is at least partially to blame for someone receiving unsolicited commercial email advertising Amazon.
Did the email just contain a message from the person, or was it decorated with Amazon branding and 'click here to buy more stuff from Amazon' logos? If it just contained the mess
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We are talking about spam emails here.
Not about freedom of speech.
I'm pretty sure you have a spam filer, too.
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Seems like freedom of speech to me
What? People go to Amazon, click a button, thereby performing unpaid advertising work for the company, and that counts as 'speech'? Certainly not speech by the customer; nor indeed thought. It is advertising, carried out by Amazon and sent out unsolicited. It is clearly SPAM, and the involvement of a customer's click is merely a new way of finding addressees. Odious. Underhanded. Not speech.
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No - it's about unsolicited advertising
The point is: your "friends" cannot decide that you want that advertising. Only you can.
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No. Even US Courts have ruled freedom of speech does not mean you have a right to stuff your opinion down someones throat...
How is communication initiated by one of your friends, a person you have chosen to hear from when they update their status or make postings, somehow them stuffing something down your throat? You have TOTAL control over whether or not you hear from those people. If you don't like it, just don't follow them - you obviously have made a poor choice in bad-mannered friends, and are trying to blame someone else for your own shortcomings.
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True, but they have yet to rule that me sending them an email is "stuffing it down their throat". In fact, US courts have ruled that a physical (real-world) relationship does imply the level of consent needed to send emails and even phone calls.
The US courts, so far, have not ruled that my asking a third party to act on my behalf is not the same as me having done it myself.
I guess Germans can now take comfort in the fact that they can no hire a hitman to do their killing and not be held responsible for the
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Yes we have. The boundaries between free speech (which is a human right) and other human rights are just a little bit different than in the US. These differences are an expression of the differences in culture.
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How is censoring any negative comments about the economic migrants an example of Germany embracing freedom of speech?
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Parent claims that Germany has free speech and counters a claim to the contrary referencing "differences in culture". The irony is that people who are trying to point out a "difference in culture" with the migrants are having their speech censored by Germany.
Re: Seems like freedom of speech to me (Score:2)
No they habe not. You could say that in public. Your opinions are communucated by the media. There habe Bern hundrets of talk shows on the subject in the past years. Often it is you who do not want to talk to the media, which you call conveniently "lying media" (Lügenpresse). However, the only ones who come up with fairy tales in the subject are right wingers and fascist. BTW in most news media , for example the Zeit, you can post what you want in the comments. And many of you do so. Their commen
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And defining abuse is censorship and then no more freedom...
Heil Amazon! (Score:2)
Jawohl, mein herr!
Fun fact: Amazon doesn't pay any taxes in Germany, they're all "profits" "realized" in Ireland.
Where it pays no taxes too.
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While the whole thread is off topic, it is problematic when states are not well funded because some people and companies can sneak out with their money. Actually, it is stealing from the public and it shows that such people or companies do not care about other or the effects of their actions. In short they behave sociopathic. It also shows that they hope that others pa their taxes, because without funding the sate will collapse and there will be no schools, no food stamps (USA) and no minimal income (EU), n
Probably badly translated (Score:3)
Court verdicts are not easy to read, but they managed to garble it further.
The verdict is not about sharing your purchases but the unsolicited sharing of offers from marketplace vendors.
great... (Score:2)
So, when are they going to rule on all those pictures of meals on facebook. Like, yeah, wish you were here, but bring your AmEx black card.
A little more seriously, awhile back a relative enabled some odious Netflix feature that posted cover art and a Netflix-generated synopsis of every title he viewed. He watched a *lot* of Netflix. Man, that was annoying. I just turned off any contributions from his account in my news stream. Other family members unfriended him. But the point is, features like this t
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Exactly, it reminds me of the bad old (clearly not good old) "I am listening to Britey Spears - Baby One More Time.mp3" we use to see every 3 minutes on IRC.
No one gives a shit...
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Exactly, it reminds me of the bad old (clearly not good old) "I am listening to Britey Spears - Baby One More Time.mp3" we use to see every 3 minutes on IRC.
No one gives a shit...
Agreed. Except that, you have to feel a little sorry for someone so culturally bereft.
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I'm not sure why people would want this (amazon) feature anyway.
"I just bought a Sony X950B on Amazon!"
Heh, I've already seen it "ruin" Christmas gifts for a few people. Not due to the email spam, but the recently purchased items stuff etc.
God forbid a whole household use the same tablets or laptops.
Next up: Social media "likes"? (Score:2)
If this counts as harassment and unsolicited advertisements, why not the junk that fills up my feed when a social media contact "likes" some commercial speech, and MyLinkedFace+ copies the original to what I see? I could get behind that kind of rationale to block the stupid viral content that I often see.
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Or those stupid "what does this internet quiz say about you" things that people share because they want you to be as fascinated with themselves as they are.
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Re: Next up: Social media "likes"? (Score:2)
That makes no sense. If I opted in to see ads, I opted in. Whether they come direct from Amazon or via Google is immaterial.
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That makes no sense. If I opted in to see ads, I opted in. Whether they come direct from Amazon or via Google is immaterial.
No, the question is if there's a valid chain of agreements between the advertiser and the recipient. If Amazon buys ad space on Facebook and I have agreed through their terms of service to receive ads, the chain is valid. Obviously that right doesn't extend to Facebook users in general, if you sign up a spambot of course it's unsolicited because I agreed to receive ads but not from you. So did you in the friend request get explicit permission to send/forward commercial email to me? If not, then you don't ha
Re: Next up: Social media "likes"? (Score:3)
That still doesn't make sense, unless you mean to say that my friends don't have permission to send me emails, which is clearly an untenable proposition. In this situation, Amazon is suggesting and facilitating the sending of an email by my friend, which is almost exactly the same as something showing up on my social event stream -- Facebook suggests and facilitates the "like" being sent, Amazon suggests and facilitates the "email" being sent.
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Only YOU can decide to allow advertising from a certain company.
Your "friends" cannot make that decision for you. As simple as that.
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Uhmmmmmm (Score:2)
Doesn't Germany have other more pressing issues to worry about than Amazon?
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I found one of their "share this purchase" things so hilarious I took a screen shot.
I bought a bunch of syringes for putting epoxy in fiber optic connectors. A perfectly legitimate purchase on the company dime but somehow "share this purchase with your friends and family" with a picture of a bunch of epoxy needles just seemed so wrong, hard to explain, and out of place I had to take a screen shot.
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Uh, not exactly. If I direct Amazon to act on my behalf, it is me.
Let's try this to see how hiring someone to act on your behalf still means that you did it. I don't like Joe. I don't like Joe so much that I hire Fred to murder Joe. Fred murders Joe. Fred gets caught and snitches on me. I do all of this in Germany. Does the German government all of a sudden realize that there is nothing they can do about me because I was smart enough to hire Fred or does the German government also claim I am guilty of murde
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EU data protection law simply doesn't allow that.
They do not have permission to email that address from the OWNER of that address. This is already well-established.
But that doesn't affect anything like someone sharing on their own Facebook, via their own Facebook account. It's an entirely different process.
You can't give someone else permission to email me or see my Facebook. Only I can do that. But that doesn't affect what you spam on your own timeline.