Amazon Granted a Patent That Prevents In-Store Shoppers From Online Price Checking (theverge.com) 465
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Amazon's long been a go-to for people to online price compare while shopping at brick-and-mortars. Now, a new patent granted to the company could prevent people from doing just that inside Amazon's own stores. The patent, titled "Physical Store Online Shopping Control," details a mechanism where a retailer can intercept network requests like URLs and search terms that happen on its in-store Wi-Fi, then act upon them in various ways. The document details in great length how a retailer like Amazon would use this information to its benefit. If, for example, the retailer sees you're trying to access a competitor's website to price check an item, it could compare the requested content to what's offered in-store and then send price comparison information or a coupon to your browser instead. Or it could suggest a complementary item, or even block content outright. Amazon's patent also lets the retailer know your physical whereabouts, saying, "the location may be triangulated utilizing information received from a multitude of wireless access points." The retailer can then use this information to try and upsell you on items in your immediate area or direct a sales representative to your location.
Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only will they track you and spy on you. but now they'll also censor your browsing.
At least they're not just silently modifying the traffic to mislead you...yet...
Now what's that theory about all participants in capitalism requiring perfect information about the market?
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Interesting)
In the real world, perfect information is practically impossible, and even when it is potentially available, it is frequently too expensive to justify the cost of acquiring it. Capitalism as typically practiced is a decentralized economic approach, which tends to work well in practice because no one is a mind reader, so the individual players tend to make economic moves that are more locally informed on average than planned economies could ever hope to achieve.
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I EVER connect to in-store wifi? Even if they manage to change the law enough to let them turn the store into a faraday cage, I can still GO OUTSIDE and find out anything I want.
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Why would I EVER connect to in-store wifi?
Because your phone's 4G meter app shows "0 MB left".
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Passive participle in headline (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon is not supposed to be able to grant patents. Only the USPTO does that in the USA.
You'd have a point if the headline began "Amazon Grants a Patent". But the use of the form "Granted" is a clue that Amazon is not the agent. To fit a headline under a publication's size limits, headline writers often follow rules like the following:
1. A headline is usually in the present tense: "USPTO Grants Patent to Amazon".
2. When the agent is obvious, such as only USPTO that ever grants patents, the sentence is flipped to passive voice: "Amazon Is Granted a Patent".
3. It's common to drop "is" and "are" from a passive main clause: "Amazon Granted a Patent".
Tendency 1 lets readers tell the difference between a passive main clause and an active one because only the passive one will have a passive participle. Most English verbs have a passive participle spelled the same as the past tense, but very few verbs (such as "come" and "run") have a passive participle identical to the present tense. Thus in this context, "Amazon Granted a Patent" means "Amazon [was] granted a patent [by the USPTO]".
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or then VPN... (Score:2)
And me that used my (not-for-profit) ISP free VPN only for paying on foreign wifis.
I may well switch it on by default, after all...
H.
(P. S. yes, there are not-for-profit ISPs. In France, FDN for instance, boldly independent since practically the creation of internet accesses...)
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My "cheap-bastard" plan costs $1 / day for 100MB + calls + text.
My "luxury-bastard" plan costs $11/month for 10GB, no calls, no text.
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How do you know that?
That's what the air ticket sellers have done for a long time now. It has been proven that if you shop around for best price then they use cookies to track that you do that and you almost never get any better price than you got at the first site.
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps that's what's needed for Joe Common to finally realize how ubiquitous tracking is and why he should care.
Then finally maybe there'll be a push towards everything going HTTPS and websites and apps finally putting some effort to protect the privacy of their users' traffic.
I have little hope that Joe Common will ever care about ubiquitous tracking. They may say they care, but they will not change their actions or habits. Most people just don't have the vision or understanding. However, I have noticed that more and more websites are going to HTTPS. It seems to have been prompted by Edward Snowden's revelations a few years ago; or at least seemed contemporaneous.
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you ever 'jump on' wifi in a store? Even if my wifi is turned on, I have to manually connect to any new networks. My experience this dates back to Best Buy and their in-store price lookup kiosks. Not sure if they still have them, but a few years back I had looked up the price of something at home saw it was in stock at the local Best Buy. Went there to purchase but the price was something like 100 dollars more. I asked the associate what was up, told him I just verified the price on the their website was less. He takes me to one of the pricing kiosks, looks up the part and shows me it matches the in-store price. Since this was before I had a smart phone (like I said it was years ago), I ran home looked up the price again, printed it out, went back to the store and got the item for that price. Turns out the in-store kiosks either pointed to an intranet mirror of the public site or had different pricing. Bottom line is don't trust the wolf when he says he isn't going to eat you.
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I hope other stores do too and I hope this is actively mentioned in the news.
They could use the same technique to block all news mentioning it.
Then finally maybe there'll be a push towards everything going HTTPS
You are confused. This has nothing to do with HTTPS. Nearly every ecommerce site is already using HTTPS.
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I hope other stores do too and I hope this is actively mentioned in the news.
They could use the same technique to block all news mentioning it.
Only if you're trying to load the news story while connected to the store's wi-fi. Not connecting to the store's wi-fi seems like it would solve this issue pretty well.
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:4, Interesting)
With HTTPS this is impossible.
Unless you happen to have a root cert. I guess the question is how much do you trust Amazon Trust Services?
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Now that is some evil shit right there.
But is there some way to detect this? Does Amazon Trust Services allow Amazon to spoof any website in the world?
Key pinning (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have visited a particular website before, and its key is pinned [wikipedia.org], the browser will know not to trust Amazon Trust Services for that site.
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According to the article whether or not HTTPS is used is very relevant to the system employed in this patent.
Well, then since near 100% of ecommerce sites use HTTPS, Amazon's technique will work roughly 0% of the time, and this is a total non-issue.
Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, given that Amazon has like, two retail locations, the point of this is to prevent other sellers like, oh, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc, from being able to block retail customers from searching for Amazon pricing on items they find in-store?
'cause it seems to me that if a seller doesn't really have a brick-and-mortar presence, that this patent doesn't help them actively.
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https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] http://gizmodo.com/241220/best... [gizmodo.com]
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So the question is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they patenting it so they can license it, or so they can prevent others from doing it by not licensing it?
Re:So the question is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So the question is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
or license it to brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, etc. If the licensing is enough to cover the margins Amazon gets for hosting a product, not only do they still make the profit margins they were expecting, but they dont have to expend labor and shipping in the process. It would be a legal, and unique, twist on the old mob shakedown 'fire insurance' scenario. Buy my amazon-blocking app and you'll never worry about lost sales from us.
Re:So the question is this: (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they patenting it so they can license it, or so they can prevent others from doing it by not licensing it?
I suspect they did this to lock it up so brick and mortar stores can't use it to prevent people from using it to check Amazon prices.
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That makes sense. By preventing others from doing it, Best Buy will not be able to prevent consumers from searching Amazon.com.
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That was my first thought - a defensive patent might make sense for Amazon here.
Still, I'd like to know how they propose to bypass SSL. Google uses it everywhere, as does Amazon, B&H, and many others.
All the retailer is going to see is a GET request for something from one of those sites, something which they could already quite easily block. What they can't do is see what page your're looking at
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And since I was unclear, they won't get a full GET request, only the domain name you're requesting. That's all that's needed by the browser to establish encryption and everything else is exchanged thereafter.
This idea looks like something from a decade or more ago.
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can they do it with https? (Score:3)
because that seems like how everyone is going with their sites and apps
Re:can they do it with https? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how TLS works. At most you expose the hostname you connect to. All path parameters in the GET request are encrypted. And it doesnt matter if GET/POST/PUT.
RST injection based on SNI (Score:2)
At most you expose the hostname you connect to.
A competitor's hostname in the Server Name Indication feature of the ClientHello message is enough to inject RST. So is a competitor's hostname in a DNS request.
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You're correct, but you're the fifth person to be correct.
How will this work with TLS? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not to mention those of us using VPN clients on our phones as well.
Nothing to see here (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called "wire tapping"
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called "wire tapping"
This is a good point to raise. A patent gives you the "exclusive right to your invention", but the important word is "exclusive". In case people aren't aware, a patent does not give you the right to implement your patent, it only gives you the right to prevent others from implementing it (via monetary restitution or an injunction by a court). You can patent something that's illegal (e.g. a new method for manufacturing heroin), and you can sue anyone that infringes your patent, but you can still be arrested or sued for implementing it yourself.
Note that I'm not arguing whether or not Amazon's system counts as wire tapping, I'm only saying that it's not the USPTO's job to decide if it counts as wire tapping.
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...I wonder if this patent could be considered a restraint of trade, maybe the FTC should have go at it....oh, forgot, the administration doesn't believe in regulations.
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Or did you mean the system that is described by the patent?
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That's good question but there isn't a very good answer. I think you can probably do as you please on private property (within a broad range of other legal constraints based on local/state/federal law and in particular, your business license), but restrain of trade seems rather a stretch. Even then you can probably refuse service to anyone as long as you can dodge the maze of "discrimination" laws.
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I think you will find that is IS NOT wiretapping. Wiretapping has a specific legal meaning, and this is certainly not it.
The store is providing a proprietary service, specifically, a dedicated, store-purchased and controlled wi-fi service. They own it, they provide it to you for nominally "free". It's not a common carrier, it's not "net neutrality", it's their network connection that they are allowing you to use.
The cost, of course, is that you aren't able to get anything you want as i
Don't use store WiFi (Score:4)
Cool plan, but I never use store WiFi. It's too much of a hassle to sign in, and it's often slow, and when you walk away, it interrupts any open connections. Instead, I just keep 4G mobile data on all the time.
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Instead, I just keep 4G mobile data on all the time.
How much does a subscription to 4G mobile data cost in your area, and how much do you save every month through price comparison?
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Of course I do. Competitor in SNI => inject RST.
In store Wi-Fi? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent, titled "Physical Store Online Shopping Control," details a mechanism where a retailer can intercept network requests like URLs and search terms that happen on its in-store Wi-Fi, then act upon them in various ways.
WTF would anyone use in-store Wi-Fi in a retail store? I have trouble even imagining a meaningful benefit to this. I don't even use "free" Wi-Fi at places like the airport outside of an emergency. Cellular network connections are generally faster, more secure, more private, and less hassle.
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WTF would anyone use in-store Wi-Fi in a retail store?
I often can't get a cellular connection inside of a store, especially if it's in a metal building.
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I often can't get a cellular connection inside of a store, especially if it's in a metal building.
"Often"? I've been in a LOT of stores and while there certainly are some dead zones, it's fairly uncommon. Certainly not enough of them to justify using in store Wi-FI.
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I often can't get a cellular connection inside of a store, especially if it's in a metal building.
"Often"? I've been in a LOT of stores and while there certainly are some dead zones, it's fairly uncommon. Certainly not enough of them to justify using in store Wi-FI.
Yes, often. I can get a signal if I have line-of-sight to the sky through the front windows. Once I'm far enough into the back that I can't see the windows it drops out. Maybe the stores are smaller where you are.
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Don't need unlimited data (Score:2)
Not everyone has an unlimited data plan for their cellphones.
You don't need an unlimited data plan. We're talking about doing a quick price comparison. That doesn't require gigabytes of data.
Sometimes wifi is just more convenient.
In a retail store? When?
m using wifi on the express bus since it's faster and doesn't drop out while going through the Palo Alto hills on 280.
What does that have to do with a price check on in-store wifi in a retail store?
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In a retail store? When?
When you're five days away from having your maxed out 2GB data cap reset to zero and you don't want to pay an extra $15 for a gig of data.
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That doesn't require gigabytes of data.
It does require greater than zero data, which is what subscribers to a "talk and text" plan get.
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If you need to be a professional infosec guy to go grocery shopping, the world's already a lost cause.
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Forget security professionals. Most people are just plain lazy and won't go that extra mile to use the in store wifi. It requires an extra intentional step that most people simply aren't going to bother with.
Plus, American phone plans are BAD but not THAT bad.
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If you need to be a professional infosec guy to go grocery shopping, the world's already a lost cause.
AC is pissed off that I'm no longer trolling the trolls and I'm spending my time karma whoring.
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WTF would anyone use in-store Wi-Fi in a retail store? I have trouble even imagining a meaningful benefit to this. I don't even use "free" Wi-Fi at places like the airport outside of an emergency. Cellular network connections are generally faster, more secure, more private, and less hassle.
Maybe for people with bad data plans it's more of an issue, but in general, I agree. A grocery store that I shop at offers free wi-fi, but I turn off my wi-fi when I go into the store. It is actually slower for me to pull up info on their coupon app on the wi-fi than over the cell connection.
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It wouldn't be far-fetched to assume they would use cellular-signal blocking tech alongside this
Great plan... until someone dies in the store because calling 911 from a cell phone didn't work.
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Have U.S. carriers fully phased out legacy GSM and CDMA2000 voice in favor of VoLTE? Until they do, 911 calls go over a different frequency band.
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Holy shit, and I thought my 500 MB/month was terrible.
Get a better plan (Score:2)
I get 50 MB a month of mobile data. The only way I ever use the Internet on my phone is through Wi-Fi.
Then you need to shop around for a better plan. There are plenty available for reasonable prices.
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I get 50 MB a month of mobile data. The only way I ever use the Internet on my phone is through Wi-Fi.
Total Wireless has a 5 GB plan [totalwireless.com] for $35 a month.
How much does it save you per month? (Score:2)
Total Wireless has a 5 GB plan for $35 a month.
On T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plan, I currently pay $3 per month for 30 minutes of voice, text messages, or a combination thereof. Does in-store price comparison save you anywhere near $32 per month?
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On T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plan, I currently pay $3 per month for 30 minutes of voice, text messages, or a combination thereof. Does in-store price comparison save you anywhere near $32 per month?
Sometimes, yes. I saved $40 on a telescope I bought for my wife at Christmas by scanning the item with my Amazon app. That extra $32 also gives you unlimited voice & text, so it's a pretty good deal compared to most others. Even with Tracfone, you can get a flip phone that will give you 90 minutes of talk time & 90 texts (which also roll over) for $9.99 a month.
Holy moly we're approaching AppStore IRL (Score:2, Interesting)
This is disturbing on so many levels.
How long until it's expanded to the neighbour's non-competing store? (It's their wi-fi, they can do what they want with it)
How long until it's expanded to the whole shopping mall? (It's their complimentary wi-fi, they can do what they want)
How long until it's expanded to your local ISP monopoly? (It's a customer-service that enhances stockholder value, if you don't like it you can always get another ISP)
This kind of abuse should be prohibited by net neutrality regulation
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All regulation would do is make them turn off the WiFi entirely, so you have to do all price-checking on their oh so helpful store terminals, which they know everything about. At least with WiFi, you can use HTTPS to keep them from seeing what you're checking, even if they know where you're checking.
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Why would you assume that? Stores aren't *currently* blocking competition, yet stores are *currently* offering complimentary wi-fi. Why would they stop that if anti-competitive practices were regulated? What are you basing your assumptions on?
Also, I very much doubt any of this would cause the slightest consternation for the average /. user, but it would be effective on the vast majority of the tech-illiterate population.
Who uses random wifi? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the purpose of the patent is to bury it (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that most of the online price checking takes place at OTHER stores, with customers checking the price of something on AMAZON. If Amazon thought to patent this method, maybe it's because they don't want competitors to block these online price checks.
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Good. (Score:2)
This will push online retailers to use SSL for everything, as SSL will render the snooping and content altering aspects of this patent ineffective. Ergo, this is a good thing.
Chaos Theory (Score:2)
We'll find a way.
This is nothing... (Score:3)
Illegal to interefere or block wifi. (Score:2)
They could send you coupons, but they can't stop you from seeing anything you want to see.
Hotels tried to do something similar to force people to use their in-hotel wifi but they got slammed by the FCC.
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Those are entirely different things (unless TFA contradicts the summary). What hotels tried to do was to block hotspots in order to force you to connect e.g. your laptop to the hotel's wifi (presumably at a premium) rather than your own hotspot. From what I remember, they pretty much willfully caused interference to accomplish this, thus why the FCC were not fans.
This patent, on the other hand, is about intercepting and reacting to content while on the store's wifi.
Prior art (Score:2)
Hacking (Score:2)
New definition of MITM attack (Score:3)
Turns out what we really should have been fearing all along was, "Marketing In the Middle".
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Amazon Granted a Patent That Prevents In-Store Shoppers From Online Price Checking
Hey Beau, if you didn't know, only the USPTO can grant patents in the USA through its powers vested in it through Congress. Congress itself *USED TO* grant patents way back in the day. Amazon CANNOT grant a patent.
Amazon Granted a Patent doesn't mean Amazon gave anyone a patent, any more than Trump accused in obstruction investigation means Trump accused someone of obstruction.
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Trump accused in obstruction investigation means Trump accused someone of obstruction.
Trump thinks it means exactly that.
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Are you saying we found Trump's Slashdot handle?
We did it Internet!
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Trump accused in obstruction investigation means Trump accused someone of obstruction.
Trump thinks it means exactly that.
Yeah, poor reading comprehension can be found in all walks of life.
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Ambiguous grammar (Score:5, Informative)
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Depending on their data plans & usage, yeah
Initially, when I read this, I thought that this was about Amazon somehow preventing me from doing price comparisons when I am logged into their site from my computer. To which, I thought, hey, I can just pull up my tablet and check the other sites, and then decide where to go. Seeing this story, there are 2 potential solutions. First is to do the homework at home, check out the place w/ the best deal, and then go there, and not do one's comparison shopp
Spend a pound to save a penny (Score:2)
First is to do the homework at home, check out the place w/ the best deal, and then go there, and not do one's comparison shopping in the store.
But then you have to make two round trips to the store instead of one: one to look for which product you want and one to make the purchase. Depending on how long it takes to ride the bus to the store and back and how much you make per hour at your day job, you might not come out ahead.
The other is to use one's cellular connection to do the online comparison on the phone and then decide who to go w/
But then you're paying for a cellular connection, and the difference in monthly price between a plan with voice, text, and data and one with only voice and text might exceed what you save per month through aggressive price com
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When cellular service costs $36 per month with data or $36 per year without, then yes, people will choose to make HTTPS connections over stores' open WLANs.
Re:This might be defensive (Just like 1-Click) (Score:3, Insightful)
Again why does anyone buy anything from Amazon. They are an evil evil evil company. They don't make anything better, only more expensive (long term).
Most likely this patent was asked for by Amazon so they *STOP* retailers from doing this. If a retailer does this, then Amazon can ask the store for all their profits since the beginning of time. Amazon hope customers will do this so they will find it cheaper through the amazon store.
Please people, stop giving Amazon any money, don't buy from these creeps.
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The manager was walking by and I said what's up and showed him the online price. He said quite quickly, show the cashier, we'll give you that price.
Was the manager walking funny? Because if I saw a $15 upcharge I'd tell the manager to ram the cartridge up his ass.
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I imagine that the terms of major movie studios' licenses to Amazon Video already requires Amazon to build technology to identify VPNs.