Amazon announced that they are extending their A-to-z Guarantee to protect customers in the unlikely event a defective product sold through Amazon causes property damage or personal injury – regardless of who sells it.

Amazon stated in a post on their website that the company will directly pay customers for claims under $1,000 – which Amazon says account for more than 80% of cases – at no cost to sellers. Amazon also says it may step in to pay claims in higher accounts if the seller is unresponsive or rejects a claim that Amazon believe’s to be valid.

Another interesting thing from Amazon’s post is mention of the Amazon Insurance Accelerator. According to Amazon, “sellers have long been required to obtain product liability insurance.” Amazon reported that it worked with an insurance broker to create Amazon Insurance Accelerator, and that sellers only pay for the cost of the insurance itself.

CNBC reported that Amazon’s third-party marketplace, “where counterfeits, unsafe products, and even expired goods have become a notorious problem” have attracted scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.

Last month, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission sued Amazon to force it to recall dozens of defective products sold by merchants on its marketplace. Perhaps Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee is a means by which to appease the Commission.

Financial Times reported that Amazon told the Texas Supreme Court that it was merely the middleman in a transaction where someone was injured by a product they purchased through Amazon. The Texas Supreme Court agreed with Amazon’s position. A California court said Amazon could be held potentially liable for third-party sales, in the same way a bricks-and- mortar retailer might be.

Overall, I think the result is that Amazon will take more effort to remove dangerous products from its platform. That’s good for everyone who makes a purchase on Amazon.

Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Karl A. Racine, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com seeking to end its anticompetitive practices that have raised prices for consumers and stifled innovation and choice across the entire online retail market.

Amazon has used its dominant position in the online retail market to win at all costs. It maximizes profits at the expense of third-party sellers and consumers, while harming competition, stifling innovation, and illegally tilting the playing field in its favor,” said AG Racine. “We filed this antitrust lawsuit to put an end to Amazon’s illegal control of prices in the retail marketplace that expands options available to District residents and promotes competition, innovation, and choice.

CNBC reported that that Attorney General Racine is seeking to end Amazon’s illegal use of price agreements to avoid competition. The lawsuit also asks for damages and penalties to deter similar conduct. The lawsuit asks the court to stop what it calls Amazon’s ability to harm competition through a variety of remedies as needed, which could include structural relief, often referred to as a form of breakup.

According to CNBC, shares of Amazon barely moved on the announcement, down 1% as of Tuesday afternoon.

In my opinion, Attorney General Racine is doing the right thing by filing this kind of lawsuit against Amazon. Unfortunately, given how much money Amazon has, it seems likely that it has much more financial resources than an Attorney General’s office would have. I suspect that Amazon will win the case because it can spend more on attorneys and will not be harmed by dragging out the lawsuit for as long as possible.

Amazon announced that it is extending until further notice a moratorium it imposed last year on police use of its facial recognition software, Reuters reported. Amazon halted the practice for one year starting in June 2020, during the hight of protests across the United States against police brutality toward people of color.

Reuters was the first to report that Amazon’s extension underscores how facial recognition remains a sensitive issue for big companies. According to Reuters, Amazon said last year it hoped Congress would put in place rules to ensure ethical use of the technology. No such law has materialized.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation responded to this news in a tweet: “After a year of organizing by civil liberties and racial justice orgs, Amazon will indefinitely extend its moratorium on selling face recognition tech to police. The admission of those harms must be accompanied by ending Amazon’s Ring-police partnerships.”

The Guardian provided some details about the Ring-police partnerships:

Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how the content can used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

According to The Guardian, since Amazon bought Ring in 2018, it has brokered more than 1,800 partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, who can request recorded video content from Ring users without a warrant.

It is good that Amazon is indefinitely continuing its moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, but this should be considered a good start. Until and unless Amazon uncouples Ring video content from access by law enforcement agencies, innocent people can still be surveilled by local police.