Yikes - wishing you a full speedy recovery.
Florida added on September 16 (with its own added claims against its state laws).
This article had a concise explainer of the central issue: “The [FTC’s] lawsuit’s central dispute is not whether advertisers could set a maximum bid, but how Amazon determined the amount charged when an ad won.”
And as an Amazon Advertising customer (though not for many years), this is the first I’m hearing of these other factors besides bids that Amazon alleges contribute to final pricing. 
Is that new?
Amazon says advertisers never pay more than their maximum bid. It also says its system uses hard and soft reserve prices and evaluates ad relevance alongside the bid, rather than selecting placements by bid amount alone.
Comedy reference here.
I’m not going to defend Amazon, but it is interesting to note that the regulations and laws that are claimed to have been “broken” here are simply too vague.
There but for the grace of God you and I.
The “discretion” of the US attorney and/or the FTC, or whatever is waaaay to important in the process here. The only way to understand the regs and laws is to understand the court rulings, as the laws themselves are not clear on specifics, both for civil and criminal violations.
Now, if you talk with a typical US attorney, he/she will say that they don’t want to be so very specific, as that would make a “roadmap” for evading the laws, while still doing bad things. But the problem here isn’t that Amazon is a greedy bunch of jerks who scheme to “maximize revenue” from what was money in sellers pockets, it is that it is impossible to say if their scheme was legal or not.
Many moons ago, was I was exec at one of the larger corporations to ever terrorize the planet.
I was warned, as we were all warned about the new criminality of “a records retention policy”. As Arthur Anderson, one of the largest consulting firms on the planet, had been prosecuted for merely following an existing document retention policy to the letter, and shredding documents per that schedule for their client, Enron. The resulting prosecution caused all their clients to abandon them, and the firm went kaput, even though it was eventually found completely innocent of wrongdoing in 2005 by the Supreme Court by a unanimous ruling. But it was too late - they were out of business, they had to surrender all their CPA licenses, lost all their clients, and lost most of their employees after an initial 2002 “guilty” verdict, tarring them with the same bush as Enron.
A single employee could be indicted and charged with some unrelated offense (example “drug trafficking” for mere possession, which would be a typical “overcharging”). Now that guy could fight, but it would likely bankrupt him, moreso if they take the tactic of “seizing assets that may have been purchased with drug money”, which means his house, life savings, car, and baseball card collection. So, the guy’s lawyer is surely gonna negotiate a plea deal, where the legality of all this is never challenged, but the guy gets a lesser sentence, and even that sentence can be waived - if he turns “Whisteblower” on his employer, or at least his own boss. He will fabricate stuff to save his own hide, as he is thinking of his family.
So, the prosecutor and/or regulator can use these targeted criminal prosecutions to build a case against a targeted corporate entity. They “walk up the org chart”, and present each person with a set of charges that are very likely bogus, but impossible to fight “The Government” due to the time, unthinkable cost and certainty of being unemployable for simply being indicted, let alone found guilty.
And each guilty plea expands the scope of the vague law, and makes actions that were legal into actions that are now criminal offenses. Example - Martha Stewart sold her stock in a company because she heard that a principal in that company was dumping his shares. Not at all illegal, but claimed to be some form of “insider trading”. Martha was also trapped into “lying to government agents”, as she soft-pedaled her knowledge, and falsely claimed that there was an pre-existing “sell order” on that stock tied to a specific price drop mark. So, she really only went to jail for lying, not for what she lied about doing, as what she did was not strictly illegal for an arms-length investor without a significant stake in the company.
But don’t cheer Amazon’s prosecution for “maximizing profits” so loudly, as you might be next. It is a minefield, and “compliance” is almost impossible. Today’s legal strategy can be tomorrow’s criminal act, and no one can keep up on top of it all.
And never have any conversation with even a local cop, let alone a federal agent, without a really good federal business law lawyer present. Not even about the weather. Seriously.
I don’t think those who were subscribed to prime without their consent, or those of us who have to pray that the ad campaigns are transparent and honest feel the laws are too vague, when no other laws exist.
After all, this is why we have juries and grand juries in the first place. A law being “vague” is only one of several steps in the process to actually bring/prosecute charges, a case, or consumer protections. Then we have the entire appeal process as another safegaurd.
Many of those involved in Enron were caught destroying evidence becoming a criminal, more than the FTC would have ever affected them via the corporate FTC actions. I do agree with your core premise, but find it difficult for a society to make laws for every conceivable crime being thought of and executed.
Generations ago it used to be a simple question of how one made the profits, plain and simple, but back then we had different societal norms that kept people in check for their behavior. One could claim that vague laws exist in the hopes of preventing more actions like Luigi Mangione, if people feel there are legal actions to be taken instead of vigilantism.
Except for VTR, everyone can just ignore this down-in-the-weeds reply.
This is very much a side issue, and I see we generally agree on most all of this, BUT let me correct the record, as there is very little knowledge of the DOJ bullying that led to the collapse of Arthur Anderson for no good reason…
“Destroying evidence” was following a legal and ethical document retention policy at Arthur Anderson. The public was told that their acts were illegal, but the supreme court decided later that those acts were NOT illegal, unethical, or even unusual. Most people did not hear that part.
For the record, Arthur Anderson employees followed the existing document retention process to the letter, and they were periodically reminded of their obligation to preserve documents per that policy, and to destroy documents per that policy.
Those periodic reminders were used against them, even though their policy was strictly compliant with the law and the tax code. David Duncan was the first person charged with criminal offenses, as he was the lead partner on the Enron auditing account. He signed the memos to the large team who audited Enron every year, including the “follow the document retention policy”.
The DOJ was angry because they could not get the records outside that strictly compliant policy, so they jumped to the conclusion that AA was “obstructing justice”, because they FOLLOWED the legal and IRS-compliant retention rules.
Duncan could have fought this, but it would have cost him is career, his house, his savings, and likely his wife, too. So, he turned “government witness” and, in exchange for a lighter sentence, he “admitted” and “confessed” to having an “obstruction” purpose behind merely following the existing AA policy in regard to records retention. This is how the DOJ, FTC, and SEC work - they get someone to “confess” to criminal intent, and then apply that criminal intent to the whole company. It is insidious.
When the supreme court found AA “not guilty”, he withdrew his guilty plea, and the judge in his case allowed him to be a “free man”, but he was tarred by a very big brush, and never got a high-flying “big 5” consulting post again.
But it gets worse - one of the metrics for “cooperation” of a company with the SEC and DOJ is that they, in exchange for not losing their CPA licenses or whatever, agree to BREAK THEIR EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS with employees, as most such contracts include clauses that obligate the company to defend employees accused of crimes or violations in the normal course f their presumptively legal work for the company. They refuse to pay for lawyers, so the company gets off with an affordable fine, and the employees caught up in the mess are cut loose, and do not have the money to pay for their own defense, so fabricated “confessions” and plea bargains all around, and no court ever hears the facts, let alone judges the veracity of any of it.
Why do I care so much? I have more than a little money, and my guys spend a lot of billable time answering the question “Are we legal?” As no one really knows. Companies can be accused of almost anything these days, so simple things like “how do we audit?” can become a question with actual criminal liabilty for the auditors. Sheesh.