Amazon has been criticized on many issues, including anti-competitive business practices, its treatment of workers, offering counterfeit or plagiarized products, objectionable content of its books, tax and subsidy deals with governments supplying law enforcement with facial recognition surveillance tools; forming cloud computing partnerships with the CIA; leading customers away from bookshops; adversely impacting the environment; placing a low priority on warehouse conditions for workers; actively opposing unionization efforts; remotely deleting content purchased by Amazon Kindle users; taking public subsidies; seeking to patent its 1-Click technology; engaging in anti-competitive actions and price discrimination; and reclassifying LGBTQ books as adult content. Criticism has also concerned various decisions over whether to censor or publish content such as the WikiLeaks website, works containing libel, anti-LGBT merchandise, and material facilitating dog fighting, cockfighting, or pedophile activities. An article published by Time in the wake of social media website Parler's termination of service by Amazon Web Service highlights the power companies like Amazon now have over the internet. In December 2011, Amazon faced a backlash from small businesses for running a one-day deal to promote its new Price Check app. Shoppers who used the app to check prices in a brick-and-mortar store were offered a 5% discount to purchase the same item from Amazon. Companies like Groupon, eBay and Taap have countered Amazon's promotion by offering $10 off from its products. The company has also faced accusations of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and extend its profitability. One effort to squeeze the most vulnerable book publishers was known within the company as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle." In July 2014, the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit against the company alleging it was promoting in-app purchases to children, which were being transacted without parental consent. In 2019, Amazon banned selling skin-lightening products after pushback from Minnesota health and environmental activists. In 2022, a lawsuit filed by state attorney-general Letitia James was dismissed by the New York state court of appeals. After the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon faced criticism for complying, under pressure from the Biden Administration, to "reduce the visibility" of books critical of the COVID-19 vaccine, which was revealed after Rep. Jim Jordan (acting on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee) subpoenaed emails between the company and the Biden Administration.
Amazon Prime has been criticized for its vehicles systemically double parking, blocking bike lanes, and otherwise violating traffic laws while dropping off packages, contributing to traffic congestion and endangering other road users. Jane Friedman discovered six listings of books fraudulently using her name, on Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon and Goodreads resisted removing the fraudulent titles until the author's complaints went viral on social media, in a blog post titled "I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)." In 2024, following years of criticism for providing law enforcement footage in the custody of Ring (a home security company owned by Amazon) without a warrant, Ring has halted this practice. It received cautious praise from privacy-focused organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this change. In February 2025, Sky accused Amazon of not doing enough to prevent the piracy of its sports rights via "jailbroken" Fire Sticks. Project Nimbus is a contract by which Amazon and Google provide Israel and its military with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other cloud-computing services. The contract has been criticized by shareholders and employees concerned that the project may lead to abuses of Palestinian human rights in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In October 2025, Amazon suspended an employee who posted messages to the company's Slack and wrote a letter to Andy Jassy criticizing Nimbus. On July 22, 2025, Amazon announced its plan to acquire San Francisco-based startup Bee AI. Bee produces a wristband, similar to most modern smartwatches, equipped with AI and microphones. The wristband is capable of providing summaries of conversations and reminders of tasks, effectively serving as a 24/7 note taker. News outlets criticize the fact that the devices saves transcripts, potentially utilizing it to train generative AI models which require vast quantities of data. In January 2026, Amazon sent a notice out to cloud staffers in an apparent error acknowledging “organizational changes” at the company. The note also mentioned a "Project Dawn" which was cancelled, although it is unclear what the project is about.
Anti-competitive practices
One-click patent
The company has been criticized for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance; its "1-Click patent" may be the best-known example. Amazon's use of the 1-click patent against competitor Barnes & Noble's website led the Free Software Foundation to announce a boycott of Amazon in December 1999, which ended in September 2002. On February 22, 2000, the company patented an Internet-based customer referral system known as an affiliate program. Industry leaders Tim O'Reilly and Charlie Jackson spoke out against the patents and O'Reilly published an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, petitioning Bezos to "avoid any attempts to limit the further development of Internet commerce". O'Reilly collected 10,000 signatures, and Bezos responded with an open letter. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Bezos visiting Washington, D.C. to lobby for patent reform. The company received a patent, "Method and system for conducting a discussion relating to an item on Internet discussion boards", on February 25, 2003. On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a re-examination of the 1-Click patent based on a request by actor Peter Calveley, who cited an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.
Canadian site Amazon has a Canadian website in English and French. Until a March 2010 ruling, however, it was prevented from operating any headquarters, servers, fulfillment centers or call centers in Canada by that country's legal restrictions on foreign-owned booksellers. Amazon's Canadian site originates in the United States, and Amazon has an agreement with Canada Post to handle distribution in Canada and for the use of the crown corporation's Mississauga, Ontario, shipping facility. The launch of Amazon.ca generated controversy in Canada. In 2002, the Canadian Booksellers Association and Indigo Books and Music sought a court ruling that Amazon's partnership with Canada Post represented an attempt to circumvent Canadian law. The litigation was dropped in 2004. In January 2017, doormats with the Indian flag were offered on the Amazon Canada website. Use of the Indian flag in this way is considered offensive to the Indian community and a violation of the Flag Code of India. Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj threatened a visa embargo for Amazon officials if Amazon did not issue an unconditional apology and withdraw all such products. According to deputy commissioner for deceptive marketing practices Josephine Palumbo, Amazon.ca was required by the Canadian Competition Bureau to pay a $1 million penalty and $100,000 in costs for failing to provide "truth in advertising". The fine was levied because some products on Amazon.ca had an artificially-high list price, making a lower selling price appear attractive and giving the company an unfair competitive edge over other retailers. This is a frequent practice among some retailers, and the fine was intended to "send a clear message [to the industry] that unsubstantiated savings claims will not be tolerated". The bureau indicated that Amazon has made changes to ensure that its regular prices are more accurate.
BookSurge Sales representatives of Amazon's BookSurge division began contacting publishers of print on demand (POD) titles in March 2008 to inform them that for Amazon to continue selling their POD books, they must sign agreements with Amazon's BookSurge POD company. Publishers were told that eventually, the only POD titles Amazon would sell would be those printed by BookSurge. Some publishers felt that this ultimatum was monopolistic, and questioned the ethics of the move and its legality under anti-trust law.
Direct selling In 2008, Amazon UK was criticized for attempting to prevent publishers from direct selling at a discount from their own websites. Amazon argued that it should be able to pay publishers based on the lower prices on their websites, rather than on the recommended retail price (RRP). Amazon UK was also criticized that year by the British publishing community after withdrawing from sale key titles published by Hachette Livre UK, possibly to pressure Hachette to provide discounts described as unreasonable. Curtis Brown managing director Jonathan Lloyd said that "publishers, authors, and agents are 100% behind [Hachette]. Someone has to draw a line in the sand. Publishers have given 1% a year away to retailers, so where does it stop? Using authors as a financial football is disgraceful." In August 2013, Amazon agreed to end its price-parity policy for marketplace sellers in the European Union in response to investigations by the UK Office of Fair Trade and Germany's Federal Cartel Office.
Price control After the announcement of the Apple iPad on January 27, 2010, Macmillan Publishers began a pricing dispute with Amazon about electronic publications. Macmillan asked Amazon to accept a new pricing scheme it had worked out with Apple, raising the price of e-books from $9.99 to $15. Amazon responded by pulling all Macmillan books (electronic and physical) from its website, although affiliates selling the books were still listed. On January 31, 2010, Amazon "capitulated" to Macmillan's pricing request. In 2014, Amazon and Hachette became involved in a dispute about agency pricing, when an agent (such as Hachette) determines the price of a book; normally, Amazon dictates the discount level of a book. High-profile authors became involved; hundreds of writers, including Stephen King and John Grisham, signed a petition: "We encourage Amazon in the strongest possible terms to stop harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business. None of us, neither readers nor authors, benefit when books are taken hostage." Author Ursula K. Le Guin said about Amazon's practice of making Hachette books more difficult to buy on its site, "We're talking about censorship: deliberately making a book hard or impossible to get, 'disappearing' an author." Falling sales of Hachette books on Amazon indicated that its policies probably deterred customers. On August 11, 2014, Amazon removed the option to pre-order Captain America: The Winter Soldier to control the online pricing of Disney films; the company had used similar tactics with Warner Bros. The conflict was resolved in late 2014, with neither side making concessions. Amazon again began to block pre-orders of Disney films in February 2017, just before Moana and Rogue One were due to be released for the home market. The law firm Hagens Berman filed a lawsuit in the New York district court in January 2021, saying that Amazon colluded with leading publishers to keep e-book prices artificially high. Connecticut announced that it was investigating Amazon for potential anti-competitive behavior in its marketing of e-books.
Removal of competitors' products On October 1, 2015, Amazon announced that Apple TV and Google Chromecast products were banned from sale by all merchants effective October 29 of that year. The company said that this was to prevent "customer confusion", since those devices did not support Amazon Prime Video. The move was criticized as an attempt to suppress products competing with Amazon Fire TV products. In May 2017, it was reported that Apple and Amazon were nearing an agreement to offer Prime Video on Apple TV and allow the product to return to the retailer. Prime Video launched on Apple TV on December 6 of that year, with Amazon beginning to sell Apple TVs again shortly thereafter. Amazon is known to remove products for trivial policy violations by third-party sellers which compete with Amazon's home-grown brands. To compete for product placement where Amazon's own brands are featured prominently, third-party sellers often list themselves with Amazon's Prime program; this increases costs, shrinking profit margins. Amazon has suppressed other Google products, including Google Home (which competes with Amazon Echo), Pixel phones, and products from Google subsidiary Nest Labs (despite the Nest Learning Thermostat's integration support for Amazon Alexa). Google announced on December 6, 2017, that it would block YouTube from the Amazon Echo Show and Amazon Fire TV products. In December 2017, Amazon said that it intended to begin offering Chromecast again. Nest said that it would no longer offer stock to Amazon until the company committed to offering its entire product line. In April 2019, Amazon announced that it would add Chromecast support to its Prime Video mobile app and release its Android TV app more widely; Google announced that it would, in return, restore access to YouTube on Fire TV (but not the Echo Show). Prime Video for Chromecast and YouTube for Fire TV were both released July 9, 2019. In December 2019, after the acquisition of Honey (a browser extension which applies online coupons to online stores) by PayPal, Amazon began to warn users that Honey was a security risk.
Apple partnership In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products through the company, selected Apple authorized resellers, and vendors who meet specific criteria. As a result of this partnership, only Apple authorized resellers and vendors who purchase $2.5 million in refurbished stock from Apple every 90 days (via the Amazon Renewed program) may sell Apple products on Amazon. The partnership was criticized by independent resellers, who believe that it restricts their ability to sell refurbished Apple products on Amazon at low cost. In August 2019, The Verge reported that Amazon was being investigated by the FTC because of the deal.
Marketplace participant and owner Amazon owns a dominant marketplace and is a retail seller in that marketplace. The company uses data from the marketplace which is unavailable to other retailers in that marketplace to determine which products to produce in-house and at what price point. Amazon markets products under AmazonBasics, Lark & Ro, and other private-label brands. U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed forcing Amazon to sell AmazonBasics and Whole Foods Market, where Amazon competes against other sellers as a brick-and-mortar retailer. Tim O'Reilly, comparing Ingram's business with Amazon's, noted that Amazon's focus on the customer debilitates the retail ecosystem (which includes sellers, manufacturers, and its own employees); Ingram sought to innovate and build on behalf of all the stakeholders in its marketplace it operates in. According to O'Reilly, Amazon's behavior is driven by its need for growth. Third-party sellers have criticized Amazon's rent-seeking behavior, which includes increasing the cost of doing business on its platform, abusing its dominant market position to manipulate pricing, copying popular products from third-party retailers, and unjustifiably promoting its own brands. In October 2021, citing leaked internal documents, Reuters reported that Amazon harvested and studied data about its sellers' sales and used the data to identify lucrative markets and launch Amazon replacement products in India. The data included information about returns, clothing sizes, and the number of product views on its website. Rival sales figures are not available to Amazon's sellers. The company also tweaked search results to favor Amazon's private-label products. The strategy's impact reached well beyond India; hundreds of Solimo-branded household items are available in the US. One casualty is the clothing brand John Miller, owned by India's Kishore Biyani. In October 2022, a £900 million class-action lawsuit was filed in the United Kingdom against Amazon over a buy box on its website which "favours products sold by Amazon itself, or by retailers who pay Amazon for handling their logistics".
Antitrust complaints The European Commission began an investigation in June 2015 of clauses in Amazon's e-book distribution agreements, which may have breached EU antitrust law by making it harder for other e-book platforms to compete. The investigation ended in May 2017, when the commission rendered binding Amazon's commitments not to use or enforce the clauses. In July 2019 and November 2020, the European Commission began in-depth investigations of Amazon's use of marketplace seller data and possible preferential treatment of Amazon's retail offers and those of marketplace sellers which use Amazon's logistics and delivery services. It was charged that Amazon relied on nonpublic data from third-party sellers to benefit its retail business, violating competition law in the European Economic Area. On June 11, 2020, the European Union announced that it would prosecute Amazon for its treatment of third-party e-commerce sellers; California began an investigation around the same time. In December 2019, the Competition Commission of India suspended an approval for the takeover of Future Retail and levied a ₹200 crore. The commission learned from internal Amazon emails that it intended to acquire the company solely to take advantage of foreign-investment relaxation. Amazon appealed the suspension; the CCI defended it in March 2022, citing misrepresentation on Amazon's part. In July 2020, Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta were accused of using excessive power and anti-competitive strategies to quash potential competitors. Their CEOs appeared in a July 29 teleconference before the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee. In October 2020, the subcommittee released a report accusing Amazon of holding a monopoly e-commerce position to unfairly compete with sellers on its platform. In a March 2022 letter to bipartisan leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department endorsed legislation forbidding large digital platforms from disadvantaging competitors' products and services: "The [Justice] Department views the rise of dominant platforms as presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency, global competitiveness, and our democracy". The Attorney General of California sued Amazon in September 2022 after the state's investigation which began in 2020, alleging that its contracts with third-party sellers and wholesalers inflated prices and stifled competition; merchants are coerced into contracts which prevent them from offering their products elsewhere, on other websites, for lower prices.
Stagnation of subsidiaries Amazon's buying up of subsidiaries has reportedly led to stagnation and a lack of development or innovation in them, particularly Goodreads; an Input Magazine article called the platform "ancient and terrible", saying that it resembles an early-2000s digital library with no developments to accommodate the evolution of book-metadata acquisition or online reader activity. New Statesman also criticized Goodreads, calling it "stagnated" and a "monopoly on the discussion of new books": "[W]hat should be a cozy, pleasant corner of the internet has become a monster."
Effects on small businesses Due to its size and economies of scale, Amazon can undercut small local shopkeepers. Stacy Mitchell and Olivia Lavecchia, researchers with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, say that this has caused many local, small-scale shopkeepers to close in a number of cities and towns in the United States. Amazon India, subject to foreign investment regulations barring e-commerce firms selling directly to customers, can only collect fees from vendors selling products. In 2021, Reuters investigation alleged that Amazon side-stepped regulations meant to protect small businesses, favouring 33 large retailers who accounted for two-third of all sales on its platform. Amidst marketing push for being a haven for small businesses, Amazon's "special merchants" program with Ashok Patni's Appario and Narayana Murthy's Cloudtail accounted for 35% of all sales.
Products and services
Fraudulent book listings Jane Friedman discovered six listings of books fraudulently using her name on Amazon and Goodreads; the companies resisted removing the fraudulent titles until the author's complaints went viral on social media in a blog post, "I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)."
Animal cruelty Amazon had carried two cockfighting magazines and two dog-fighting videos. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), saying that their sale violated federal law, sued the company. An August 2007 campaign to boycott Amazon received attention in the wake of a dog-fighting case involving NFL quarterback Michael Vick. Marburger Publishing agreed to settle with the Humane Society in May 2008 by asking Amazon to stop selling its magazine, The Game Cock; The Feathered Warrior, the second magazine named in the lawsuit, remained available. Mercy for Animals has said that Amazon permits sales of foie gras, which has been banned in California and several countries, on its website. As a result, animal-welfare groups began a movement known as "Amazon Cruelty".
Items prohibited by UK law In December 2015, The Guardian published an exposé of Amazon sales which violated British law. Items included a pepper-spray gun (sold by amazon.co.uk), acid, stun guns and a concealed cutting weapon (sold by Amazon Marketplace vendors); all are considered prohibited weapons in the UK. The Guardian also released a video describing some of the weapons. Likewise, brass catchers, illegal in New South Wales, are sold by Amazon.com.au.
Antisemitic content A January 2008 article in the Czech weekly Tyden called attention to shirts sold by Amazon which were emblazoned with "I Love Heinrich Himmler" and "I Love Reinhard Heydrich". Amazon spokesperson Patricia Smith told Tyden, "Our catalog contains millions of items. With such a large number, unexpected merchandise may get onto the Web." Smith also told Tyden that the company did not intend to stop working with Direct Collection, producer of the T-shirts. After pressure from the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Amazon announced that it had removed from its website the Himmler and Heydrich T-shirts and "I Love Hitler" T-shirts sold for women and children. After the WJC intervention, other items (including a Hitler Youth Knife emblazoned with the Nazi slogan "Blood and Honor" and a 1933 German SS Officer Dagger distributed by Knife-Kingdom) were also removed from Amazon.com. An October 2013 report in the British online magazine The Kernel said that Amazon.com was selling books defending Holocaust denial, shipping them to customers in countries where Holocaust denial is prohibited by law. That month, the WJC called on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to remove books denying the Holocaust and promoting antisemitism, white supremacy, racism or sexism. "No one should profit from the sale of such vile and offensive hate literature. Many Holocaust survivors are deeply offended by the fact that the world's largest online retailer is making money from selling such material," WJC executive vice-president Robert Singer wrote in a letter to Bezos. Although Nazi paraphernalia was still listed on Amazon in the US and Canada in 2016, the WJC announced on March 9, 2017, that Amazon had complied with it and other Jewish organizations by removing from sale the cited Holocaust-denial works. The WJC offered assistance in identifying Holocaust-denial works among Amazon's offerings in the future. The Central Council of Jews in Germany denounced Amazon in July 2019 for continuing to sell items glorifying the Nazis. The company was caught in December of that year selling Auschwitz-themed Christmas-tree ornaments on its platform, printed on demand with stock images of the concentration camp from a third-party seller; Amazon eventually removed the ornaments from all its platforms. Auschwitz Memorial, which maintains the concentration camp for historical and educational purposes, said that it had found a "disturbing online product from another seller – a computer mousepad bearing the image of a freight train used for deporting people to the concentration camps." Wired journalist Louise Matsakis called the Holocaust-themed products "the byproduct of an increasingly automated e-commerce landscape", noting that the items were print-on-demand and Amazon became aware of them after offended customers reported their sale. Amazon removed all new and used print and digital copies of The Turner Diaries (an antisemitic and racist dystopian novel) in late 2020 from its bookselling platform, including its AbeBooks and Book Depository subsidiaries, effectively removing it from the digital bookselling market. The company cited the book's connection with the QAnon movement as the reason, and had already purged a number of self-published and small-press titles connected with QAnon from its platform. Amazon subsidiary Goodreads purged the metadata from all editions of The Turner Diaries, replacing the author and title fields with "NOT A BOOK" (capitalization intended), a designation normally used by the platform to weed non-book items with ISBN numbers, as well as plagiarized titles, from its catalogue. Amazon began offering access through its Prime streaming service in 2022 to the documentary film, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, which had been endorsed by Kyrie Irving. The film contains a number of conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial and the theory that European Jews were responsible for the Atlantic slave trade. Variety defended Amazon: "The radio silence [of Amazon] shouldn't be misinterpreted as indifference. To the contrary, insiders say how to properly handle "Hebrews" [the film] has been the subject of endless debates at numerous meetings, some of which have involved the top brass at Amazon ... [W]hile the company has a long and arguably inconsistent track record when it comes to policing controversial content on its own platform, "Hebrews" has been particularly challenging given how high-profile the Irving saga became. Few execs from the company’s headquarters in Seattle or its studio business in Culver City have been spared an earful from those wondering why the company is selling such vile material on its website." CEO Andy Jassy said that the film had to remain on Amazon even if the viewpoint was objectionable. Stephen A. Smith criticized former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for the decision: "Jeff Bezos, you’re supposed to be a better man than that. Get rid of that. Get that off your platform, please, since all of this noise is being made."
Pedophile guide On November 10, 2010, a controversy arose about the marketing by Amazon of an e-book by Phillip R. Greaves entitled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover's Code of Conduct. Readers threatened to boycott Amazon for selling the book, which was described by critics as a "pedophile guide". Amazon initially defended its action, saying that it "believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable" and "supported the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions". The company later removed the book. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon "defended the book, then removed it, then reinstated it, and then removed it again". American Booksellers for Free Expression president Christopher Finan said that Amazon had the right to sell the book; it is not child pornography or legally obscene, since it does not have pictures. Enough Is Enough (a child-safety organization), however, said that the book should be removed and "lends the impression that child abuse is normal". People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), citing the removal of The Pedophile's Guide from Amazon, urged the website to also remove books on dog-fighting from its catalogue. Greaves was arrested on December 20, 2010, at his Pueblo, Colorado home on a felony warrant issued by the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Lakeland, Florida. Detectives from the county's Internet Crimes Division ordered a signed copy of Greaves' book and had it shipped to the agency's jurisdiction, where it violated state obscenity laws. According to Sheriff Grady Judd, Greaves violated local laws prohibiting the distribution of "obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct" (a third-degree felony). Greaves pleaded no contest to the charges and was released on probation, with his previous jail time counting as time served.
Counterfeit products On October 16, 2016, Apple filed a trademark-infringement case against Mobile Star LLC for selling counterfeit Apple products to Amazon. In the suit, Apple provided evidence that Amazon was selling counterfeit Apple products and advertising them as genuine. Apple had a 90-percent success rate in identifying counterfeit products, which Amazon sold without determining if they were genuine. Mobile Star LLC settled with Apple for an undisclosed amount on April 27, 2017. The sale of counterfeit products by Amazon has attracted widespread notice, with purchases marked as fulfilled by third parties and those shipped directly from Amazon warehouses found to be counterfeit. This has included products sold directly by Amazon, marked as "ships from and sold by Amazon.com". Counterfeit charging cables sold on Amazon as purported Apple products have been found to be a fire hazard. Selling Apple products is now a restricted category on Amazon, meaning resellers have to get approval from the brand to sell those products on the site. Counterfeits have included a variety of products, from big-ticket items to tweezers, gloves, and umbrellas. More recently, this has spread to Amazon's newer grocery services. Counterfeiting was reportedly a problem for artists and small businesses, whose products were rapidly copied for sale on the site. Companies such as Birkenstock and Nike have pulled their products from Amazon. Seller accounts on Amazon are set by default to use "commingled inventory", which encourages counterfeiting. The goods a seller sends to Amazon are mixed with those of the producer of the product and those of all other sellers supplying what is supposed to be the same product. In 2023, Amazon said it spent more than $1.2 billion and employed more than 15,000 people that were dedicated to protecting customers from counterfeit, fraud, and other abuse. Between 2020 and 2023, the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit pursued more than 21,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement. The company posts updated numbers in its annual Brand Protection Report. In June 2019, BuzzFeed reported that some products identified on the site as "Amazon's choice" were low quality and had a history of customer complaints and evidence of product-review manipulation. The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2019 that it had found more than 4,000 items for sale on Amazon's site that had been declared unsafe by federal agencies, had misleading labels, or had been banned by federal regulators. In the wake of the WSJ investigation, three U.S. senators – Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, and Bob Menendez – sent an open letter to Bezos demanding action against the sale of unsafe items on the site: "Unquestionably, Amazon is falling short of its commitment to keeping safe those consumers who use its massive platform." The letter questioned the company's practices and gave Bezos a September 29, 2019, deadline to respond: "We call on you to immediately remove from the platform all the problematic products examined in the recent WSJ report; explain how you are going about this process; conduct a sweeping internal investigation of your enforcement and consumer safety policies; and institute changes that will continue to keep unsafe products off your platform." Earlier that month, Blumenthal and Menendez had sent Bezos a letter about the BuzzFeed report. In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that people were retrieving trash from dumpsters and selling it on Amazon as new. The reporters learned that it was easy for a seller to set up an account and sell cleaned-up junk as new. In addition to trash, sellers were obtaining inventory from clearance bins, thrift stores, and pawn shops. In August 2020, an appeals court in California ruled that Amazon could be held liable for unsafe products sold on its website. A Californian bought a replacement laptop battery which caught fire, giving her third-degree burns.
Media American copyright lobbyists have accused Amazon of facilitating the sale of unlicensed CDs and DVDs, particularly in the Chinese market. The Chinese government responded by announcing plans to increase regulation of Amazon, Apple and Taobao in relation to Internet copyright infringement. Amazon has shut down third-party distributors due to pressure from the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC). Amazon has been caught selling counterfeit books, which mimic an authentic edition of a published work but are not authorized for publication by the copyright holder; one example is The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, a non-fiction medical book. According to David Streitfeld of The New York Times, "Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way. That has resulted in a kind of lawlessness. Publishers, writers and groups such as the Authors Guild said counterfeiting of books on Amazon had surged. The company has been reactive rather than proactive in dealing with the issue, often taking action only when a buyer complains. Many times, they added, there is nowhere to appeal and their only recourse is to integrate even more closely with Amazon." This was not the first instance of a counterfeit book appearing on Amazon. According to the New York Post, the problem also encompasses plagiarized books; author Martin Kleppmann said that Amazon was selling pirated copies of his textbook with "pages overlapping" and bleeding ink, making the book unreadable and sparking negative reviews. In 2019, InterVarsity Press announced that counterfeiters had sold $240,000 worth of fake copies of Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary on Amazon—as many as 20,000 copies, compared to an estimated 121,000 legitimate copies sold by IVP to that point. According to a 2019 Vox article, Amazon benefits from the sale of counterfeit books. The article citing a small-press publisher forced to partner with Amazon to return legitimate books to the market: "Bill Pollock, founder of the San Francisco-based programming and science guide publisher No Starch, told the New York Times that this solution was just putting even more onus on rights holders to protect themselves: 'Why should we be responsible for policing Amazon for fakes? That’s their job'. No Starch said that it was spending '$3,000 a month and rising' to keep its search placement higher than the people who are copying it."
Third-party marketplace A 2019 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation found third-party retailers selling over 4,000 unsafe, banned, or deceptively-labeled products on Amazon.com. When customers sued Amazon for unsafe products sold by third-party sellers on Amazon.com, Amazon's legal defense has been that it is not the seller and cannot be held liable. Wirecutter reported in 2020 that over a several-month period, they "were able to purchase items through Amazon Prime that were either confirmed counterfeits, lookalikes unsafe for use, or otherwise misrepresented." CNBC reported in 2019 that Amazon third-party sellers regularly sold expired food products, and the size of Amazon Marketplace has made policing the platform difficult for the company. By 2020, third-party sellers accounted for 54 percent of sales on Amazon platforms. In 2019, Amazon earned $54 billion in fees from third-party retailers for seller services.
Plagiarism in Kindle Direct Publishing Nora Roberts, an American romance author who has had a number of titles of hers plagiarized and re-published through Kindle Direct Publishing, said about Amazon's self-publishing branch: "I'm getting one hell of an education on the sick, greedy, opportunistic culture that games Amazon's absurdly weak system. And everything I learn enrages me ... this culture, this ugly underbelly of legitimate self-publishing is all about content. More, more, more, fast, fast, fast!". Roberts said during an interview with The Guardian that she would sue her unnamed plagiarists. In 2019, the Authors Guild said that "the way KDP and KU [Kindle Unlimited] are set up, which attracts scammers who take advantage of weaknesses in the system to repackage other authors' books and anthologies ... they pass them off as them as 'new' works". Goodreads and Google Books often retain metadata for counterfeits and plagiarized titles after Amazon removes them from its sales platforms, which leads to improper author attribution, ambiguity and reader confusion. Amazon maintains that it checks for plagiarism by monitoring user accounts and checking uploaded files, although critics say that Amazon's system is not robust enough to handle issues such as identity theft, minors accessing the platform, or internet anonymity. The Urban Writers said that "Amazon is extremely sensitive about plagiarized work and, if flagged, your account could be deactivated." Other writers and reports have been more critical of Amazon's response to plagiarism, noting a number of cases where Amazon did nothing to stop one or more plagiarists from uploading copyrighted files and claiming them as their own, claiming to be the author themselves, uploading stolen information from an author (such as tax numbers or a home address) to falsely claim their identity, claiming public domain works under their own name, and making up names to avoid legal consequences. CNET writer Michelle Starr described a 2012 case where "sci-fi authors C.H. Cherryh and John Scalzi issued Amazon with DMCA takedown notices for books of theirs that one Ibnul Jaif Farabi had uploaded, with titles slightly changed, under his own name. He had also done the same thing with works by deceased authors, such as Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, who, of course, are slightly too deceased to notice." In most cases, Amazon stops publishing (and selling) the titles while retaining metadata on websites such as Goodreads. Rachel Ann Nunes, a writer of Mormon fiction, said in an interview for The Atlantic that emotional stress and reputation damage were even worse than the financial implications of her books being plagiarized: "I felt like I was being attacked ... and when I went on social media, I didn’t know what would be waiting for me." Nunes said that she had been unable to sleep, gained weight, found herself unable to enjoy writing any more, and paid thousands of dollars in legal fees for attempting to catch her plagiarist, who had a number of ali