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by AnthonyMouse 2309 days ago
> However, Amazon also permits sellers to operate from countries that ignore US court orders.

Something that would help here is if Amazon would display the seller's country more prominently (or at all). It's a lot more problematic if you're not even aware that you're buying something from a seller in country without a functioning legal system.

1 comments

Sure. The tricky thing about this is that there isn't much stopping anyone from starting a US shell or paying an associate to do it and then logging in to the account from anywhere. There are plenty of super functional countries that disobey court orders.

China for example does have a functioning court system. Like many countries, they don't cooperate with US court orders as a matter of sovereignty. Not even when Nike is trying to collect a couple billion dollars from counterfeiters: https://www.thefashionlaw.com/home/in-18-billion-case-over-c...

As you note though it's actually an important distinction about the retailer, because the retailer carries most of the product liability. Amazon makes people fill in a check box stating that they have liability insurance once the seller gets to a certain size, but they do not really check this at least to my knowledge. I encounter a lot of people who should have liability insurance, certified to Amazon that they did, but do not. There's not much wrong with a seller located in a country that cooperates with the US selling into the US because they can be held liable for any bad stuff that they do. They at least have a stake and can be held accountable. Not so when they are retailing from a safe haven.

> The tricky thing about this is that there isn't much stopping anyone from starting a US shell or paying an associate to do it and then logging in to the account from anywhere.

But then if they commit fraud the US associate gets arrested, and it's hard to find volunteers to do that.

They create a Delaware C corp, and if the product is found bad, the company just goes bankrupt. Replace with a new one.