[woodruffw]

Mens rea is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. You can also be found culpable under the standards of reckless action or criminal negligence. This is also true in every state that I'm aware of.

"We run such a large and haphazard business that we inevitably do a little crime" is textbook culpability via negligence.

Edit: And, to be absolutely clear, I do not believe for one moment that it isn't within Amazon's technical capabilities to detect at least some percentage of likely stolen goods on their site. This is merely the weakest possible argument for responsibility on their part.

[prvit]

It’s literally impossible to sell goods from third parties at scale without inevitably accepting stolen goods.

There’s no amount of vetting that could solve this.

> "We run such a large and haphazard business that we inevitably do a little crime" is textbook culpability via negligence

Accepting goods for sale from third parties is not negligent.

[woodruffw]

That's why the standard is negligence and/or recklessness. Nobody expects Amazon to catch every single illegal use of their platform: the expectation is that they apply reasonable effort to doing so, including demonstrating a response to publicly known incidents of crime rings operating on their site.

I said exactly as much in my first comment.

Edit: This is at least the second time you've minimized an important piece of context: the problem is that they're accepting stolen goods, with multiple municipalities repeatedly warning them about it. Treating that as a "scale" issue doesn't wave the crime away, any more than throughput at a meatpacking factory would be a defense for the occasional employee being caught in the slaughter line.

[prvit]

> the expectation is that they apply reasonable effort to doing so, including demonstrating a response to publicly known incidents of crime rings operating on their site.

Again, rule of law. Reasonable effort is to do nothing unless they have information that would make a reasonable person believe that the specific goods were stolen.

There’s no expectation that Amazon would investigate the providence of the goods they receive.

> Edit: This is at least the second time you've minimized an important piece of context: the problem is that they're accepting stolen goods, with multiple municipalities repeatedly warning them about it.

No, I’m not. Amazon receives unimaginable amounts of goods, of which only a vanishingly small fraction is stolen goods.

> Treating that as a "scale" issue doesn't wave the crime away, any more than throughput at a meatpacking factory would be a defense for the occasional employee being caught in the slaughter line.

Are you serious? Surely the odds of an employee ever getting caught in the slaughter line must be greater than zero?

Surely you understand that if we were to infinitely scale the meatpacking factory, we’d be essentially guaranteed to see employees get chopped up.

[woodruffw]

> No, I’m not. Amazon receives unimaginable amounts of goods, of which only a vanishingly small fraction is stolen goods.

This simply does not matter in the eyes of the law. What matters is receiving stolen goods, period. The degree to which they do will solely determine the degree of the statute applied.

I think I'm just repeating myself at this point, so this will be the last time: there are different standards for culpability, and each exists for a reason. Accidents happen all the time, and we don't generally refer them for criminal prosecution unless they meet a standard of intentionality, knowledge, recklessness, or criminal negligence.

To use the slaughterhouse example again: nobody expects a slaughterhouse to be perfectly safe. However, we do expect a slaughterhouse to not recklessly or negligently expose its employees to danger. Nobody expects Amazon to perfectly avoid sales of stolen goods. However, we do expect them to pursue reports of stolen goods made by victims and investigating DAs.

[notch656a]

I'm really interested why these "warnings" weren't subpoenas or warrants, especially if this is happening in multiple municipalities as you state. Is it some conspiracy across the US to not charge Amazon when probable cause is present, but instead send "warnings."

Not saying warnings don't happen when probable cause exists to prosecute a crime, but I think we're missing the content of these warnings before we get ahead of ourselves about what to think about them.

[woodruffw]

This is just baseless speculation on my part, but: municipalities don’t really want to take companies to court if they don’t have to. It’s expensive, politically risky, etc.

Besides, providing a warning actually helps the prosecution establish the crime: it’s much easier to argue negligence or recklessness if they can produce a history of repeatedly giving the company an opportunity to fix identified issues.