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Comment by bdw5204 | Hacker News Reader

A spy camera that looks like a towel hook seems like a product that should be illegal to sell. For what legitimate purpose would somebody want a towel hook camera? Don't most people put towel hooks in bathrooms?

It seems perfectly reasonable to hold Amazon legally responsible for selling this product even if it was a 3rd party seller (not clear from the article). A product whose intended use is to secretly record videos of people in settings where they will probably not be wearing clothes should be unlawful to sell just as it is (or should be) unlawful to knowingly record such videos without informed consent.

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"you can't sell a spy cam that looks like a towel hook" is sort of too broad and too specific to be a good law. what does "looks like a towel hook" actually mean? a law like this would end up having some unintended consequences, where bad actors use it for something like claiming all their competitors products look like towel hooks.

i think what's happening here is really the ideal solution: you can sell a camera that looks like anything, but if somebody uses the towel-hook spy cam that you sold for it's obvious intended purpose, you're liable for the damages.

I'm not sure I can agree with either of you.

I definitely don't agree with "thing I don't like should be illegal".

And I can't really agree with "People who sold something I don't like should be liable for it's use".

I think the "blame" for objects should lie in the people that misuse them. Now, obviously, it's a little hard to come up with legitimate reasons to have a towel hook camera. However... All you're asking for is smaller cameras.

To which we restart this whole thing with "These super small cameras should be illegal".

There is a world of difference between a tiny camera and a tiny camera mounted in a towel hook.

No there isn’t.

Because with a small camera, what are you going to do? Ban mounts that can hold a camera? You going to ban a towel holder with a pin hole?

Someone is always going to unhappy.

The simple rule for anyone who says “there aught to be law against” is “no there shouldn’t”. There is nothing truly new under the sun. We have broader laws that restrict bad behavior. We do not need to narrowly control life to ever tightening degrees of control.

Selling something on Amazon that's purpose-designed and purpose-advertised for creepy videos in the bathroom is different than selling something on Amazon that's small and requires creativity and skill to hide in a mount.

The bar is lower for a product that some creeper can order something on Amazon and install it with a screwdriver, vs something that requires woodworking (or 3d-printing or injection molding or papier-mâché or whatever) skill in order to disguise.

Edit: the thread here is about selling on Amazon, but I see your response a few levels up mentions legality period. IMO the law should treat marketplaces like Amazon differently than individual possession. And of course, there’s a muddy line in between the two. Which is why I think law should be judged by humans rather than code.

I see you got downvoted. I might get downvoted as well by saying I mostly agree with your point... To me it doesn't make sense to have a law against producing, selling or buying towelhanger/cushion/bathroom cams. Any (not even mini) cam can be used for illegal spying.

Also, a lot of sold products can be used lawfully as well as unlawfully.

In the end, Amazon's reputation is at stake. It seems like they are cannabalising their reputation that took years to build, by selling questionable items. Hopefully getting bad attention by lawsuits will incentivise them to scrutinize the products they sell or let sell on their platform.

So yes, unfortunately there is no way out of the mechanics of free market/capitalism for this problem.

I understand where you're coming from, but the effect of rules like that is to essentially create a system where spying on people with towelhook cameras is totally legal and easily doable unless you happen to get caught.

Most laws could be reduced in the same way, but a lot of dangerous illegal activities have proactive protections, like regulations on purchasing and selling guns, etc.

Small cameras as a class are probably too broad not to sell as a rule, but cameras sold with a specifically designed case to pass them off as other objects might be a step too much. Of course one could always drill a small hole into anything and add a camera, but we shouldn't just be giving the offenders the tools so easily right off the shelf.

In the copyright-adjacent space, there's the concept of something having no substantial non-infringement-supporting use. It's a judgment call, of course, and certainly it's abused... but that seems like what people are angling for: making it illegal to sell things which have no legal use.

I can come up with a few legal uses for this, though. Not many, and I doubt the primary use of this thing is legal. But it means any law would have to involve some kind of balancing test.

I remember people trying to make various open source software illegal under this kind of argument. Debuggers, tool suites, and so on. Because obviously only evil hackers used them, and open source development was a negligible fringe activity.

>I think the "blame" for objects should lie in the people that misuse them

the case here specifically isn't about misusing things though, it's about using things for exactly the purpose it was advertised for.

"these super small cameras should be illegal" is, again, vague and has probably unintended consequences. for example, an ESPCam has all sorts of legitimate uses, but could easily be turned into a spy cam. should that be illegal?

The “ideal” is not yet reached: the judge rejected a motion to dismiss, there is no verdict yet. And then there’s appeal. Amazon has deep pockets.

The standard answer is to prevent the crime that happens in bathrooms: drug use, rapes, bullying, et cetera.

But that's a BS answer IMO. If you actually want to prevent the crime, the criminals have to know the surveillance is there. Make the cameras visible, or take the doors off the bathroom stalls[1]. People will be outraged at that; but hidden surveillance is even worse.

1: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/some-water...

Looking at the photo of the product, it'd be substantially less sketchy to put it somewhere other than a bathroom for home security purposes. But I know a lot of people are sketched out by putting security cameras indoors, even in a living room or hallway. I've got lots of cameras on my perimeter but none inside the house.

Yeah I thought the quote in the article claiming there were "legitimate and legal uses" was odd. They said "like in-home surveillance" but... why do you need to surveil your bathroom? What legal purpose does that serve? Maybe a way to film burglars while they don't know they're being filmed? But isn't part of the reason security surveillance works is visible cameras making people do the "right thing" or whatever. The quote was so weird. I don't see any legitimate use that doesn't have a pretty easy contradiction.

We have coat hooks that look similar to this in our foyer. I can definitely see a legitimate use for a camera there, and having it be discreet would be great.

AFAIK, "towel hook" = "coat hook" and is often placed in entryways.

Where Amazon gets nabbed is the listing specifically says towel hook.

It's up to the legal system to decide whether this was advertised as a hidden bathroom camera.

I imagine that the advertising pictures of the camera holding a towel made this a rather easy decision.

> a product that should be illegal to sell

Is the suggestion that should be "marketing that should be illegal"?

"should be illegal" isn't really a tenable criteria to require vendors to apply to their products. What does that even mean, broadly? A product is either legal to sell or it isn't.

“Should be illegal” is not “it is illegal”. So no, Amazon can’t be legally responsible for selling this legal product more than it is for selling kitchen knives

I guess you could argue nanny cam for when the kid is being bathed, but of course, that's not the only activity it would monitor.

It looks the same as a jacket hook too.

Amazon doesn't need, or, rather, shouldn't need laws in order to do the right thing.

and what is the "right" thing with regards to a coat hook camera?

I know someone who put a spy camera in their kitchen to catch a person drugging their beverages. Could've just as easily been a coat hook spy camera.

To go at it from another angle, how about those snake cameras that bomb detection units sometimes use. You can use that for illicit purposes and good purposes.

I'm not saying the wrong thing is to ban these things, all I'm saying is that it's not quite so black and white as some people are making this out to be.

It's advertised as a towel hook. By their own admission, the product is designed, meant and marketed to be used in a bathroom.

That's what's great about the case. They can't claim that they're not liable because it is meant for legitimate use because they advertise specifically for an illegal use.

By their own admission, they have to find a legitimate use of a bathroom spy cam.

The archive.org copy of the listing linked elsewhere in this thread shows it listed as a clothes hook. One of the photos does show towels on it, suggesting it can work as a towel hook, but another shows a coat on it and is not in a bathroom.

Doesn't matter what other uses they marketed; they also marketed it as a bathroom spycam. They have to explain what legitimate use there is of marketing a bathroom spycam.

Its kinda nasty, actually. stretching it, there might be legitimate reasons for a camera in a bathroom (say the elderly, or making sure a drug test is done honestly). But a hidden camera? No way.

It doesn't matter what you, or I, think is the right thing to do. Commerce is a consensual act. I can deny you a deal on any basis. Amazon did not exercise judgement.

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