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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

This is right in the same vein as cookie stuffing, which Shawn Hogan went to prison for [1] [2]. Keep in mind that there is no "cookie stuffing" statute - he was charged with Wire Fraud - and using your position in the link chain to steal revenue from other affiliates seems to definitely fall under the definition of wire fraud. I can't imagine what lawyer told Bitly that this was a good idea given this precedent, but both they and Pinterest are doing it. I guess it's only illegal if you aren't a multi-billion dollar startup.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-...

[2] http://marketingland.com/top-ebay-affiliate-sentenced-5-mont...

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I don't think it's really the same. The cookie stuffing case was about generating affiliate revenue from people who never actually clicked on a link to eBay. This is just about making non-affiliate Amazon links into affiliate links.

Also, Bitly and Pinterest probably got approval from Amazon for this scheme. Shawn Hogan misled eBay about what he was doing.

We have no idea if they received approval or not, but IMO the conduct is very similar. I also can't imagine that Amazon would say "sure, divert revenue from our affiliates into your own pockets without telling them". That sounds like an idea that any affiliate program manager would vehemently object to.

Horrible indeed. But sadly this is a common practice. Once I called out [1] the folks from Read It Later (now Pocket) for silently changing Amazon links. In their defense, at least they acknowledged and promptly "fixed" the API/policy in a couple of hours [2].

Another one that does the same is TabCloud Chrome Extension [3]. It scans all the tabs you saved, and stuff Amazon's affiliate links there. I fixed mine locally, but it's not a public license, so can't just fork and re-publish it.

[1] http://twitpic.com/4p9cpt

[2] https://goo.gl/YbYhTG

[3] https://goo.gl/OGdV3H

Wow. I totally missed this. It's not a horrible deal... 5 months in prison for $10M or so. Still feels weird being criminally prosecuted for breaking a TOS.

Don't know about you, but for me there isn't any amount of money that's worth becoming a federal felon for getting.

Sure there is. The time might be hard to take, but if the price is right I'd celebrate the label. Of course many actions that would justify such a label are out of bounds on principle, but the label itself is irrelevant (the cash covers job effects, and other restrictions).

Becoming a felon by stealing money from the company that runs PayPal. I'd put that on my resume.

> I guess it's only illegal if you aren't a multi-billion dollar startup.

Amazon owes me > $40k after terminating my affiliate account for doing something similar in principle.

Their reasoning was that they felt the traffic I was driving in their direction was already going to be theirs, and that I was just injecting my affiliate commission into the process...as such, I was stealing from them.

> to steal revenue from other affiliates

would it be legal(ish) if you left affiliate links intact, i.e. only adding your ID to links that aren't affiliate links already?

IANAL nor an affiliate marketing expert, but if I ran an affiliate program I would make that against the rules. It at least goes against the intent of the program, which is to reward/incentivize people who send you business. Everyone clicking these links was already going to your site, so bit.ly as an affiliate generates zero extra dollars in sales.

Stackexchange converts outbound amazon links to affiliate ones. (see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26964/auto-insertin...) Would that be the same?

Hey I'm just a guy. Maybe Amazon figures it's better to police affiliate links lightly or that a bit of a giveaway to SO isn't such a bad thing. If I ran an affiliate program I probably wouldn't allow that behavior.

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