Amazon, along with pirated sites, has been put on the U.S. government's list

Recently, the U.S. Trade Representative's Office (USTR) has classified some of its major websites as pirated and counterfeit in its latest "Unregular Review of the Incredible Market "(Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets). The pirated websites in the report include Pirate Bay (Th ePirate Bay),1337x, FMovies and RARBG, etc. Surprisingly, however, amazon has also been labelled as a platform for offering services to copyright infringers. Also, for the first time, USTR listed an advertising agency as a "notorious member" of the piracy ecosystem.

 Every year, the USTR publishes an updated list of its'Anonymous Market Review'.

 The report is a non-exclusive overview of websites and services that copyright holders consider to involve piracy or counterfeiting based on their views.

 by convention, review targets typically include popular pirated portals such as well-known torrent sites (torrentsites), web storage platforms, and streaming portals. In recent years, however, domain name registrants, hosting companies and advertisers have become new targets.

 The same is true for 2020. USTR mentioned in the report, as expected, web storage platforms such as 1 fichier and Uploaded, streaming portals including FMovies, and torrent sites such as RARBG、Rutracker、ThePirateBay and 1337 x.

 A new addition to USTR 2020 report is the last website mentioned above. There are many new sites, such as the BestBuyIPTV to sell access to pirated IPTV services and the Cimaclub.com. of popular streaming sites in Saudi Arabia

 The most surprising addition, however, comes from another camp –——USTR first branded an advertising agency called PropellerAds". According to the report PropellerAds there is no escape from funding pirated websites and spreading malware.

 USTR wrote in the report :" The obligee believes that Propeller Ads provides considerable advertising revenue for many torrent sites, online storage platforms and other pirated sites. The company is also involved in serious'malicious advertising' operations, where malware is distributed through its online advertising.

 Malware is a particular focus of USTR attention in 2020. The report cited a number of articles highlighting the risks of malware on pirated websites. However, the report also cites an article from Torrent Freak website that describes some of these claims as exaggerated.

 Adding ad companies to the report is an important step for USTR, but amazon's unexpected appearance in the report attracted almost all attention.

 As an American company, Amazon.com couldn't have been listed as a notorious market because the list was only for foreign companies. USTR, however, bypassed this restriction by listing amazon (Amazon.ca、Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de、Amazon.fr和Amazon.in sites) as a notorious market.

  The world's largest online retailer has been labelled as a notorious market, as Amazon reportedly provides a platform for copyright infringers (to be exact, counterfeiters). While this is true for many online retailers, amazon's measures against infringers are clearly below standard.

 USTR mentioned that copyright holders complained that sellers on Amazon platform were not reviewed, the removal process was cumbersome, and the counterfeiting problem continued to grow. Amazon should change its policy to solve these problems.

 "Rights holders have asked Amazon to take other actions to address their concerns, including by collecting enough information from sellers to prevent repeated infringers from opening multiple stores on the platform so that consumers and rights holders can clearly see the details of the real seller of the product ."

 An Amazon spokesman responded by saying the company was listed because of the Trump administration's personal grievances against the company.

 Amazon told Politico website :" this is purely political and is another example of the Trump administration using the US government to launch private retaliation against Amazon ."

 Either retaliation or not, the American Clothing and Footwear Association (American Apparel &Footwear Association) reported Amazon to the U.S. government and specifically asked to list Amazon's foreign site name.

 Amazon is not the only online retailer listed. The U.S. government has also named Indian Snapdeal and Indonesian Tokopedia as platforms for notoriety.

 Despite some harsh wording, USTR stressed that its overview did not mean "discovery of violations ", but merely" illustrative ".

  Most importantly, the report may be used to give a clear warning to the relevant websites and companies to make changes and take better measures. However, this is unlikely to attract the attention of sites such as Pirate Bay, but other sites may be more vulnerable.