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Amazon Plugins and Amazon TOS

by LarryC
7 replies
I've used various Amazon plugins over the years, but I'm wondering how many of them might be in violation of Amazon's current TOS. For example, many plug-ins take product descriptions and reviews and allow you to publish them to your blog. I would guess that this is technically against their TOS, but has anyone gotten their account closed down because of this?

I've heard that Kindle authors have gotten into trouble this way -for publishing reviews for their books on their own websites. But how about affiliates? It seems to me that Amazon would be working against it's own best interests by cracking down on this, as it makes it much easier to sell their products if you use content from their site.

So, I guess my question is, is it still safe to use Amazon plugins? :confused:
#amazon #plugins #tos
  • Profile picture of the author danr62
    Actually, I don't think that this is against Amazon's TOS at all. In fact, I'm fairly certain that these plugins use Amazon's own API to pull this information.
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  • Profile picture of the author agc
    Just because an API gives you access to something, doesn't mean it gives you license to do whatever you want with it.

    Just as an example, the API to my blog lets you click around and view pages of articles I've written. But that does not give you a license to publish the articles in your book.

    I'd say read the AWS agreements carefully. It think there are some plugins that break "the letter of the law", but maybe because they're only used to drive sales, Amazon isn't sweating it. Yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author LarryC
    This is one of the things that makes IM so complicated. You have issues like this, where it's hard to even know if you're breaking the rules or not. I barely even know what API means. I guess it's best to just pay attention and see if Amazon starts cracking down on this. It would certainly make it harder to promote their products.
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    Content Writing, Ghostwriting, eBooks, editing, research.
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  • Profile picture of the author agc
    I hear ya. Lots of people are perfectly willing to sell you tools and tell you to use them in ways that _could_ get you in trouble.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jasonsc
    Be careful which ones you use. I think so long as you're using the Amazon API you should be ok. But it's against Amazons TOS to show star ratings of products, snippets from customer reviews or indeed prices ... unless you're using the Amazon API.

    Be diligent and do your research before purchasing any plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    I think (hope) most of the recent ones show the reviews in an iframe (or whatever it is) that is complaint with TOS. The ones that showed the review as part of the comments is not compliant.

    You can't post the review anywhere on your blog or you will get the axe if you get caught. This part of their TOS was added about a year ago or so. Prior to that many of the plugins simply posted the reviews as comments.

    I wonder if you are supposed to go back to all your old posts that have these as comments and remove them or if those are grandfathered in?
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    Gone Fishing
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  • Profile picture of the author LarryC
    It sounds like it's best to avoid putting reviews on a personal blog. People who are curious about the product can click on it to read the reviews anyway.
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    Content Writing, Ghostwriting, eBooks, editing, research.
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