AFTER EMAIL SENT TO JEFF BEZOS
by Sharon Rondeau
(Sep. 26, 2020) — Two days after sending an email to an account we were told is monitored by Amazon founder, president and CEO Jeff Bezos, The Post & Email was notified that a website hosted by an Amazon subsidiary and conducting wholesale copying of its content is no longer engaged in the activity.
Todaystopics.com was launched in late June and reproduced every article published by The Post & Email while removing all bylines and links and marking all content with its own false copyright.
After we contacted AWS “abuse” last month and it conducted an investigation, we were advised that corrective measures would be taken. On two occasions, however, the claim that the infringing material had been removed was immediately found to be inaccurate.
On September 10, after we threatened “legal action,” AWS appeared to have disabled the site, only for it to return to reproducing our content within days or hours. Subsequent requests to AWS to remedy the situation received no response.
Accordingly, on Wednesday we called Amazon corporate headquarters and described our problem to a customer service representative, who provided us with an email address she said is monitored by Bezos personally.
On Friday, we received the following from AWS Abuse:
Hello,
My name is XXXXXXX and I’m a manager with the AWS Trust & Safety team. I apologize for the lack of visibility or movement on this report. Please be advised that we’ve received your recent notice indicating that there was more infringing content on the website you initially reported, and have engaged our customer to have it removed.
Our customer responded today again and have advised that they’ve removed all infringing content. I took a look at the website in question and it doesn’t appear to be much different from my investigation yesterday, so I felt it best to reach out to you to see if you can confirm. If you do still see infringing content, please provide the exact location so that I may engage the customer appropriately. If the problem has truly been resolved, please let me know.
Regards,
AWS Trust & Safety
Amazon Web Services, LLC
Our response to the AWS employee reads:
Sharon Rondeau has operated The Post & Email since April 2010, focusing on the Obama birth certificate investigation and other government corruption news. She has reported prolifically on constitutional violations within Tennessee’s prison and judicial systems.
