"It's one thing to be fired for something you did (hey doofus, don't cause a heap of MPAA infringement notices to land on Amazon's desk because you were running the new Pirate Bay on EC2) but it's entirely another to be fired for something outside your control."
If your own state government is something you happily and comfortably state is "outside your control", getting fired by Amazon is the least of your problems.
> If your own state government is something you happily and comfortably state is "outside your control", getting fired by Amazon is the least of your problems.
Sure, however if Amazon is a significant revenue stream on my website, I know and track Amazon policies. I don't track all sales law changes with my regulator.
Hence, I would assume if Amazon come to know of a regulatory policy which might affect me, I expect them to send me a warning email, and not after you close my account.
(I dont use amazon, but I think AMZN didnt do that via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1176132 )
That may be true, but Amazon was obviously involved in trying to get this bill stopped, or changed. Wouldn't it have been worth Amazon's while to appeal to their Colorado associates to petition their legislators on this issue while the bill was still being considered rather than waiting until after it was already enacted?
They may be worried about political reprisals and investigations. For example, Humana faced a federal investigation when they sent out a mailer with statements that contradicted claims by Senator Baucus. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32954068/ns/politics-health_care...)
I'm sure that possible course of action occured to them and, based on the fact they didn't choose to do it, they decided it wasn't worth their while. I'm sure Amazon is looking out for Amazon, as they ought to be.
I don't track all sales law changes with my regulator.
If you break the Amazon TOS, you maybe get your account terminated, but if you break tax law, you maybe pay fines or go to jail. Don't you think you might have your attention priorities inverted?
Senators are very responsive to small issues like this. The elected official will listen to polls or their own values on the big issues like healthcare or abortion. On the little issues that are extremely important to a small group of people but largely unimportant to the rest, the senator will hop onboard with the vocal minority very quickly. 99% of the state might prefer the tax but it doesn't real change their vote, and 1% might vehemently oppose it and it will change their vote, the official will almost always go with the 1%.
I've been part of that vocal minority and had elected officials intervene in tiny issues. You'd be very surprised by what can be accomplished by 20-100 angry people.
If your state government isn't responsive to its people's needs, that's a bigger problem than losing your Amazon Associates revenue.
If you want a more constructive suggestion, here's one: form a lobbying group to protect the interests of web publishers. In the 1990's there was a moratorium on sales taxes over the internet in order to protect the burgeoning ecommerce industry. I think there's a good case to be made for moratoria on taxes affecting web publishing and advertising--especially affiliate advertising--since web publishing is in a burgeoning state and needs to be allowed to grow without tax or interference so that content producers can find the right business models to serve the public interest after the decline of newspapers. (This is very handwavy but lobbyists and think tanks can come up with much more solid arguments.) This isn't necessarily the greatest idea, but that's how the system works nowadays and we need to get with it.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said, "Amazon has taken a disappointing, and completely unjustified, step. Amazon is simply trying to avoid compliance with Colorado law."
If your own state government is something you happily and comfortably state is "outside your control", getting fired by Amazon is the least of your problems.