Amazon.com Defends
Dr. Laura Association
from "The List" *
(6/28/01)
You may recall I told you last time about a burgeoning problem
with
Amazon.com. Well, it's now gotten much worse. Basically, the
company seems
to be loathe to enforce its own terms of services as it
applies to
non-discrimination against the glbt community.
The
issue, in a nutshell, is that about 6 weeks ago, someone noticed an ad
for
Amazon on Dr. Laura's Web site. They wrote Amazon to complain, and got an
email back saying that Dr. Laura is an "affiliate" of Amazon (meaning, she
puts up their ads and gets paid for how many people buy Amazon stuff by
clicking through the ad). Amazon also provided a copy of its terms of
service
for affiliates, and told folks that while it does ban affiliates
whose Web
sites "promote discrimination based on" a variety of categories,
including
specifically "sexual orientation," there was nothing on Dr.
Laura's site
promoting discrimination against gays.
That's when an
inventive young soul went to Laura's site and got a picture of
an Amazon
banner on Dr. Laura call-to- action, asking visitors to her site to
contact
Congress in favor of the Jesse Helms amendment, would help protect
the Boy
Scouts' policy of discriminating against gay scouts and scout
leaders. When
folks told Amazon that in fact Dr. Laura's Web site was
promoting
discrimination in the Boy Scouts, Amazon wrote back and said, well,
it
wasn't "illegal discrimination." The problem here is that nowhere in
Amazon's terms of service does it require "illegal" discrimination, only
"discrimination."
So, folks write back to Amazon again, and then
were told that Amazon believes
in free speech, and that the best answer to
bad speech, was more speech. But
that begged the question of why, if Amazon
is such an advocate of free
speech, does it already have a terms of service
policy banning "speech" on
Web sites that discriminate? And, why when that
speech is directed at gays,
isn't Amazon willing to enforce their own
written policy? And folks wrote
Amazon and asked them this.
So, what
did Amazon do? They wrote back again, this time saying that they
don't
scrutinize the social or political views of their affiliates - which is
simply absurd. Of course they do. The company specifically says you cannot
be
an affiliate if your Web site promotes discrimination against a number of
specific minority groups. If you advocate discrimination against a minority
group, that is per se your social and political view of minorities. So, once
again, Amazon is begging the question of why it is now suddenly trying to
carve anti-gay exemptions to its written terms of service policy WHICH
EXPLICITLY FORBIDS ASSOCIATES WHO PROMOTE DISCRIMINATION.
If Amazon
is suggesting that it will exempt anti-minority Web sites that
involve a
"political" or "social" point of view, they'd be better careful,
because
David Duke, Fred Phelps, the Klan, the militias, and lots of other
folks
will be very glad to hear that Amazon.com is ok with affiliates that
promote
discrimination, so long as they can show the discrimination is part
of their
"political" agenda. Can't wait till GodHatesFags.com gets wind of
this.
You can read more about the Amazon controversy here, including seeing
copies
of their correspondence:
http://forums.about.com/ab-uspolitics2/messages/?lgnf=y&msg=228.1
You can see Amazon's ad on Dr. Laura's site:
http://forums.about.com/ab-uspolitics2/messages/?lgnf=y&msg=264.1
And this is Amazon's contact information:
mailto:info@amazon.com mailto:associates@amazon.com
Send Amazon.com a message asking
why do they support Dr Laura