On April 29, the News/Media Alliance filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of the Appellee in Amazon v. Perplexity. The case involves Perplexity’s misrepresentation of its AI Agent to gain access to password-protected areas of Amazon’s site, despite Amazon’s express prohibition and use of technical methods to block Perplexity’s bots.
The brief urges the Court to uphold the district court’s narrow preliminary injunction, supporting Amazon’s position that ordinary users of a website cannot “pass along” their access rights to password-protected areas where the website owner has expressly informed the third party that this activity is prohibited. Because the right to “authorize” site access belongs to a site owner, not a user, such subsequent access is “without authorization” in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”).
The brief highlights that a ruling that the CFAA does not cover bots’ circumvention of technical barriers to gain unauthorized access would undermine publishers’ ability to generate revenue to support their journalism. NMA describes the necessity of effective access controls, including account registration and paywalls, to ensure human users are navigating the site, not bots. These controls support news publishing business models, especially subscriptions and advertising revenue. Lastly, the brief explains how finding CFAA liability in this case does not run afoul of the First Amendment by pointing out that the narrow dispute in this case does not involve protected traditional newsgathering activities, including obtaining publicly available information; but rather, a company’s attempt to access protected areas of a website for commercial purposes, after the website operator demanded it cease access. It therefore urges the Court to consider the public interest in incentivizing online journalism. Read the whole brief here.
