Appeals court limits Amazon’s ability to block shopping agents under anti-hacking law
A narrow Ninth Circuit ruling shifts part of the agent-access fight from anti-hacking statutes toward contracts and technical controls.
The Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against Perplexity’s Comet assistant, holding that on the current record the user—not Perplexity—accessed Amazon’s servers while the agent acted as a tool through the user’s browser. The court stressed that it was deciding only the federal and California computer-access claims at this stage, not creating a general liability shield for agentic AI or preventing Amazon from enforcing private terms against users. For media and information platforms, the ruling weakens one legal route for controlling user-directed agents, shifting more of the gatekeeping contest toward contracts, technical blocking and other causes of action.