> Laurent Degousee, of the SUD-Commerce union that was behind the complaint, acknowledged that Amazon had "not stood idly by" amid the crisis but had taken a "slew of measures without any evaluation".

> He said that the taking of temperatures had sometimes caused queues and thus risked possible infection.

So Amazon had the choice of either;

a) taking the court ruling seriously and doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety and working out what needs to be done to lift the suspension

or

b) raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries, thereby adding fuel to the notion that Amazon doesn't take worker safety seriously and creating opposition in France that will now work on strategies for "what to do if Amazon pulls out of our market?"

Which one seems like a smarter response?

I don’t see this. The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target with respect to a complex international logistics network. Amazon’s choices are to sloppily comply or halt until they can properly do so. They’re choosing the latter.

That keeps warehouse workers safe. And it gives Amazon time to figure out how to only ship that which the court would consider essential. The only loser is the French consumer, and they (will eventually) have other options.

Given Amazon's recent behaviors around worker protection, I expect their action here is chosen for maximum drama, an attempt to pressure the French government, and to warn other governments that they will disrupt the delivery of essential supplies if they don't get their way. So I agree with harryh; it's a middle finger.

It's been deeply disappointing to me. I've been on the fence with Amazon for a while about labor issues. But their behavior recently has crossed a line. I canceled my Prime membership yesterday. If they don't rapidly reform, it'll be the end of my 23 years as a customer.

And guess what? Halting all deliveries is the most conservative course of action possible here.

The "magic fine" were not random and unjustified. Those country were already borderline, if not fully crossing the border, with a lot of regulation here. Country like France and Germany were sick of seeing a lot of profit made within their border while tax revenue flee elsewhere.

The fine they given were not from vague plan, they were within the strict boundary of the law that those company keep playing with. Those same company are pushing for stricter and clearer regulation but are being faced with the opposition of other EU member who kind of profit from the practice of these company.

A second order effect would be the rise of a regional competitor to fill the vacuum. Then Amazon, even if they played nice, would have a hard time pushing back in to those markets, at the same time the regional competitor would, if wise, get on good terms with the EU regulatory regime and thereby give it some preferential treatment when trying to get into markets that Amazon had not vacated. A regional competitor could easily hit a tipping point and become an international one.

Long enough for the government and the people to feel the shock, but not long enough for a serious competitor to take advantage of.

No, it wouldn't. Amazon in the US is amazing compared to what Amazon is in Europe. Packages take a lot longer to arrive and the choice is much worse. There isn't even a central Amazon EU website! Yet no competitors exist. Absolutely nothing is even close to Amazon. For whatever reason, the EU market is incredibly behind in these kinds of services.

In fact, logistics over here is much better developed than the US. Most items can be next day delivered here in the UK for a low standard charge. Amazon has to offer same-day deliveries to the UK at a much higher level than the US in order to compete and maintain its competitive advantage.

Cool. What about the rest of Europe/the EU? I am in an EU country and ordering anything from any of the Amazons has a minimum delivery time of 1 week. Usually it's longer than that.

>Also digital e-commerce retailers are prevalent in all EU countries.

And they are not trustworthy. Those online retailers always have everything in stock, but after you order and pay money it always turns out that they will have to order it from somewhere else. Often that other place has no stock either. It took me almost a month to get a new HDD last year because of shenanigans like this.

>Amazon set up separate national operations in the EU due to social, regulatory and tax reasons.

This is true if you live in one of the five odd countries that have an Amazon site. The 20 other EU countries don't get this luxury.

My comment disagrees with that. To me, it's the other way around, Amazon has to do more than what they do in the US to compete over here.

So when I'm talking about getting relatively cheap next day delivery here, I'm talking about with any merchant, not just Amazon. That's why they have to offer more same-day delivery (than the US) to compete (and to justify the Prime subscription).

I'm arguing exactly about this. Yes, Amazon's doing great in the UK, but Europe does not stop at the border of the UK, France, and Germany. There are other countries there. I live in one. I explained that it's not rosy across Europe.

>So when I'm talking about getting relatively cheap next day delivery here, I'm talking about with any merchant, not just Amazon.

Great. Now what about the other few dozen European countries?

So your argument boils down to "Amazon is bad in europe, therefore no competition would arise even without Amazon"

That doesn't quite follow.

Are you saying that Amazon is the best that is possible in Europe? Even if that were the case, there's no reason an equally bad competitor couldn't fill the vacuum.

Even if I'm wrong, my point against the GGGP post stands: There wouldn't be some huge public uprising against local governments to get Amazon back if they decided to pull out.

No, I'm not saying that a competitor can't appear, I'm saying that it's unlikely, because it hasn't happened for such a long time. Of course there are other ecommerce stores but they aren't on Amazon's level.

I also agree that people wouldn't care much about it if Amazon pulled out. It would just be another way where Europe accepts worse service though. France still uses cheques to pay for some utilities (or at least they did only a few years ago).

The respectful admiration that people have in the US for big businesses and successful entrepreneurs doe not exist in France. Instead, there is the same feeling for the rebellious, for the one the fighting against big businesses, for the people.

Take a look at the Double Irish [0] and then at the Dutch Sandwich. [1]

These are accounting methods the deliberately take advantage of loops holes and arbitraging of tax regulations between jurisdictions, knowing full well some jurisdictions will take issue with it and it will be a fight.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

Last pre-COVID19 example was probably Facebook trying to circumvent the idea behind GDPR by claiming their user use facebook because the _want_ advertisements and _the only way_ to provide customized advertisements is by thoroughly tracking everything the user does and therefore the they don't need any additional opt. in/out from the user. Which is both pretty much not quite true.

(In GDPR there is a clause that e.g. if you sign a contract they contract doesn't need to state that the contract will store your name provided through the required name field and similar, you still need permission if you use the name for anything but "the contract", like e.g. statistics).

What exactly is the EU protectionism in this context? It's not like member states are just coming up with laws specifically to draw fine revenue out of American companies and to prop up local competitors.

It's a cultural clash between American (and other nation's) companies pushing the envelope of a capitalism in a more socialist regulatory market.

Sadly this is true of almost every topic other than software engineering, electronics and rockets.

/s (kinda)

Oh my gosh. No.

There are countless examples of companies who have put a good faith effort into complying with laws and regulations only to have the gov't drop the hammer on them later.

And why not? Companies make good whipping boys for politicians and it's a relatively risk-free way to score political points.

Not providing an enumerated list of essential goods makes it extremely likely that no matter what Amazon stops shipping, something Amazon thought was essential is deemed non-essential and results in fines.

Deciding you can’t win isn’t throwing a temper tantrum; it’s a business decision based on likely outcomes and the profit/revenue of those outcomes.

I’d say a more correct approach would be to assess the risks associated with any decision, according to whatever framework your fiduciaries deem necessary, and then to simply disregard the casual criticism of armchair commentators as irrelevant.

For a company that is known for the one-click-buy, they definitely make it hard to cancel.

Had to go through app - website - German website ( that's a first) - "click here to cancel" ( doesn't do anything, but found something on the same page "I do not want to use my advantages" does seem to do the trick).

I kinda hate what some companies/people are currently doing though.

Also, some people are really stepping up like Bill Gates, but I don't know if it will be enough.

Like I said before...

It's not that simple. Fuzziness can be necessary to prevent bad actors from subverting the law through loopholes and to make the law applicable to future situations where it would reasonably be expected to apply. Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive.

For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings.

Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written).

Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements.

Maybe in the anglo-saxon law system, this is true. In countries with napoleonic or roman law system judge's role is generally considered to be to apply the law as it is written, with the assumption that the law in most cases is sufficiently clear in itself.

I was under the impression that those Napoleonic/Roman law judges still have to interpret the law's meaning and apply it in ambiguous situations, but the difference is that their interpretations aren't binding on other judges like in the Anglo-Saxon system.

Judges in France still need to interpret laws according to what they intended to do. There's then a majority and minority opinion(s) on how that law is intepreted, and these things are set by discourse and precedence, with judges being free to decide.

In practice the difference is not so large.

This is just a flowery way of granting unchecked power to prosecutors under the theory that they'll use it in good faith. If the law is ambiguous and the prosecutor is allowed to choose an adverse interpretation in order to ensnare "bad actors" then they can really use it to ensnare anyone for anything, because everyone is technically in violation under the strict interpretation so all they have to do is decide who they don't like and charge them with the violation that everyone is technically committing. It's a complete abandonment of the rule of law.

The answer to "loopholes" is to close them, or better yet take more time to evaluate what you're doing from the start so you don't create them in the first place. Notice in particular that nearly all "loopholes" come from some combination of internal inconsistencies, unnecessary complexity or an inherent unreasonableness of the rules to begin with. (If you find yourself spending all day carving out exceptions to a rule, chances are it's a bad rule.)

> Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive.

This is not actually helpful because vagueness prohibits more alternatives than specificity. Overly specific rules are to be avoided, but at least then you know how to comply with them. If the rule just says "don't be bad" then you have to sit motionless and do nothing because there is no way to know what "bad" means until judgement is being passed and it's already too late not to do it.

> For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings.

This isn't an argument for intentional ambiguity. "Writings" was ambiguous because more than writings didn't exist when it was drafted. So it wasn't ambiguous in practice for about a hundred years. Then movies and sound recordings came to exist, there was a court case about whether they could be covered, the answer was yes, and once again the answer was unambiguous for about a hundred years since. There was only a short period between when the world changed and when the law was clarified that the answer wasn't clear. This is how you want it -- it shouldn't start off as ambiguous when it's passed and if something changes that causes it to be unclear then an interpretation should be chosen promptly so that it goes back to being unambiguous. The ambiguity is a thing to be minimized to the fullest extent practicable.

Notice also that the Copyright Act doesn't say "creative work" but rather "work fixed in a tangible medium of expression," which is much more suitable language than "creative work," because it doesn't exclude movies or VR works just because they didn't exist when the words were drafted, but at the same time it then doesn't cover abstract ideas or unrecorded expressions or inventions that should be covered by patent rather than copyright.

> Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written).

Except that then no one has any idea at all what "reasonable protections against infection" means. Does it mean washing your hands, or full hazmat gear? Does everyone have to wear the hazmat gear or only doctors? Do you have to wash your hands after every new patient or is it against the law to only do it three times a day? Does it matter if the patient evaluation indicates they're not infected?

That rule tells you nothing. It gives cover to negligent providers with good lawyers and gives cover to malicious prosecutors who then have a pretext to prosecute anybody they don't like.

> Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements

This should make them more familiar with why you're wrong, because in technical writing you have similar constraints and manage to deal with them even when there is no judge to provide an ex post facto interpretation. It is necessary to be clear about what you're saying from the start.

No, it's not. In the U.S. law system, the prosecutor does not determine the boundary of what a "creative work" is. That is determined by CASE LAW, which the judge applies based upon the facts of the case. The notion that statutes can, without ambiguity, capture all that they need to is defied by the entirety of legal history.

What does this change from the perspective of the person who is trying to comply with the law? You don't know what the law makes illegal but if you do something the government doesn't like then the government will decide whether it's illegal after the fact and punish you for doing it even though they never made it clear that it was actually illegal.

> The notion that statutes can, without ambiguity, capture all that they need to is defied by the entirety of legal history.

This is still not an argument for purposeful ambiguity. The fact that absolute perfection is impossible is a lame excuse for not even trying.

Yeah, for things that are not readily apparent, you might need a lawyer to help you understand if your conduct is illegal. Have you looked up the statutory definitions for what a work is in copyright? For like 99% of people and businesses it is clear. What do you propose as an alternative? This is a pretty absurd conversation because you seem to not acknowledge the reasons for WHY the law functions this way and just posit a world that doesn't have the problems the real world does.

>This is still not an argument for purposeful ambiguity. The fact that absolute perfection is impossible is a lame excuse for not even trying.

Feel free to describe a better system. It's gotta be real though, you can't just say "a system where everything is already prescribed"... that's just fantasy

You're just talking about case law. That isn't actually any different. If something is made unambiguous by case law then it is unambiguous.

What I'm talking about are laws that a lawyer cannot tell you with a high degree of certainty what the outcome would be in court, because it was made purposely fuzzy specifically to allow the law to be retroactively interpreted adversely against anyone who draws the ire of the government.

> Feel free to describe a better system.

Here you go: In matters of statutory construction when the government is the prosecutor/regulator, the parties submit their briefs, they're read by 9 independent judges who are all told to construe the statute against the government if it's ambiguous, the judges don't get to talk to each other, the defense gets to choose which judge's interpretation to use, and that interpretation becomes precedent until the legislature changes it by statute. The government's only appeal is to the legislature (which then only applies to future cases).

Now if there is an ambiguity, it is likely to actually be construed against the government, so the government has an incentive to resolve it ahead of time whenever reasonably possible. When that isn't possible, it goes in favor of the defense in the original case and then the legislature has the opportunity to clarify what they want for future cases by passing new legislation.

No, I'm not. Statutory interpretation isn't inherently clear just because you SAY it would be. Interpreting statutes does not have to be done with an eye towards previous cases. It can be done in a vacuum, as I pointed out to you in another thread - that's how it works in civil law. Even in common law, the factual circumstances of a case dictate whether or not precedential cases are relevant. Nevertheless... there is an INTERPRETATION LAYER.

>What I'm talking about are laws that a lawyer cannot tell you with a high degree of certainty what the outcome would be in court, because it was made purposely fuzzy specifically to allow the law to be retroactively interpreted adversely against anyone who draws the ire of the government.

Ok - give an example of such a law...

> Here you go: In matters of statutory construction when the government is the prosecutor/regulator, the parties submit their briefs, they're read by 9 independent judges who are all told to construe the statute against the government if it's ambiguous, the judges don't get to talk to each other, the defense gets to choose which judge's interpretation to use, and that interpretation becomes precedent until the legislature changes it by statute.

You are suggesting that a defendant get to set precedent merely based upon their own selection. You are aware that, save for that, this exactly how the appeals circuit functions?

Like, I'd be happy to have this conversation genuinely with you, but you clearly have no experience in the legal world. Ambiguity is ALWAYS construed against the government and it's a foundational principal of our legal system. It seems more like the problem is your own ignorance, not how the law actually functions.

Also, it seems like you do not understand the distinction between civil courts in the united states and criminal courts.

He's basically saying "the US law is fuzzy because there are lawyers, whereas in other systems there are only judges" which really fails to understand the different systems of law in two key ways.

1) As I described, the US system is not actually fuzzy. Pretending there is a legal system that only "just applies the law" that does not have a 'reasonableness' layer is factually incorrect. It is also factually incorrect to say that the prosecutor determines whether or not the law is violated. It's obviously not true and it reflects a tremendous misunderstanding of the adversarial legal system. In this system, the differing sides argue for their interpretation and application of the law to the facts of the case. The judge, in hearing their arguments, makes determinations along a set of guidelines as to HOW THE LAW APPLIES TO THE FACTS. That is to say, the complete opposite of what this OP described. In the US system, the JUDGES APPLY THE LAW.

2) In non-adversarial systems, what the judge does is more than "just apply the law". The judge performs the roles of the adversarial sides, just within the judge's head. The judge determines, based upon his own belief (and I'm sure, some guidelines) what either side would argue, and from there, applies the law to the facts of the case to determine outcomes. This is why it is factually incorrect to suggest this system is in any way more or less fuzzy. If a system simply just "applied the law" without any regard to the debate of the factual circumstances of the case, there would be no need for JUDGMENT.

"Civil law" is too restrictive a term for what you mean, and there certainly is a direct analogue to case law precedent.

Civil law ("droit civil") is simply the part of the law of France that deals with personal matters including contracts between private (non-state) entities; marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, and other family matters; landlord-tenant and other private property matters. The broader private law ("droit privé") includes employer-employee law, commercial sales law (advertising, warranty, and so forth), insurance law, shipping and transport law, manufacturing law (standards and practices) and so forth.

Public law ("droit public") includes criminal law ("code pénal"), constitutional law (which defines public bodies and their broad responsibilities especially with respect to human rights), and administrative law (which governs the powers of public bodies and provides recourse for adverse decisions and other private-party claims against such bodies).

Both types of law are codified in regularly-updated statute, and there are some eighty extant codes.

The codes are binding on all the courts, and a goal of the process of revision is to make the codes sufficiently comprehensive that they apply to practically all cases. Where codes are insufficient, the courts must of course make practical decisions anyway, and there they are bound by jurisprudence constante -- matters not yet codified should be as in accord with the code as possible, and subsequent decisions in similar circumstances should aim to be in accord, with a view to making it easy to amend the code.

Appeals decisions in France do not bind all the courts below in common to the ratio of the appeals court judgment. This is the "common" part of common law: it binds all the courts within the same jurisdiction, with statute overriding other sources of law. In France, the statutory codes are the overriding source of law, but all courts are bound to aim for predictable, stable justice, even if that (seemingly paradoxically) means disagreeing with a previous judgment of a senior court. The Court of Cassation in France reviews questions of law and procedure, with the goal of ensuring that the interpretation of the law is uniform throughout France. This is somewhat like restricting itself to dealing with "circuit splits" in the United States's federal court system, but not driven by the facts of the cases in question as opposed to whether the code was applied at all, and what was done to maintain jurisprudence constante.

In common law jurisdictions, typically one typically must "distinguish" a case in a lower court from a precedent set by a higher court, and hope that the distinguishing is either not appealed or survives on appeal. However, in the French system, when faced with a series of similar cases and an argument that this forms jurisprudence constante, one may still persuade the court that an exception is justifiable. The most important difference is that one decision by a higher court can trigger a requirement to distinguish in common-law systems, whereas in French law formally only the codes themselves are binding in the strict sense.

Note that there are codes in many common-law jurisdictions, examples include the Criminal Code of Canada, the Uniform Commercial Code in the USA, and so forth. These consolidate into single codes what historically (and still in England & Wales; Scotland has a much more Roman law system than E&W) appears scattered across several Acts of the legislature. However, even in England & Wales statutes are updated from time to time to reflect results in the courts; most common-law jurisdictions have some form of law commission which proposes amendments (and sometimes consolidations) to the legislature to effect this in a non-partisan manner. This is almost exactly how the codes in French law and similar systems are updated over time, too.

While there are surface differences between French law and Irish law (which is similar to English law for historical reasons), statute law -- the codes, in essence -- have been converging as the European Union has evolved. Consequently, I think there is an argument that the main difference between the system of (non-constitutional) law in the USA (and the several states) and the system of (non-constitutional) law in France is in the historical policy choices of the respective legislatures, and the differences in political and legal cultures. There are sharp differences between the political and legal cultures of the USA and England and Wales, or Canada, too, and these bubble up into the judiciaries rather than being driven by them.

I don't think you have a very good understanding of the US legal system. Caselaw consists of interpretations of laws made after (sometimes long after) those laws came into force. It's a reflection of the inherent ambiguity and fuzziness in any body of law.

Law isn't like computer code. While there may be some philosophical appeal to the idea of a law code that's unambiguous and requires no judgement to interpret or apply, such a goal is actually impractical and undesirable.

I know it's tough being wrong on the internet, but just the L on this one.

By this I mean we don't know how to make such a system practical without ambiguity. Not that people haven't tried.

The court gave a short deadline because it should have been done a while ago already. Let's not pretend like it's a surprise.

The government asked to stop any non-vital activity a month ago. Amazon, instead of interpreting this as: let's reduce our activity to just the part that qualifies as vital (vital for the country, not vital for Amazon margins), interpreted this as: since we ship some vital stuff, all of our activity is vital, and can proceed like business as usual. This is just a usual greedy move where profit comes before health of the employees.

It’s hard to cast Amazon as the villain here if France won’t provide a clear definition of vital.

Off the top of my head they could use Amazon and Google’s product taxonomy to explicitly identify categories that are allowed/not which would scope this further down to a, still challenging, classification and content moderation problem.

Read the shutdown orders, they will clarify this sort of stuff.

Vital goods are goods that are necessary for human life, shelter, and the operation of businesses that have been declared vital. (Which are thoroughly enumerated in most shutdown orders).

Most of Amazon's business, by that definition, ships vital goods. I don't think any western country has so far discriminated between vital goods going to vital businesses, versus non-vital household use, so most of their business is permissable...

I develop software and systems in an almost pure R&D environment and all of my current project work is, as far as citizens in this country are concerned, non-essential, yet my employer blasts almost daily emails that play semantic gymnastics as more and more lockdown requirements were/are issued by states and municipalities that (surprise) are construed by management that everyone is "essential" through a long drawn out and highly questionable argument.

It's comical to watch greed try and define essential because for greedy behavior: money is essential. They'll wiggle around definitions and policies all day as much as they can to limit shutting down their revenue streams.

This isn't logical. When you order someone to comply with something, you give them the amount of time it takes to do the task. If you want to punish them - fine them. Ordering them to do something impossible and then criticising them for failing is just intentionally setting them up to fail.

...so the only logical response is for them to suspend operations.

The French state didn't issue a mere suggestion a month ago, it was an order. The court just upheld the order. Amazon had the entire month to prepare.

If Amazon cannot comply with the order in the time NOW given, then their only alternative is to suspend operations.

Whether or not they wasted time in the past, is irrelevant at this point.

I wasn't arguing that they should or should not close, I simply responded to OP comment that they didn't have enough time to comply, while they in fact had that time (not anymore).

Is toilet paper vital and necessary? One person may say no and other may say yes!

What about cheese? What about mop? There are literally millions of items, each of which would need to be cleared with a lawyer now.

Why would you do that? Especially if other retailers don’t have to comply with a similar order.

I also do not believe the french state would bother Amazon because Amazon included toilet paper in their list while it's not on France's list. It's the complete inaction and not acting in good faith that has prompted the state to take action against them.

Everyone in the world is trying to meet an ambiguous target. You know what happened to all the small businesses in my neighborhood? They are closed until further notice.

Amazon employs an underclass (warehouse workers) that we all expect to risk their lives for our comfort. French court said: "non". Good for them.

They are not, but they are aiming at leveraging their near-monopoly status to create public outrage against the decision. What else would motivate their decisions to forego profit on the allowed product categories? I am assuming we are all intelligent adults here, no need to spell out everything...

You can say what you want about Amazon, but they always take the long-term view when it comes to profits.

Let's look at the situation. First, there's the added cost of complying. Second, there's a risk that even with a good faith attempt, they would not be able to comply, and thus there could be fines. Third, by restricting what can be sold, the order may have diminished Amazon's revenue and profits. So it could very well be that under the order it is not profitable for Amazon to operate its warehouses in France.

> They are not, but they are aiming at leveraging their near-monopoly status to create public outrage against the decision.

Maybe it's a bad decision with bad consequences, and that is what would cause any outrage. Maybe there won't be any outrage after all, since the French apparently have solidarity with the workers in these warehouses? I don't see any evidence that Amazon is artificially inflating their response to generate outrage.

In New Zealand, which is still under full lockdown, supermarkets and dairies still sell wine and beer.

Source: A friend of mine, who lives in Paris and is into wine.

According to the article, Amazon had a month and didn't get its act together, and this is the follow-up action by the court.

ambiguous target

Says Amazon. Amazon doesn't say what was ambiguous.

with respect to a complex international logistics network

You don't get to endanger people's lives just because you're a big company operating in multiple markets. Plus, Amazon isn't exactly hurting for money.

And if we're being intellectually honest here, you can't even "sloppily" comply with ambiguous targets.

“Our interpretation suggests that we may be forced to suspend the activity of our distribution centers in France,” Amazon said in a statement. “The court gave categories that are very general and create ambiguity that would be too hard to implement, this is a complex business to run,” a spokeswoman for Amazon told Bloomberg.

Amazon isn’t able to reduce its activity and must shut down completely “because of the terms and conditions of the court order, especially because of their ambiguity and the absence of definition,” the e-commerce giant said in an internal memo that was seen by Bloomberg. The company will suspend activity at its fulfillment centers for an “initial period” of five days starting on April 16, it said.

5 days, with 100% of their pay btw. That does not sound like a "threat" to me. Why frame it as such?

This headline could have easily been written as "Amazon states it may suspend French deliveries ..." but that doesn't portray Amazon as negatively as the author wanted. Amazon is meant to be the villain in this article.

If the deadline was, say, 1 week, then I'd agree that it seems like a fair demand.

If they're not happy, they can leave. It's not like we don't have other (law complying) marketplaces.

Now people complain that they are sending them home

Amazon is just todays "big evil corporation" and nothing they do will be "correct"

AFAICT the only people complaining are the ones complaining that Amazon shouldn't have to protect their employees.

The courts ordered them to meet an unrealistic bar, so the only way to comply with the court order is to shut down for a week.

This is what the judge ordered. If the judge didn’t want to create artificial shortages during a crisis, they should have thought more carefully before deciding the case. Note that Amazon’s appealing the ruling, so hopefully the judge will be overruled.

Mission impossible really.

So court had set them up to break the law.

Amazon doesn't do anything wrong here. If it can't improve in a month, surely it can't improve in 24 hours.

If they couldn't comply, why won't they say why? Which parts of the rules are arbitrary and difficult to comply with?

>Which one seems like a smarter response?

Amazon's response seems reasonable to me, under the circumstances. Your characterization of their response is unfair.

I do, however, think it serves as a signal to the French courts that rulings of this sort can have unintended consequences, and perhaps more care should be taken: 24 hours is not a reasonable deadline for such an undertaking. It seems strange the court did not enter into a dialogue about how long changes would take: It is an obvious issue that would need to be addressed. Had they done so, the court, rather than Amazon, could have decided what happens in the interim before a reduction to "essentials" could be implemented.

I doubt they could comply with significantly upping their product control.

Bottom line, based on the little that was in the article, if coronavirus shows up in your facility despite your doubled down efforts you're still liable. A court of law is a court of law in the US. The liability would be with you. Again, maybe there was some more clear instruction given? But if not, there's a lot of rope there to hang yourself with. Best to just stop doing business in that jurisdiction. At least until you have a better idea what's going on.

Obviously you shut down. I don't think any reasonable people have an issue with that. What I'd like to understand more is what are the steps sufficient with guaranteeing, (or, I guess, better protecting), health? I can't really make out what is not being done that needs to be done vs what is being done that shouldn't be done vs etc etc etc.

In my understanding, court orders are not a polite requests. They are demands, with the force of law standing behind them. You don't make good faith attempts to comply with them. You comply, or risk severe consequences (in this case, 1M euro/day). If Amazon can't comply in the time frame allowed, shutting down is probably the right call both for their business and from a public morals perspective.

Uh... "Good faith" is, literally, the term of art used in the legal profession to define the criteria for honoring a contract or order.

Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things. But that's not the way it's supposed to work. The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.

People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point. I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?

No. Honoring a contract and a good faith attempt to honor a contract are not the same. A good faith attempt does not exempt you from the consequences of failing to perform a contract or comply with a legal order. In some cases it is a mitigating factor, but it is not by any means universal.

If the French court wanted Amazon to make a good faith attempt to do something, that is something they could have ordered. But they ordered compliance, not an attempt at compliance (as is their prerogative).

> Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things.

You mean like a 24h deadline for compliance with a large set of changes to operations?

> The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.

Tbh I'm not seeing the connection between rule of law and social trust. You can have high trust societies with less rule of law, and low trust societies with more rule if law. They are separate, loosely connected dimensions.

> People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point.

I am not such a person.

> I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?

I'm not sure I could make any such blanket statement without knowing the state before, the desired state as indicated by the court order, the evidentiary and legal bases of the decision, etc. The impulse to protect the vulnerable is good. The means by which societies choose to implement that impulse can cause harm, and I judge actions by their results, not their causes.

> You mean like a 24h deadline for compliance with a large set of changes to operations?

A 24h deadline after a month of stonewalling and zero progress from Amazon...

So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?

Perhaps it did, or perhaps it didn't. I don't think it's very relevant whether the court knew whether Amazon would be able to comply. It had its priorities, and it ordered Amazon to abide by those priorities. That's something that's perfectly within its rights to do.

But if the court were interested in Amazon's ability to comply, then it could have asked Amazon what it could and couldn't do in what time frame. It did not ask, or at least discarded the response if it did ask, so presumably its orders are not conditioned on Amazon's capabilities.

> That's, to borrow a phrase from the HN code of conduct, assuming bad faith on the part of the court. It seems much more likely to me that it just made a mistake and wasn't itself trying to escalate a war.

You seem really eager to assign good and bad faith and assumptions of the same to various parties, including myself. I am not eager to do that. I am also not willing to assume the court was incompetent or made a mistake. It gave an order, and presumably it had an understanding of the possible range of effects of that order. If it didn't, it could have availed itself of Amazon's thoughts on the subject before issuing the order. I assume the court did know the possible results, and it considers Amazon shutting down temporarily to be an acceptable short term outcome, if necessary to protect worker health.

> So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?

Because the court said they would be fined if they failed to comply. I'm not making the connection on why Amazon's behavior should be conditioned on what the court's view of the reasonableness of the request is. Surely Amazon's behavior should first be conditioned on Amazon's view of the feasibility of the request, the potential economic and political consequences of failure, etc.?

It specifies to only ship essential items and proscribes a 1-million euro fine for every mistake Amazon makes. I don't even think it defines essential (I don't speak french and I don't see anything obvious in the order defining it, perhaps there's a callout in the text to another declaration which defines essential).

A much more reasonable requirement would have been to tell Amazon to not ship any non-essential items and to fine them 10x the value of anything they ship over, say, 5-10% their total shipments.

E.g. If Amazon ships 90 packages of toilet paper/essential items, they can accidentally ship up to 10 pairs of shoes/non-essential items. If they ship 11 non-essential items they would be fined 10x the value of that item.

Seems like that would be a much smarter way of laying-out that decision.

(as trivially evidenced by the URL slug.)

Don't worry, if Amazon stops selling altogether, small businesses will be more than happy to take back some market share.

I'm not sure why you think Amazon is somehow immune.

The GP didn't claim that Amazon could keep up with demand.

Their general point is the whole supply chain is straining, and shutting down Amazon is going to exacerbate the issue. Maybe that's the right thing to do, and maybe it isn't, but the broad consequences are clear.

Between COVID-19 and the US-China trade war, I hope we're all taking a long hard look at supply chain diversity going foreword.

That's true, but GP seems to think that we need Amazon to solve a problem which Amazon doesn't solve.

> Their general point is the whole supply chain is straining, and shutting down Amazon is going to exacerbate the issue. Maybe that's the right thing to do, and maybe it isn't, but the broad consequences are clear.

I don't think it's clear at all that shutting down Amazon will exacerbate the issue, because I don't think "the whole supply chain" is the issue. Specifically with medical supplies, the problem isn't that online retailers can't get stock to customers quickly enough. The problem is that stock doesn't exist. Unless Amazon decides to pivot into medical manufacturing, Amazon isn't the solution to this problem.

The reason Amazon is restocked on toilet paper is that toilet paper manufacture is fairly simple, so manufacturers have already pivoted to manufacture toilet paper. This is a credit to manufacturers, not Amazon.

> Between COVID-19 and the US-China trade war, I hope we're all taking a long hard look at supply chain diversity going foreword.

This we can agree on, at least.

In this case the French government gave an order, which they need more than 24 hours to comply with, so they are temporarily shutting down in order to understand the law and make changes.

Because to me it sounds amazingly large, that one company should do 17% of business for any market. And anything that is on a scale of countries, reducing it by 17% is going to be disruptive.

Walmart is shipping whatever-the-fuck, I can order nightstands and a bed on wayfair and weed from the SQDC (government)... Let's be clear, marijuana is not an essential for all but a very small percentage of the population using it as medecine...

Yet everyone's roasting Amazon for operating like it's business as usual while the smaller players run wild.

>Amazon.com Inc. threatened to stop activity at its fulfillment centers in France after a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And 24 hours to implement improved health procedures? Without being told which ones specifically to implement?

There's basically no limit to improving health procedures. They could go as far as hourly temperature checks, glove changes after every package, no more then 10 people in the entire warehouse, etc etc. And if they don't go far enough (according to the courts, in 2 years when all the appeals are finally figured out), then they could be fined 1.1 million a day since tomorrow.

https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-l...

>But the American e-commerce giant was condemned to "restrict the activities of [its] warehouses to receiving goods, preparing and shipping orders for food, hygiene and medical products", "until the company has carried out, with the participation of employee representatives, an assessment of the occupational risks inherent in the Covid-19 epidemic in all of its distribution centres and the resulting measures".

I should have written: "They were free to ship whatever they want ...".

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

Has anyone actually done a fair comparison of Amazon warehouse working conditions with those of other warehouses? Other than the presence of robots to help our their workers, nothing I've seen and read about strikes me as being out of line with any other warehouse. Or are they just the ones getting the flack because they are the largest and most visible?

Similar to folks on HN every time someone discovers that the Facebook SDK exists in <random app> while generally ignoring every other tracker and app that is possibly much more nefarious... Bobs Tracking App™ doesn't make headlines like "Facebook is stealing your data"

Being large and visible might be a part of it, but their system being unnecessary cruel in the first place is reason enough.

However, many people want Amazon to unilaterally change its labour practices. It’s not fair that they do this, while competing with Walmart the largest company in the world, if Walmart doesn’t need to change merely because they have better PR.

My cynical mind suspects Walmart has better PR merely because it’s part of an establish oligarchy who knows which hands to grease, and owns the media companies.

That's not limited to one country - but leads a bit far away from this specific french court decision. On the other hand, all of these contexts play into conflicts like this one.

Don't underestimate just how many jobs countries have to maintain our standards of living.

1. Yes, in a way. Articles about Amazon warehouses regularly describe that people can work there only for a while before either burning out our simply trying to find something better. High fluctuation was a common theme.

2. Despite the issues Amazon has with unnecessary cruelty, quotes suggest that there is a higher and a steady pay, compared to shadier alternatives. Working there during the holiday season to make more than with alternatives was a regular motive in articles.

3. In anarcho capitalist countries like the US people risk dying or falling into utter poverty when not accepting work conditions like this. Not everyone can fall back into a programmer job (and now even less so), and most can't be sure that an alternative will turn up if they stop working and start searching. That bad jobs get taken does not show that they are acceptable in a system providing a basic standard. Same is true for countries like Germany, where not accepting bad jobs can mean not getting state support anymore (and yes, people died because of being sanctioned like that and then starving, that's not hyperbole).

The same media attention is happening in the US, even vloggers with different demographics are getting their kicks in, Louis Rossman who kicked off the right to repair movement made a video about Amazon selling dildos at prime speed when ppe is delayed weeks.

On the flip side, if “highest liquor sales ever” also means “highest liquor consumption ever”, I could easily see long-term health costs exceeding short term tax receipts.

This distinction cannot be legislated. Amazon is absolutely in the right to shut down for a bit while they try to figure it out. They're also absolutely in the wrong for the way they've treated their employees over the past month. Both of these can be true! Its like everyone in this thread needs to pick a side, and the other side is crazy for thinking the way they do.

My hot take: having companies, that are so large that banning them is detrimental to society, is detrimental to society and extremely dangerous. We should never give so much power to one corporation. It should always be possible to reject a company.

I think the claim is that democracy means "the people" are in charge in some sense.

Of course, it's always been my experience that Starbucks has much better customer service than the DMV, so I'm not sure exactly how much that matters; it's not just that the people are nicer - the company actually cares somewhat about my opinions.

My opinions that Starbucks doesn't care about:

* How much foreign aid the US should send to Liberia

* Which model of surfboard is best

* Contract negotiations at the local school district

My opinions that Starbucks cares a lot about:

* How much I like their coffee in comparison to other coffee I drink

* How the purchase process went

* How much I like spending time in their store

Starbucks cares very much about my opinions when it matters to them. Whereas government, local or otherwise, couldn't care less about me.

> You actually likely have more influence over the running of your own local government than your local franchise coffee shop.

Clearly you haven't had to deal with an HOA, much less local government.

This is a justice decision. The government has nothing to do with it.

Interestingly, in the French wikipedia page for "gouvernement" [1], there is this paragraph :

Différence avec le terme anglais

En anglais, le mot « government » s'applique non seulement au gouvernement au sens où on l'entend en français, mais aussi aux collectivités territoriales et aux administrations publiques, aussi bien centrales que locales. Le concept le plus proche en français est donc celui de collectivité publique, qui englobe les institutions politiques qui incarnent directement les pouvoirs législatif, exécutif et judiciaire, ainsi que l'ensemble des administrations qui leur sont rattachées.

Which can be loosely translated as :

Difference with the english term

In English, the word "government" includes not only the executive governement like in French, but also all local and global public administrations. The closest concept in french is therefore "collectivité publique" which encompasses institutions for all Legislative, Executive, Judiciary powers, as well as all administrations under their authorities.

I learnt something new today.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouvernement

What I can say is that personally, I definitely think I live in a country ruled by law. However separation of powers means there is no single entity exercising total control on this law: the executive branch proposes changes to the law, the legislative ratifies these changes (or not), and the judiciary branch is an arbiter of what happens when the existing law meets real life situations. While the limits between the executive and legislative branches can sometimes feel porous (especially when executive and legislative are controlled by a single political party, as is the case in both France and USA at the moment), the judiciary branch always felt more insular to me from the two others, at least in my country.

Another linguistic nuance to think about: in French, we are "ruled by law " but not "governed by law". In French, "gouverner" (to govern) is something that people do, not laws.

This is a bit of a brain dump, sorry. I wish I would have more definitive answers for you.

The difference here being that Americans perhaps prefer to refer to their country as land (in this case "of law", but on other occasions, "of opportunity", "of the free" and so on...) whereas the French would rather embrace the idea of the (welfare) state.

The former's legal system is one of common law (precedent based) whereas the latter is one of civil law (statute based).

Regardless -- the judicial in France has that same responsibility of ensuring the governing laws conform with the constitutional rights (via the Conseil Constitutionnel)

The difference though with the word government/gouvernement is probably, I agree, only one in language. Or what we would call in French "faux amis", or in English, "false friends" :)

Executive, Legislative, Judicial, are the 3 general area's of a functioning government

Most modern democracies do have an elected legislature, a legal system, an executive authority (whether it be an elected president or a parliamentary-style cabinet), and a career civil service (i.e., what in the US would just be called non-political-appointees in the Executive Branch), but the terms they use for these can differ, as can the exact nature of the separation of powers between them.

All modern functioning governments have the same 3 basic struture

These are all part of the government. My point says nothing about how the separation of powers between those government branches function, just that they exist and are all "government"

I am not sure how anyone can claim the court system of a nation is not part of "the government" which was the comment I replied to

Different countries have different words for things. It’s as simple as that.

What we call “soccer” in the US is called “football” in the UK. It doesn’t mean they’re two different things.

https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/la-justice-demand...

> stop the delivery of non-essential products until is put in place an evaluation of the risks and measures necessary to protect the employees health

https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/amazon-va-fermer-...

> order the online shop to limit itself to sell "essential products" (food, hygiene or medical) as long as the sanitary risks of the activity in the warehouse haven't been evaluated

Edit: better source

https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-l...

>But the American e-commerce giant was condemned to "restrict the activities of [its] warehouses to receiving goods, preparing and shipping orders for food, hygiene and medical products", "until the company has carried out, with the participation of employee representatives, an assessment of the occupational risks inherent in the Covid-19 epidemic in all of its distribution centres and the resulting measures".

We have plenty of other websites to order from: fnac, darty, ruducommerce, cdiscount, etc.

This is going to be good for the french economy, and a good message to american giants that they are not above the law.

I find it hilarious, and a bit sad at the same time.

I'm Canadian and I've seen that the US tends to let companies do anything, provided they funnel enough campaign funding to politicians via lobbying

basically legalized bribes

The law here doesn't forbid to ship non-essential items, it only forces to protect your workers.

> The $1.1 trillion company was given 24 hours on Tuesday to comply with the ruling to sell only essential items such as food and hygiene products, and to upgrade its health-security procedures.

https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/la-justice-demand...

> stop the delivery of non-essential products until is put in place an evaluation of the risks and measures necessary to protect the employees health

https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/amazon-va-fermer-...

> order the online shop to limit itself to sell "essential products" (food, hygiene or medical) as long as the sanitary risks of the activity in the warehouse haven't been evaluated

Edit: better source

https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-l...

>But the American e-commerce giant was condemned to "restrict the activities of [its] warehouses to receiving goods, preparing and shipping orders for food, hygiene and medical products", "until the company has carried out, with the participation of employee representatives, an assessment of the occupational risks inherent in the Covid-19 epidemic in all of its distribution centres and the resulting measures".

This was phrased as a threat in the article title, but I don't see how Amazon had any choice until implementation of measures is either done or they have an answer to a court appeal. Likewise, there could be a case to be made that measures should already be implemented, but there is no documentation in the article over what progress there has already happened. Per this court order and event, I again don't see another response by them.

My understanding per the article is that this is not about applying a uniform set of safety standards, so there is no legal template we as outsiders can use - say, the safety standards implemented by their French competitors - to judge whether this order is or is not "fair". I also don't think it is my place to judge. Instead, Amazon has the right to determine whether or not they provide service within a country under that country's laws, and to raise awareness if _they_ feel the judicial system is giving illegal preferential treatment disguised in the context of crisis response. I don't see that as happening here either, though - at least not yet.

Why should human beings, when at work, not have all of their human rights?

The obvious answer, to me, is that the hiring and firing involves the abstraction of the company, and is not predominantly a product of a human, but a system. When a manager fires someone, they're not acting as an individual human being, just as when a police officer coerces or shoots someone they aren't doing it based on universal rules for people.

Your argument makes more sense when applied to a sole proprietor. And I think that the legal system recognizes this sort of thing because it makes sense. For instance, if you are renting out a room in your home, you aren't held to the same non-discrimination requirements (in the US) as otherwise.

Are you sure about that?

It's a very common if not universal complaint among libertarian anarchist types that police and/or other government employees shouldn't be subject to different rules from the rest of us. It seems obvious that like it or not, they are in present society.

I'm not suggesting I'm in favor or against it, just acknowledging that the rules for what's acceptable depend on what collective entity you're part of. It doesn't seem peculiar to me if there are always non-individual responsibilities to go with non-individual powers.

This is why you hear the common police trope of “I feared for my life”.

In practice, of course, the prosecutors will aggressively prosecute people defending their own homes from intruders, and fail to prosecute police engaging in premeditated murder; but that of course is a different story. The legal framework, in theory, provides them no special privileges to kill.

However, even if they weren't, it's irrelevant to my point, that people, including but not limited to the police, have powers that come from their membership in an abstract entity, and it's perfectly natural for them to have regulation of those privileges as well.

> Amazon “evidently failed to comply with obligations to protect the health of employees,” judges said in their Tuesday ruling.

That results in

> a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.

I think there's something missing from one reason (not good enough health practices according to the judge) to lead to ban non-essential goods sales.

Can some fill in what's missing (with references) please?

[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon...

If Amazon is not taking precautions and putting the population at risk, they should be shut down.

Amazon is already putting massive delays on non-essential goods (delivery times have moved from 2 days to up to 1 month) in order to prioritize moving essential goods. Not to mention, they've said they're hiring due to the massive influx of orders for essential goods.

So logically speaking, if a large portion of their current activity is already essential goods, what is this besides a way to look like they're standing up to the big bad foreign tech company while getting to keep their deliveries flowing in (all without actually protecting anyone)

Not a single source I've read on this has a hard actionable order on Amazon that actually improves the safety of those who will still be involved in their operations.

The closest they got to that is for them to self evaluate... which they already did and came to conclusions which are actively putting people at risk

I think the point is many suspect that is not the case.

https://thegrio.com/2020/04/01/amazon-worker-strike-covid-19...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-seeks-to-hire-another-75...

It’s true Amazon is still selling non-essential goods, and I understand why the man is frustrated, but it’s very clear even with just “essential goods” being sold, Amazon will still require a large part of their current machinery.

When you’re talking about an organization as large as Amazon Fulfillment, and a virus as infectious as COVID, these half-measures definitely come across as more for optics than actually stopping the spread.

This guy has really weird standards for what qualifies as essential.

At least here in the UK those items showing delivery estimates a month away still show up in a day or two.

Top twitter comment from Amazon: Following the decision of the court on 14th April, we (Amazon Inc) have to temporarily suspend activity in our distribution centers.

Decision from the court, in a screenshot few comments below: We order Amazon Inc to evaluate work-related risks inherent to the covid-19 pandemic, across all its warehouses and to put in place measures expected by article L4121-1 from labor laws (not sure what's in this article)... we order Amazon, until the above measures are put in place and within 24h of being notified of this decision, to restrict warehouse activity to reception of merchandises, preparation and shipping of food items, hygiene items and medical supplies, otherwise it will be subject to a fine of 1M EUR per day late and per infraction.

https://twitter.com/AmazonNewsFR/status/1250481148209369088

https://twitter.com/BlaisePere/status/1250522103952158722/ph....

Even if they had the perfect list the court is requiring, they still need to somehow stop inflows of non-essential items from overfilling their warehouses. The court has ordered them not to clear the warehouse space by simply selling them, as they normally would. Instead, they have to establish some new process (ship the items back?) while deliberately lowering the staffing levels of their warehouses and distribution centers.

They already did a rough first pass of all of these things, and have been incrementally improving.

This court ruling specifically rejected their current course of action. There’s no way they’ll be able to do significantly better in a 24 hour window.

Amazon share price and business activity is surging as a direct result of Covid-19. They need to hire 100,000+ workers to meet the demand. However, the same thing they are profiting from (Covid-19) should also increase many of their operating expenses. Things like healthcare, paid sick leave adequate for the situation (so at least 4 weeks for proper quarantine), good PPE, in-depth infection combat strategies, and so on.

The problem is those operating expenses are only obvious if you have ethics/morality/whatever that concludes individual human life is more valuable than money. So if you're a big corporation that has been designed to enrich shareholders and the space company fantasies of your ego-maniacal CEO, you fight as hard as possible against taking on those operating expenses.

They are already doing all the things you suggested:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-benefits-201...

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to...

I fail to see a response other than - stay operating against the order of the court, or close until they can be in compliance with the court.

"“While the prime minister last March ordered the closure of non-essential businesses and activities bringing together more than 100 people simultaneously, due to the coronavirus epidemic, Amazon continues its activity as if nothing had happened,” a union spokesperson said alongside the lawsuit. “Despite not only the mobilisation of staff and formal notices from unions, inspection and occupational health, but also criticism from the ministers of economy and labour.”"

The ruling called for Amazon to limit orders to a rather specific group of items; I have not heard that other companies in France have had problems understanding. (Although I understand some stores in my state had to be told that "no, even if what you sell is considered essential in another state, you still have to obey this state's order.") And the ruling has been suspended pending appeal.

"The ruling, which has already been suspended pending appeal, required the company to only accept orders for groceries, toiletries and medical products as part of the wider lockdown imposed in France....Amazon immediately appealed against the ruling, securing a suspension of the requirements until conclusion of the appeal."

Amazon didn't seem to have problems when the limitation was its own idea, at least temporarily.

"Amazon temporarily, in late March, stopped taking orders for some non-essential products in France and Italy, in a move to implement social distancing guidelines at the company’s dispatch centres in those countries. Now the company says it is “prioritising” essential products in those countries, but non-essentials continue to be available."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/amazon-sales-n...

But all that aside, no country likes to be dictated to by a foreign company, and I rather suspect Amazon has less power in France than, say, the United Fruit Company in 20th century Nicaragua. Amazon is gambling that French consumers value its services enough that they will oppose the likely long-term response from the French government.

I personally wouldn't take that bet.