Online Sales Tax, CDA Debate Likely Common Policy Ground for Amazon, ‘Post’

They said Amazon and the Post benefit from Section 230 of the CDA, which prevents online publishers from being held liable for content posted by others on the publishers’ sites. Comments on Post articles and reviews on Amazon are “only there because of Section 230,” said Kevin Goldberg, First Amendment attorney with Fletcher Heald. Amazon and Bezos have “been very good in a number of ways” on free speech issues, and “it would be a natural fit for him to become more active in that area,” he said. Section 230 has recently been a topic of debate, as a group of state attorneys general asked Congress to reform the law so state and local law enforcement officials can prosecute websites that profit from Internet-facilitated sex trafficking. “They're trying to make this a strict liability situation,” which would make Amazon and the Post responsible for reviews and comments posted on their sites, Goldberg said.

The attorneys general proposal “would truly break much of the Internet,” said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka. “If companies like Amazon and the Washington Post -- not to mention countless smaller website operators -- were held liable under state criminal laws for content created by their users, any one of the 27,000 state and local prosecutors in the U.S. could shut down a company under” an “endless array of laws,” he said.

Amazon and the Post support online sales tax legislation, based on past statements. Amazon is widely seen as a driving force in the online sales tax debate, though the company had initially been against legislation. “Amazon will soon be collecting taxes for over half the country under existing law,” said Policy Counsel Carl Szabo of NetChoice, with members including AOL, eBay, Facebook, News Corp. and Yahoo, but not Amazon. “As Amazon expands its distribution centers to more and more states, it will soon collect for the entire country.” The bill “impairs smaller competitors” without creating significant burdens for Amazon, he said.

The Post published an editorial in April -- when the Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would give states the power to collect tax on sales made by out-of-state online retailers -- praising the MFA (http://wapo.st/1cKdkPp). The legislation would “level the playing field for stores that have a physical presence, which are already charging tax on all local purchases,” the editorial board wrote. It called the measure “fair for retailers, good for state budgets and even beneficial for consumers who would rather shop in person.” The bill would boost state revenue, the editorial said: “Both Maryland and Virginia, for example, have built transportation plans on the expectation that Congress will” pass MFA. That editorial view is unlikely to change after Bezos’ purchase of the Post, Szabo said. The paper “incorrectly believes that [MFA] will save small businesses,” he said.

Bezos will have to carefully balance his advocacy on policy issues -- as well as Amazon’s advocacy -- with the Post, said Bob Steele, Nelson Poynter scholar for journalism values at the Poynter Institute. Bezos should “build in significant internal fences” to ensure “that any advocacy on his part is totally separate from his influence of the operations of the Post,” especially its news coverage, he said: “He will have to be very careful in how he pursues any advocacy” to avoid the perception and the reality that his business interests in Amazon are influencing the Post’s operations. In a letter to Post employees (http://wapo.st/176dWKv), Bezos said his business interests would not dictate the direction of news coverage. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners,” he wrote. Steele suggested that the change in ownership presents the opportunity to revisit the role of the Post’s ombudsman, as others had also sought after the deal. “The ombudsman concept, imperfect though it is, provides at least one method for aspiring to accountability,” he said.