amazon.com

Forget China or Al Qaeda. In a twist that would have been inconceivable even a few months ago, the WikiLeaks.org Web site is being proposed as the first public target for a U.S. government cyberattack.

After the shadowy, document-leaking organization distributed nearly 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war on Friday, Washington officialdom responded with a torrent of denunciations alleging violations of national security and endangering U.S. military operations.

In a rare point of congruence, The Washington Post and The Washington Times both criticized the release, with the smaller paper arguing that WikiLeaks' offshore Web site … Read more

In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today that the company would not have to turn over detailed records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina tax collectors.

The state had demanded sensitive information including names and addresses of North Carolina customers--and information about exactly what they had purchased between 2003 and 2010.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Washington state said that request went too far and "runs afoul of the First Amendment." She granted Amazon summary judgment.

The Tar Heel State's tax … Read more

Some of the most highly trafficked interactive systems today are accessed through the Web: Amazon.com, Facebook, Google, Zynga just to name a few. These apps have to work flawlessly across any browser or risk losing eyeballs and audience consistency.

The browser wars after all, are still alive and well, and any serious Web application needs to work on the most popular browsers , such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome but don't forget others like Safari and Opera.

But for most companies, it is difficult and costly to maintain and update a test infrastructure on premise that keeps up … Read more

The halcyon days of tax-free Internet shopping will, if Rep. Bill Delahunt gets his way, soon be coming to an abrupt end.

Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a bill on Thursday that would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the option for many Americans to shop over the Internet without paying state sales taxes.

At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren't required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't be … Read more

Amazon.com experienced a widespread outage on Tuesday that lasted, at least for many customers, more than three hours and displayed blank or partial pages instead of product listings.

By mid-afternoon, Amazon's home page was devoid of any product photographs and showed only a list of categories on the left of the screen. Searching for items often didn't work, and customers' shopping carts and saved item lists were temporarily displayed as empty.

At an annual revenue of nearly $27 billion, Amazon faces a potential loss of an average of $51,400 a minute when it's site is … Read more

A sister site of online retailer Zappos.com fumbled more than $1.6 million in the wee hours of Friday morning when a pricing-engine blip inadvertently made every product on that site available for no more than $49.95.

Aaron Magness, director of brand marketing and business development for Zappos Development, said in a blog post that 6pm.com would be honoring purchases made during the glitch, which, he said, took place between midnight and 6 a.m. PT that day.

Touting itself as a bargain retailer of brand name products, 6pm.com features, among other things, a GPS device … Read more

North Carolina's tax collectors said Wednesday that they never demanded personal information such as book titles from Amazon.com, which filed a federal lawsuit against the state this week seeking to keep that information confidential.

"Amazon's complaint is misleading in alleging the department has required detailed information revealing personal consumer preferences, such as book titles," North Carolina Secretary of Revenue, Kenneth Lay, said in a statement.

But CNET has obtained correspondence from the Department of Revenue that calls North Carolina's claim into question.

In a letter to Amazon dated December 1, 2009, Romey McCoy, the … Read more

Amazon.com filed a lawsuit on Monday to fend off a sweeping demand from North Carolina's tax collectors: detailed records including names and addresses of customers and information about exactly what they purchased.

The lawsuit says the demand violates the privacy and First Amendment rights of Amazon's customers. North Carolina's Department of Revenue had ordered the online retailer to provide full details on nearly 50 million purchases made by state residents between 2003 and 2010.

Amazon is asking a federal judge in Seattle to rule that the demand is illegal, and left open the possibility of requesting … Read more

Jeremy Bray received an e-mail message this morning with an unwelcome surprise: Amazon.com told him it had canceled its affiliate program, which provides small payments for referring customers, for everyone in the state of Colorado.

The reason? A state law, which Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed last week, slaps onerous new restrictions on large out-of-state sellers like Amazon, which said it has no choice but to end its marketing program in response.

Bray, a blogger who has lived in Pueblo, Colo., for more than 20 years, told CNET on Monday that he's now trying to "bring as … Read more