reads a few web pages

I don’t know about the EU, but it looks like in the US, if Amazon is selling a product directly – as it once did for all products – it bears liability. But if it is just acting as an intermediary between a non-Amazon seller and a customer – kind of like how eBay works – it doesn’t. I assume that in that case, liability is on that seller.

Might be the same sort of situation in the EU.

I wonder if this EU directive just affects Amazon or also places like eBay. Amazon could presumably basically just sell stuff from Amazon in a worst-case scenario, but for places like eBay, I’d think that that’d have a huge impact on their business model.

EDIT: Also, if the product description is an input into liability, which I’d guess might be the case…hmm. so, right now, a seller selling through Amazon can write their product description. But suppose it, I don’t know, sold a given product with a description that rendered it unsafe, like selling a box of rat poison as delicious candy. If Amazon is liable for that description, I’d think that they wouldn’t want to permit sellers to write their own descriptions.