alt Hacker NewsThat seems like a reasonable policy for Amazon to have. It's pretty normal practice for wholesale/distribution contracts to include clauses prohibiting the manufacturer from undercutting them in other channels after the contract is signed.
Why would Amazon want to bear the cost of people using their store as a free product billboard, or using their warehouses as cheap transient storage space, while trying to push customers to actually make their purchases elsewhere?
I'm not sure how this can be considered 'regulation' of the market, however -- to the contrary, it signifies that Amazon itself is sensitive to price pressure coming from competing distribution channels.
A monopoly store is charging (according to sibling posts) about a 50% tax to its suppliers, and will ban them if they sell their products for a fair price anywhere else. The tax percentage keeps increasing over time, as the monopoly uses this policy to prevent anyone else from competing on price.
That’s clearly in violation of antitrust laws.