Ninth Circuit clears Perplexity's Comet agent, ruling the user — not the vendor — is the one who 'accessed' Amazon
An appeals court overturned an order barring Perplexity's shopping agent from Amazon.com, holding that under the federal computer-hacking statute it was users, not Perplexity, who accessed the site. The reasoning treats an agent as an instrument of its principal — the first serious answer to a question the entire agent economy depends on.
The legal question is deceptively narrow and enormously consequential: when software acts on a person's behalf, who is the actor? The Ninth Circuit's answer — the user — treats the agent as a tool wielded by its principal rather than an independent party trespassing on someone else's system.
If that holds, it removes the largest structural threat to consumer agents. A contrary ruling would have let any site block agent access by asserting unauthorised entry under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the entire category of software that shops, books and compares on a user's behalf would have needed permission from every destination it touched.
The obligations do not vanish, they relocate. Sites retain contract and technical remedies — terms of service, rate limits, authentication — and vendors remain answerable for what their agents do. But the default flips from prohibited-unless-permitted to permitted-unless-restricted, and defaults determine which markets exist.
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