I believe that is their loophole, yes. They're just the payment processor and shipper, you are not buying the product from them. To me it seems like another area where the Internet has exposed gaps in the law that were not foreseen, and legislators have not caught up.
My mother is a sucker for online shopping, and over the last few months has bought a number of clothes on Amazon. I've checked, and every single one of them has been a counterfeit. One set was literally a pair of hospital scrubs with a label sewn in. It's disgraceful.
She's simply not savvy enough to know she's getting scammed. She can't fathom that a company as big and famous as Amazon would let that sort of criminality happen on their platform, and as such refuses to believe me that most of the products on there are a scam. In her words, "Amazon wouldn't let that happen". Not only that, but because she buys this sort of shit, Amazon seems to show her even more of it through their recommend function. She's getting targeted, and Amazon is complicit in it.
This is what bothers me most. Their excuse is "the market place isn't at fault, it's between the buyer and the seller". They damn well are at fault if they're using their algorithm to fill a persons marketplace with counterfeit goods. As soon as you manipulate what a person does and doesn't see in your shop, you have agency. You are culpable.
