So, being from Illinois, I logged into my Amazon Affiliate account today and got the above notice. Essentially, this clown, "Quinn", doesn't mind that he's putting people out of work because he's recieved countless email and letters, including one from yours truly, letting him know this isn't cool, even before he signed the bill into law, but that didn't deter him. "Push on Gov'na".
Hopefully the rest of the so called leaders of this country don't follow the lead of this idiot and start signing similar bills into law, and hopefully the next Illinois Governor will strike this ridiculous, unwanted law from the books. I can guarantee he won't be getting my vote, and I have a mighty strong feeling he just lost thousands, maybe tens of thousands more. Even, Roger Ebert, movie reviewer, Illinois resident and Amazon Affiliate raised a stink about this stupid move via his twitter.
Update: The waters get muddier and muddier by the day. Is it the fault of Gov. Quinn and his (I made my law now suck it) attitude that's screwing over Illinois Amazon Associates? Or is it Amazon.com themselves who are doing so by avoiding paying taxes? Here's a really good blog post going into depth on the latter: Read it here
After reading into the subject more in-depth, it's looking like it's more about Amazon trying to scheme the tax system than it is about the new Illinois Internet Tax Law. Also, the blog owner who had his account re-instated was never actually booted from Amazon because he's not an Illinois resident; he was just doing a cool thing by removing them from his main page himself for a month as a form of protest. That's great, but I doubt Amazon really even noticed his month-long boycott financially. What would be really useful is if he boycotted them permanently, until Amazon got it's into gear, but not just him, every Affiliate should boycott them. I think that'd finally get Amazon to take notice ...
Taken
Did you see the update at the top of the blog?
(Update: Amazon advertising has been restored to this blog after a one-month boycott, part of the necessities of doing business on the Internet, but this blog remains of the opinion that Amazon should stop shirking its tax responsibilities and stop penalizing associates based on location).
That seems pretty shady of Amazon to selectively reinstate only certain Illinois affiliates while blocking others. Apparently it's "possible" to continue having Illinois affiliates on Amazon, but they're being shady about paying out Illinois taxes.