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To: 2MAR$ who wrote (6237)	7/17/2001 3:21:38 AM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 208838

Amazon embraces the 'honor system' ( SETI program sucessful , intelligent aliens discovered and the call themselves ---->Bezos! hehe) By Jon Friedman, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 4:54 PM ET July 16, 2001 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos wants Web surfers to embrace the honor system. Based on Amazon.com's one-click shopping technology, the "Amazon Honor System" is a way for loyal users of various Web sites to contribute to the businesses' viability. Fans can contribute as little as $1 -- and Amazon.com benefits, too. It collects 15 percent of the contributions in the name of processing and other fees. FRONT PAGE NEWS U.S. techs clipped; Nasdaq falls 2.7% Citi, Bank of America earnings pass targets Market news and more! Sign up to receive FREE email newsletters Get the latest news 24 hours a day from our 100-person news team. Bezos, the ever-breezy founder of Amazon.com, spent the afternoon Monday discussing the virtues of Amazon's (AMZN: news, msgs, alerts) honor system. Framed by a surreal setting: a barbecue in, of all places, Manhattan's funky East Village neighborhood, a block away from CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock in the United States. According to an Amazon.com fact sheet, the funds gathered through the honor system have helped the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, promoting harmonica music, saying something nothing nice (crankycritic.com) and saying everything nice (daily-blessings.com). "There are thousands of Web sites on the system, and we're serious about this," said Bezos in a brief interview, happily looking anything but serious, decked out in black-and-white striped trousers, a red apron, an Amazon.com T-shirt and a chef's toque. Bezos, characteristically as unpretentious as a pie in the face, actually flipped hamburgers for a while and mentioned that one of his first jobs, when he was 15 years old, was manning the grill at a McDonald's restaurant. Amazon.com's payments team introduced the honor system with 50 participating sites. Now it has more than 6,000 members who have collected $250,000 in the past five months, the company said. "I sent a buck to a Web site in the program," said Nell Minow, who runs a Web site for family movies and one for corporate governance. "I grew up in Chicago, and I came across a fantastic site dealing with old TV shows that were shown in Chicago when I was growing up," Minow said. "It was a great site. So I sent them a buck through Amazon.com." Bezos the chef turned serious despite his incongruous get-up as he took a break from flipping burgers to address some serious issues with reporters crowded around him. He said that Amazon.com continues to seek partners in various ventures. "We never comment on anything we're close to," he said. Bezos was joined by representatives from the Modern Humorist, a Web site, in co-sponsoring the barbecue. Amazon.com's shares were down 4 percent, or 97 cents, to $16.01 Monday afternoon, continuing the descent of Internet stocks over the past 15 months.