Hi all, this is Alwin, the writer of this "hilarious" email...
I am amazed to find all this about my email :-) I was just being frank and trying to be clear, upfront, before any possible disabling of our Amazon access (which has not happened yet).
My customers are used to lengthy, detailed emails. They respect and expect my honesty, good news or bad news.
I agree that I could (should?) have been more apologetic.
But please note that my iPhone apps are not using the Amazon API at all. Amazon claims that Amazon data is being used on a mobile device, that is, data that once has been downloaded from Amazon. Which should be rare, because we have our own online media databases and our Windows / Mac software only queries Amazon for barcodes that our not found in our own databases, as a fallback. The "violation" of the Amazon ToS (if any) is very minor and rare.
But yes, it IS a violation and I will have to deal with the consequences. And informing my customers was the first thing on my mind. Which I did, fast and with all details.