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Years ago I used to shop at circuit city, they had some good points, they had some bad points. A little over a year ago I started my official boycott after reading about Michael Righi. His 4th Ammendment rights were violated by Circuit City policy, and subsequently I chose never to support them again. Arrested at Circuit City

It was getting smart with the police officer (that he, himself called) that landed him in jail. If you have an ID and the police asks for it and you refuse, you are obstructing. (The blogger does also say this at the end of the article.)

That's a lie. If you read his subsequent entry you'll see that not only was he vindicated, but that Ohio law specifically reiterates that you don't have to show police ID, but rather only tell them your name, address, and age (which he was perfectly willing to do).

more importantly, things turned out ok for him

http://www.michaelrighi.com/2007/09/20/success/

I remember reading about this ages ago but never followed up on it. Here's the result straight from Michael Righi's blog and it's a pretty interesting read, although it focuses more on him being arrested due to refusing to show his driver's licence, so decide yourself if this should be modded off topic or not. Some highlights:

"In the days that followed a few things changed. First, I learned that the prosecutor was more interested in protecting the city against a civil law suit than she was in silencing my speech. Prosecutor Hillary Goldberg was willing to drop my charges and expunge my record if I promised not to sue. Although this was welcome news I still wanted to fight the charges in court in order to set a legal precedent for others."

It's not an issue of 'growing a backbone'. It's an issue of having copious amounts of both time and money to deal with the problem. As far as I am aware, there is one person who actually took the time to make a serious legal complaint against a store that was forcing him to show his receipt/bag. You can read about his story here:

http://www.michaelrighi.com/2007/09/

Despite the headline on that blog post reading 'Success' all Mr. Righi managed to do was get charges against himself dropped. Not only that, he did not get a penny from either circuit city or the police department that falsely arrested him. He did not get an apology from Circuit City, the police department, or the City - not even a verbal apology. On top of all that, he notes that this has cost him at least $7500 in legal fees. It's not an issue of having a backbone, it's an issue of living some place where all the citizenry - from yourself, to the Circuit City employees to the police officers - have a deep understanding and respect for civil rights. If that's where you are, please let me know so I can join this Utopia.

If you had, you'd know beyond any doubt that no amount of self delusional geek greatness makes you more intelligent than a trained lawyer at home in their profession.

He isn't a freedom fighter. In fact, he lost one of his own freedoms in the process. Now if the same incident happens again, he can't sue the city.

Well, there is the .Pdf of the legal release, FTFA.

Yes, copy protection will annoy a small fraction of legit customers.
Tough.
That's the price of doing business. Do security guards irritate people in shops?

Taken from my blog at: www.michaelrighi.com:

Over the past few years I've seen the popularity of web logs grow faster than the mold in my fridge. I really get a kick out of four year crazes. Don't get me wrong, I think that web logs are profoundly important and here to stay. But right now web logs are experiencing the hype of a four year craze. Hear me out.

My first experience with the World Wide Web was circa 1993. On the weekends my father would take me into work and plop me down in front of a Silicon Graphics workstation while he accomplished work worthy of a weekend visit. I'm proud that my first web experience involved Mosaic, and when it went live a year later, Yahoo. I can't imagine what it would be like for a child's first experience with the web to involve Internet Explorer. That must be like learning how to drive on a Pinto. I digress.

Back in the day, when the workstations weren't in use, they ran this thing called a "screensaver" to keep the monitors from suffering burn-in. Specifically, they ran a screensaver named PointCast. Pointcast LogoPointCast was a program that featured Push technology. Basically, with Push technology, servers would send data to the client rather than clients requesting it from the server. Hot damn and hallelujah, push technology was going to change the world! I mean, can you imagine it!?!?! Push instead of Pull! Ingenius! Not since Columbus discovered the world is round... blah blah blah.

PointCast pushed stock quotes, news and weather to the computers that subscribed to it. I never really understood PointCast. I mean, if it ran when the computer was idle, then who was there to read the stocks, news and weather? I want my stocks, news and weather when I'm sitting at the computer thank you very much. These silly problems didn't matter back in the early to mid-nineties because PointCast's graphics were stunning (for the time) and there weren't that many choices for a screensaver if you didn't like flying toasters.

Somehow the enthusiasm for PointCast's pretty graphics translated into euphoria for Push technology. Of course Push has a place, but after about four years the hype behind Push technology gave way to the common sense benefits of Pull. Push is in use today, but its perceived importance settled down to a realistic level. I guess you could say that gravity pulled Push back to Earth.

In the late nineties, portals were king. If you didn't have a portal then why were you even bothering with the web? For those of you not aware, portals are aggregate web sites that pull together content (such as stock, news and weather) all into a convenient, customizable web page. Every search engine turned itself into a portal, with Lycos and Yahoo being the biggest that I can remember. The word Portal became synonymous with the web. Eventually the good people at Google showed that congested portals could be slayed by a clean interface tied to a fast search engine. Of course portals are still around today. For example, some of my current work uses IBM WebSphere Portal. But again, after about four years of hype, their perceived importance has settled down to a realistic level.

Over the last couple of years web logs have become all the rage. In fact, web logs have become so popular that I think they deserve a shorter name. I suggest we start calling them "blogs" for short. Blog. I think it's kind of catchy, what do you think?

Anyway, blogs have become all the rage.Trent Lott Unlike with push and portals, blogs actually have some power to their punch. In fact, Howard Dean almost lost to George W. Bush instead of to John Kerry thanks to the grassroots effort largely organized through his blog. Trent Lott would probably still be in office today if it weren't for the power of bloggers and their blogs. Blogs transfer the power of the press from the mighty publisher to the puny peon. Powerful stuff.

But wait a second, didn't HTML and the World Wide

"Over the past few years I've seen the popularity of web logs grow faster than the mold in my fridge. I really get a kick out of four year crazes. Don't get me wrong, I think that web logs are profoundly important and here to stay. But right now web logs are experiencing the hype of a four year craze. Hear me out. My first experience with the World Wide Web was circa 1993. On the weekends my father would take me into work and plop me down in front of a Silicon Graphics workstation while he accomplished work worthy of a weekend visit. I'm proud that my first web experience involved Mosaic, and when it went live a year later, Yahoo. I can't imagine what it would be like for a child's first experience with the web to involve Internet Explorer. That must be like learning how to drive on a Pinto. I digress...."