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Retailers Swing DMCA To Stop "Black Friday" Sale Info
zoid.com writes "It looks like a few of the big retailers have sent out DMCA notices to a few of the consumer deal sites. So now they are claiming that sale prices are covered under the DMCA. I would like to know what part of the DMCA states that you can not share the price of merchandise. Also, why would they want to stop this free advertising?"
I can understand FatWallet not wanting to fight this, but I sure wish somebody would. Until there is enough momentum from the accused, we won't see any real progress on seeing the DMCA changed or overthrown.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Also, why would they want to stop this free advertising?
Why? Because their prices are not competitive of course. In that case it's not advertisement on such a site.
Whenever I check out the price comparison sites, I won't bother looking into a vendor that isn't listed or won't let itself be listed. Most people have a general idea of how much the item they are looking for will cost anyway. Based on that, you can usually find a great price from multiple people, so why bother looking up the prices of the few who won't be listed? It seems that they may lose sales from people like me who won't spend the extra time it would take to look them up individually.
As for how the DMCA relates to this, it's obviously just a way for the companies to make an excuse for delisting their prices. They think that not having the prices public will help them stay out of price wars or other competitive practices, but it's not like this would stop secret shoppers or anything.
Probably the copyright claim is bogus itself, but it is common practice for the big corporations to use the threat of legal action to make small fries do what they want, even if they know they would lose. And that isn't a DMCA issue either -- that's a problem with the way capitalism leverages the legal system.
I'm not sticking up for the DMCA, but this case is really, ultimately, about something else.
If the site were serving scanned images of advertizing flyers, they might be in violation of copyright law, but if they're just reporting pricing facts, how can it be a violation?
The advertising copy from some flyer containing a blurb-type phrase might be copyrightable, but the fact that some store at some address is selling some item for some price is not copyrightable.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
From the link:
While we believe that sale prices are facts and can not be copyrighted, We have made the business decision to comply with the dmca notifications.
Our reasoning for this is very simple - Our mission is to serve consumers - If we were to choose to fight this battle, It would require more resources than are available - and we would no longer be able to serve consumers.
This speaks more to the flaws in the legal system itself than it does to the DMCA. The legal system has esentially become a means of controling people with significantly less money than you. Time and time again, we hear some variant of "we believe we are right, but we don't have the resources to prove it."
The system no longer provides equal protection to all; "justice," as it were, can be purchased. Witness PanIP's attempts to bully web merchants, or the OJ Simpson case.
The DMCA is bad; nearly all of us believe so. In the end, however, it is simply one item from the overly-expensive toolchest that is the american legal system. The average American can afford a hammer, but the mega-companies all have power tools. The legal system is designed to see who has the better legal case, but the sad fact is that many cases never actually get to that point; the entry level is simply to high. Joe Blow running his web site from his basement may have the best legal argument in the world for why he should be allowed to print the sale prices of items, but he cannot afford the cadre of lawyers to ensure that that aregument gets heard. Joe Blow might be right, but that doesn't matter; the company that opposes him can simply drag out the legal preceedings long enough to bankrupt him.
Ideally, when something like this happens, the defendant would be able to go before a judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the judge would say "case dismissed." Instead, they go before the judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the claiment says "that's not what my stable of lawyers say..."
The really depressing thing is that, even though I can see the system is broken, I really have no idea what to do about it. The system needs to be reformed, but I'm not entierly sure where to start.
Thomas Galvin
Prices are facts and cannot be copyrighted because they are not original works of authorship. See the Feist case, where an alphabetical listing of phone numbers was unanimously ruled to not be copyrightable.
However, a price sheet may involve some originality in selection, layout, graphics, descriptions, etc... and thus an exact reproduction of this might be infringing.
The interesting DMCA question is whether an access TPM to a copyrighted price sheet could be circumvented if the only thing extracted was the price data. I actually think the DMCA as written says such access IS illegal but that Congress has no Constutitional authority to pass such a law.
Then again, I think the 2nd Circuit's opinion upholding the DMCA was deeply flawed.
Yet another reason why the DMCA is WAY TOO broad in its scope. And another reason lawyers need to educated themselves on technology.
I don't think so; the DMCA is overly broad, but I don't think the DMCA actually applies in this case. The problem with this is the fact that, even though the operators of bigfatwallet.com may be right, they cannot afford to prove it in a court of law. The real problem in this case is not the scope of the DMCA, but the fact that "justice" has a cover charge; if you can't afford the lwayers, you don't get in the door.
Thomas Galvin
Black Friday is a field day for stores... they essentially thrive on making people make rush purchases - this is why so many sales end at noon or early afternoon. The trick is, while everybody is slashing prices - sometimes to below cost, make your store the priority store to go to... now when you give people maybe one or two days to figure out all the deals, they're less likely to systematically plan and take advantage of the best deals, after all - the best deals aren't why they want you at their store - they want you to make periheral purchases, which are worse deals - ones which make them profit. However, if you can plan your shopping much in advance knowing all the prices, you are more likely to buy the cheapest stuff from store A, the cheapest stuff from store B, etc, without bothering to even look around very much at the other deals, since you already know all the prices.
It isn't that these stores aren't competetively priced, as some have suggested, it's simply that the competetive pricing is only a lure - giving all the prices for hot items makes that lure nearly worthless.
You've got it exactly backwards. If the loser had to pay the winner's legal expenses people would be afraid to sue big companies because of the risk of being required to pay the big companies $100,000 legal bill. The big companies, on the other hand, would see the risk of having to pay the "little guy's" $10,000 bill as a minor cost of doing business.
BTW you can collect legal expenses from a losing plaintiff if you can show that his suit was frivolious and malicious.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste..., or what a waste it is to lose ones mind, or something like that.
Keep passing the open windows...
No, it's not. Copyright protection technology and circumvention is only one part of the DMCA -- the one that gets the most coverage on Slashdot, naturally. There are other provisions of the DMCA, such as those dealing with the liability of online service providers for the dissemination of infringing material.
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
Because the DMCA is about circumventing copyright protection technology, which usually means encryption. Please explain what copyright protection technology the retailers employed on their copyrighted sales prices, and how exactly these web site circumvented it.
The DMCA had two main provisions, a circumvention ban and a takedown notice procedure, with numerous riders. This case invokes section 512(c) about takedown notices. If an ISP doesn't respond to a takedown notice, it becomes liable for everything sent over its network.
Will I retire or break 10K?
To avoid the inevitable /. effect (swamped, plus the inevitable trolls and fringes), how about a reverse /. interview? Let Ron pose the questions, then send him the highest moderated responses. Or just a general thread, then email him the +5 comments.
I think that'd be a better representation of the /. community in that we would be self-selecting our representatives. We don't want to come off as anti-capitalist, pro-communist, p0rn lovers, 3l33t h4k3r5, warez pirates...or, god forbid, goatse.cx fans. (Even if you are one (or more) of those things, it won't help in garnering support agains the DMCA to reveal it to the readership of the WSJ).