Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Three cheers for the retailers involved in this legal action. This is exactly the kind of absurd example we need to get that crappy old DMCA repealed once and for all.
Seriously, anyone else as jazzed about this as I am?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The DMCA can apply. Why does everyone think the DMCA is only about encryption? It applies anywhere there are copyrights. The question is "can unreleased pricing information be copyrighted?".
While the answer _should_ be no, the way things are going a court might just say yes. Companies have been able to copyright collections of facts like phone numbers so why not?
People /want/ to fight it, they just can't. Try going up against Wal Mart, Best Buy, Target...you can't. You don't have the money. They can tie you up in court until your financing runs out, then your lawyer says "buh-bye" and you effectively lose.
:) You'd be suprised at how effective small groups of people can be once they get noticed by the higher managment of these places. If your stunt has entertainment value, local papers and tv stations will probably cover it if you tell them ahead of time... there's not much news on a holiday weekend anyway.
There's a fun and easy way to fight it...
Here are the stores that sent the DMCA threats: Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, Staples
Some of you may be screaming boycott... but that won't work. There aren't enough people who even know what the DMCA is to make a dent in the sales of these companies... besides, they would just chalk it up to the bad economy and ask for a government bail-out.
I think guerrilla protests are the best way... especially since most of us have the friday after thanksgiving off... Just get a few friends together and have fun...
a few ideas:
1. Go to a store and cover up their prices with red tape. This would be especially effective at stores where the prices are on the shelves and not on the items.
2. Go to a store and have customers sign a non-disclosure agreement before they look at the prices. Explain that the prices are copyrighted and they can't tell anyone else what they paid for what they buy. After the store kicks you out go outside in the parking lot. After the cops ask you to leave go to another store.
3. Guerrilla theater. Perform mini DMCA plays in the offending stores... this one can be a lot of fun.
Be sure to have fliers explaining the DMCA and what these stores did and hand them out to the curious. Be creative.
Don't worry about getting arrested... just leave when they ask you to leave and go on to another store. It doesn't matter if your mini-protest lasts only five minutes before they kick you out... the store manager will still tell his district manager about your stunt, and maybe the store might change its policy.
Too bad there isn't a geeky activist group to organize such a thing. If this were organized to be across several cities, small groups of five or six people in each city would be very effective.
I did a few protests back in college
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
For all practical purposes the "Safe Harbor" provision forces the presumption guilt upon act of the filing the complaint. That means that prior to any court cases, etc., the remedy the company filing the complaint desires already has taken place. The material is squelched.
Couple that with the deep-pockets vs small-operators problem of fighting a court case and the DMCA stiffles just about anything a company wants to stiffle, regardless of the merit of their complaint.
At the very least the "Safe Harbor" mechanism should be reworked. The company/person filing the complaint should have to go to court to get an injuction to get the offending material removed. If they couldn't even get an injunction, it is unlikely they would pursue the matter much farther. I think that would stop a lot of these thugish tactics.
Obligatory - IANAL.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
In places (like most of Europe) that have a "loser-pays" system, it does not work like this -- you don't end up with a "loser" paying the entirety of the other side's bills. The amount that either side has to pay of the other's bills is based on who brought the suit, how valid each side's claims were, how much each side was held responsible for the issue at hand, etc. I don't know how well it works, in practice, but I don't think it does any good to spread false information about how loser-pays systems work. Check out this article for information on how loser-pays systems really work.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased