Best Buy Uses DMCA To Quash Black Friday Prices

Sethb writes "It looks like Best Buy didn't learn from Wal-Mart last year, and has now invoked the DMCA in order to prevent FatWallet from posting information about what items they will have on sale the day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully FatWallet will stand up for themselves again, and Best Buy will be laughed out of court."

Comments

Same thing as last year?

[cK-Gunslinger]

I still have my response emails from Target, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy from last November/December when the same thing went down. They basically said, "Our prices are designed to help our customers save money and these 'hackers' are violating your rights as a consumer as well as ours. We shall defend ourselves by any means neccesary"

What a joke.

WHAT????

[mark-t]

Okay, the DMCA is designed to make illegal to circumvent the copy control technology on a copyrighted work. So how, exactly, does the DMCA apply here?

Best Buy got sued for something similar

[rabbit994]

Best Buy got sued a while back because a guy in the Washington D.C. Metro Area was shopping for a new laptop and went store to store with his old laptop writing down prices and features because he wanted the best value. Best Buy didn't allow this and even when so far as ripping off price tags. This guy took them to court for false advertising saying their attitude didn't reflect their name "Best Buy". Judge ruled in favor and said if Best Buy wanted to practice that type of behavior, they would have to post a sign in the front that said "We do not allow competive shopping". Needless to say, Best Buy changed a few things and I think the guy got a free laptop out of them to boot.

Re:You mean fighting our culture, right?

[ojQj]

As an American living in Germany, I'm sick of seeing American culture belittled based on false premises. You at least don't try "Americans have no culture", but your statement is still blatantly false that our cultural history is only 300 years old.

Our history on this continent is only 300 years or so old. But our culture, just like that of the Europeans is thousands of years old. Just because our ancestors moved to a new continent doesn't mean they gave their culture up. We got our culture from our ancestors; the Europeans got their culture from their ancestors. We've changed that culture since then, the Europeans have changed that culture since then. Why should the Europeans somehow have more of a right to that culture just because they live on the same continent that our shared ancestors lived on?

Legitimate criticism (like criticisms of American consumerism) are justified as long as clear arguments are presented to show that those are indeed features of American culture and that they are indeed harmful. The yogurt joke* is just bigotry in one of its variety of forms.

Oh and by the way: my father spent 2 years with the Navajos and I have Cherokee indian ancestry. Native American culture has had a direct effect on the way I view the world. Stating that Native American culture has no effect on our culture today is just as inaccurate as stating that European culture isn't a part of our cultural heritage. Just as one example: did you know that the turkey, the potato, tobacco, the tomato, the pumpkin, the cranberry, corn, kidney beans, bell peppers, pecans, squash, and many other crops are American? Many dishes which are made from these foods still cannot be found in Germany today (cornbread, pumpkin pie, candy corn, sweet potato casserole, cranberry relish, pecan anything, etc.)

*(what's the difference between a cup of yoghurt and America? -- yoghurt will eventually develop a culture)

(end rant -- sorry. As you can imagine its an issue of some sensitivity for me.)