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

Re:national buy nothing day

[SEE]

Ah, that old myth.

In fact, the 1773 Tea Act, which provoked the Boston Tea Party, remitted a significant English tea tax. The result was that Americans could buy British East India Company tea after the Tea Act for significantly less than they previously were being charged for either legal British tea or smuggled Dutch tea. And this cheaper tea was of generally higher quality than the Dutch tea, too.

So what was the issue? The extent of Parliamentary authority.

The small three-penny Townsend duty was left on the tea by Prime Minister Lord North as a statement of the principle that Parliament could tax the colonies, and the Tea Act granted a monopoly on the tea trade to the British East India Company.

Even though the result was higher quality and lower prices, the American colonies denied that Parliament had the right to do either. Indignation was high enough that the ships to New York and Philadelphia were ordered back to England by the local authorities, lest the ships be attacked. In Boston, the ship was brought in under guard, and got attacked. Americans continued to drink more expensive, smuggled Dutch tea (and increasingly coffee instead) rather than concede Parliamentary authority.

Americans did not revolt against Britain because of high tax rates; Parliament never imposed taxes in America even approaching those it imposed in Britain itself. They revolted because they did not accept the King-in-Parliament as the soverign authority in the colonies. While they were subjects of the King, they did not consider themselves subject to the authority of a Parliament in which they lacked representation any more than Britain was subject to the colonial legislatures in which Britain's people did not have representation.