Slashdot Mirror
Odeon Orders Takedown Of Copycat Site
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that Odeon Cinemas, a British theater chain, has ordered a takedown of a copycat version of its site that was made by a disability activist. The original didn't work outside of IE on Windows and was in violation of the Disability Discrimination Act; the activist-recoded one worked on everything. Odeon has flip-flopped on the issue, too; they liked it when it was first up, and now they don't."
Seems like they'd be better off using this energy to make sure their site works on all browsers instead of coming down on someone who is doing a legitimate service...
Why is this a big deal? I read the 2 emails from Odeon and the one sent to them, and I don't see why Odeon is being outragous in asking them to take down the site.
Sure, their site should work in other browsers, but that is not the issue.
The issue is that some guy is tricking people into submitting info to his site instead of the Odeon site like they think that they are. Maybe he collects the data before he sends it to Odeon, maybe he doesn't like he says. I don't know him, and thats not even the issue.
I can very well understand why a company does not want someone they don't know collecting their customers information in their name. What if they guy ends up getting caught selling all these names to spammers one day? Then Odeon would really look stupid for not taking action against the guy.
IANAL, but 'letting people browse a website easier' doesn't trump 'copyright law' where I live. He (Somerville) is using their (Odeon) IP without their permission (now).
So, why is this a bad thing? Yes their site may suck, but violating Copyright is violating Copyright no matter how you slice it.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Odeon might get less of a grilling for us if they had ever actually bothered to do something to make their site work correctly.
.. I can't think what they're smoking.
Apparently it doesn't even work correctly in MSIE most of the time, and I found the copycat site particularly useful in finding out times of films. I'd normally then book via phone.
A message to Odeon: Fix the site, and maybe then you might have some reason to complain. But so far, since the copycat site:
* Allows more people to look up film times.
* Makes it easier for people to do the above.
* Does not detract potential revenue away from Odeon itself.
Probably a bigwig who has no clue of the situation made this decision..
Why couldn't they parse the info pages (via an HTML ripper or something), pull out the information they want, and post that on their own site? No cloned pages, but the data's the same. And of course, the new pages would work in all browsers.
That's the problem with these well-intentioned laws. When someone wants to flout them, the effort to correct the problem seems to be insurmountable. I'm sure there will be lawsuits and court orders and a whole bunch of people's productivity being sucked down a black hole (willingly or not), before this is said and done.
The problem stems from the fact that in our society (modern Western democracies anyway), we are so buried in an avalanche of regulations that there is no way you can even be aware of them all, and when one that is particularly useful... such as a law requiring handicapped access, enforcement becomes infeasible because so much effort is being wasted to meet the utter explosion of bureaucratic requirements.
We already work about half the year just to pay taxes, and when we can work for ourselves how big does the proportion of time we spend dealing with red tape have to be before people get fed up. We are being nickel-and-dimed into losing productivity. Meanwhile this Web site apparently ignores the law and it will probably be months or years before anything can be done about it because the people who could do something about it are too busy making sure that all government contractors are using 7/64" bevelled grommets instead of 3/32" bevelled grommets.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The original site only allowed access to people using Internet Explorer and Windows and was in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Despite predictions when his site first went up that the lawyers' letters would arrive immediately Odeon Cinema initially welcomed the site - as did many disabled people who could access the site for the first time.
But this all changed with the arrival of an email from Luke Vetere, marketing director at Odeon
Brilliant marketing. Piss off and lock out a demographic. And there's nothing better to improve a company's image than screwing over disabled people and breaking the law. Odeon is really getting its money's worth hiring this moron.
When will /. be getting a well needed HTML upgrade to XHTML 1.0 or 1.1? And have it fully validate?! I mean for crying out loud someone on alistapart.com did an article and rewrote slashdot as a completely standard website.. see the article and read more about it here
Look at the savings in bandwidth he calculated out.
"Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total savings for Slashdot would be: $3650! All of that for just a couple of KB."
Furthermore, the e-mail to Somerville says,
So there is a trademark issue here after all.How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
What he should do is instead change the site with nothing but an explanation telling people to complain to whatever authority controls the disabilities act. If Odeon is in violation, then what would a thousand phone calls to the "Disabilities Department" (or whatever it's called) do? Maybe get a big fine levied and a court order to make their site compatible within X weeks.
Odeon wants to use the law? Fine. Use it right back.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Lots of people are spouting lots of FUD here. Of course the site should be assessable. But the Disabilities Act does not require anyone except government agencies and a few other select public service entities to have assessable web sites.
And by the way, Slashdot and OSDN does not comply with the act either, so if there is going to be some mud slinging, by all means be fair about it!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Odeon would have no problem tweaking their site to save themselves the bad press
You are demonstrably incorrect. They did NOT tweak their site to save themselves bad press. I'm used to people not reading the article, but have you read ANYTHING in this thread?
Seems unfair for the parent to be modded Offtopic.
Plus he/she brings up a good point: For all the nitpicking that we all do about non-compliant websites, it seems reasonable that the premier website for nerdly matters should set the example and lead the way.
How do you figure they were misled? Did you even read the emails? As Somerville noted in his email, the information that people submitted to his website was simply passed directly to Odeon's website. So if submitters thought their data was going to Odeon's site, they were correct. I don't see how they were misled.
Because they thought they were interacting directly with the Odeon site but they weren't. It doesn't matter if he just transparently passes the data, he's still misrepresenting his site.
The problem is that Odeon has no control over what he does. If there is a problem with his site or he screws up the customer's data, then they will think it was Odeon's fault. Even if his intentions are good, and everything seems to work find right now, it is still a dangerous liability for the company. Absolutly they have to shut him down. Or force him to make it absolutly clear to his visitors that his site is not affiliated with Odeon.
Aw crap, ninjas!