Circuit City Subpoenas CheapAss Gamer and DVDTalk

An anonymous reader writes "A poster on DVDTalk and CheapAssGamer has posted the weekly ads for Circuit City, Best Buy, and Target ahead of time for the last few years. A few weeks ago he confirmed that there was an intended price break on the PS3 and stole Sony's thunder from E3. A Circuit City ad was used for confirmation. Circuit City has threatened DVDTalk and CheapAssGamer.com to give them personal information about the poster. CheapAssGamer has hired a lawyer and is going to fight. The story is similar to the Black Friday ads being posted early and FatWallet fighting back."

Comments

What's the problem?

[Quila]

A company is trying to go after someone responsible for theft of corporate secrets (a felony, BTW). They are reasonably, and according to legal procedure, trying to get information from a third party to help identify the thief. It is the responsibility of that third party to provide such information.

Let's not confuse privacy with shielding yourself from just punishment for your actions.

Re:What's the problem?

[Puls4r]

Troll? Sounds like we've got some rather childish folks wielding moderator points today. The parent post made an excellent point. This is corporate strategy that should be kept secret - huge sums of money ride on generating successful buzz. If a competitor got ahold of this information they could do such things as cutting their price and announcing it the day before to make the other company appear reactionary.

That may appear to be big things - but what if you were a stock holder who knew this was going to happen, etc etc. They ARE big things. This was a violation of company trust. The violator should be fired, if nothing else. They have every right to find out who did it.

Re:What's the problem?

[Quila]

The anti-business hippies are out there, anything that screws "tha man" is a Good Thing. I've been maxxed on karma for years, so I'm not too worried.

I also don't think this case is equivalent to the Best Buy case as mentioned in the article. CC is trying to get to the trade secret thief. Best Buy tried to claim copyright on the information posted at Fat Wallet and sent a DMCA takedown notice to the web site itself. The problem is you can't copyright information (see the Feist decision), so the Best Buy's actions were fraudulent.

Re:What's the problem?

[Puff of Logic]

Seems to me some moderators need to reread (if they read at all) the moderators guide and mod to promote instead of demote. I'll apologise right now for being offtopic in this thread, but I thought this merited a reply. I tend to get mod points about once a week or so, and do my best to moderate fairly and judiciously. In fact, I can only recall modding a post "flamebait" once, and that post thoroughly deserved the mod. That said, I also try to maintain a 1:1 relationship between moderating and meta-moderating sessions, as the system must be self-correcting for poor mods. For you, and those like you who believe that the moderation system is periodically abused, please take the time to meta-moderate and give some feedback. Sure, for all I know the feedback goes straight into Slashdot's /dev/null but I figure trying to provide some oversight to the mod system beats just complaining about it.

cheers.

Re:What's the problem?

[Applekid]

How about a (+1 Everyone Is Special) moderation?

Re:What's the problem?

[tsheriffk]

is this really a corporate secret though? Anyone ever wonder why all name brand electronics are the same price whereever you go? All these items have MAP (minimum advertised price) restrictions that they must adhere to. All this means is that ALL retailers will be able to sell the PS3 for the new lower MAP price. Just because it leaked out of a CC ad, this price reduction is not going to be a CC only sale. I know i am assuming a bit on my last statement, but obviously unless they are doind one of those "instant rebate" type of sales, this price reduction would have been made by everyone. In addition, anyone that purchased the device ahead of the sale could get a price match, so they arent going to be making any more money on this is the info doesnt leak out. There is a lot of hoopla over nothing on this, where although CC is probably within their rights to seek out who is leaking it, are they really going to accomplish anything positive? Now all the gamers are pissed at them. I am sure they would still purchase from CC if they have the best price on stuff in the future, but if prices are the same they may be skipped over for an online or "less evil" (in their minds) retailer. And in the age of MAP pricing, how often are their really huge deals at one retailer over another?

Is it worth it?

[RichPowers]

Speedy1961 regularly posts BestBuy, CC, and Target prices weeks in advance on CAG's forums. As a testament to his accuracy, Gamespot and other sites use his info in stories relating to price drops, as was the case with the PS3.

My monthy videogame expenditures have increased thanks to CAG, but I'm actually getting more games now that I know where to shop. Prior to CAG, I would only purchase videogames online. Now I venture into brick and mortar stores like CC during their sales.

But thanks to these events, I won't be shopping at CC ever again, and I'm sure other CAGers have similar sentiments. By virtue of being a price comparison/deals website, CAG attracts more "principled" and informed consumers. Is it worth pissing off 100,000 such people, CC? Even if this is a valid case, people will be pissed if their favorite "inside" man is silenced.