But I'm not your average shopper, and most of the people who frequent boards like the one on fatwallet aren't your average shoppers either.
They're people who make copies of all their receipts and UPC codes, who file this stuff in shoe boxes by month and year, and follow up on everything. They're people who keep Price Books, so they know when and where the really good deals on things like boneless/skinless chicken breasts really are, and which store is advertising a B1G1F deal that really isn't a deal. They're people who combine coupons and rebates to actually get paid to buy a product. People who have spreadsheets tracking the cash price of a specific model of used car on ebaymotors and can tell you that auctions ending on certain days tend to end lower or that cars with red interiors tend to sell low.
But you're absolutely right. Most people don't do this. Most people don't think about filing those rebates until it's too late, or they don't follow the directions (some of which can be pretty exacting). They're not going to spend the time to follow up on a late rebate or check around to find the exact lowest price on something before they go to the store. They don't carry every single ad from the Sunday paper when they go shopping, so they can force a store to match a price on something because Store A has a lower price, but Store B has a rebate on the item.
These stores aren't losing money. The average shopper is more than making up for what I get for free. Their loss leaders are rarely a real loss to the company; they simply make less profit on those items. (It's a lot like government tax cuts. Really, they're just making the increase smaller.) And even "free after rebate" items will make money on those people who don't bother to file. That's what they count on, and the average shopper rarely lets them down, because they see filing rebates as "too much trouble", and the "sale" price before rebate wasn't too bad anyway.
I'm sure Walmart felt safe in targeting fatwallet and others in this way, because we really are on the fringe, but this sort of "information trading" has been around a lot longer than the DMCA, and using that particular law to stop people from saying "Lexmark printers are $30 this Friday" was just dumb, and that's without even getting into whether or not it applied to the situation. So they stopped fatwallet and a few other specific sites from hosting that information. Woohoo! Big deal.
It was posted to Usenet groups, and both public and private mailing lists.
Once information is in the hands of people out of your direct control, it's OUT. And there's no getting it back. DMCA or no DMCA.
At that point, you suck it up and take the high road because if you don't, you just look petty to the average shopper who'd never think to check fatwallet to begin with.
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I get my rebates.
But I'm not your average shopper, and most of the people who frequent boards like the one on fatwallet aren't your average shoppers either.
They're people who make copies of all their receipts and UPC codes, who file this stuff in shoe boxes by month and year, and follow up on everything. They're people who keep Price Books, so they know when and where the really good deals on things like boneless/skinless chicken breasts really are, and which store is advertising a B1G1F deal that really isn't a deal. They're people who combine coupons and rebates to actually get paid to buy a product. People who have spreadsheets tracking the cash price of a specific model of used car on ebaymotors and can tell you that auctions ending on certain days tend to end lower or that cars with red interiors tend to sell low.
But you're absolutely right. Most people don't do this. Most people don't think about filing those rebates until it's too late, or they don't follow the directions (some of which can be pretty exacting). They're not going to spend the time to follow up on a late rebate or check around to find the exact lowest price on something before they go to the store. They don't carry every single ad from the Sunday paper when they go shopping, so they can force a store to match a price on something because Store A has a lower price, but Store B has a rebate on the item.
These stores aren't losing money. The average shopper is more than making up for what I get for free. Their loss leaders are rarely a real loss to the company; they simply make less profit on those items. (It's a lot like government tax cuts. Really, they're just making the increase smaller.) And even "free after rebate" items will make money on those people who don't bother to file. That's what they count on, and the average shopper rarely lets them down, because they see filing rebates as "too much trouble", and the "sale" price before rebate wasn't too bad anyway.
I'm sure Walmart felt safe in targeting fatwallet and others in this way, because we really are on the fringe, but this sort of "information trading" has been around a lot longer than the DMCA, and using that particular law to stop people from saying "Lexmark printers are $30 this Friday" was just dumb, and that's without even getting into whether or not it applied to the situation. So they stopped fatwallet and a few other specific sites from hosting that information. Woohoo! Big deal.
It was posted to Usenet groups, and both public and private mailing lists.
Once information is in the hands of people out of your direct control, it's OUT. And there's no getting it back. DMCA or no DMCA.
At that point, you suck it up and take the high road because if you don't, you just look petty to the average shopper who'd never think to check fatwallet to begin with.