[TankGirl]

A great issue - thanks WT!

Originally posted by walktalker
Big Retailers Squeeze FatWallet
Can the unpublished discount price of a DVD player for next week's big sale at Wal-Mart be copyrighted? That's the question at the heart of a legal dispute involving several big retailers and FatWallet, a popular website that caters to bargain shoppers. After receiving legal threats from Best Buy, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart, FatWallet removed several user postings in its Hot Deals section. Scooping sales circulars by several days, the postings, apparently from site users who had access to proprietary sales information, included lists of products, along with reduced prices, that will go on sale Nov. 29 -- the day known as "Black Friday" for U.S. retailers because it kicks off the holiday buying season. According to FatWallet owner Tim Storm, the retailers all cited the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as the legal basis for serving FatWallet with "takedown" notices.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56504,00.html

This is good foretaste of how DMCA can be abused to censor the free exchange of information. The mere threat of an expensive court case will be effective in many cases, like here:

"We don't think sales prices can be copyrighted, or that the DMCA was meant for this type of thing," said Storm. "But it would cost us a heck of a lot of money to be right." He added that he decided to comply with the retailers' requests "as a business decision."

- tg