Bet you didn’t know it was possible to copyright prices but apparently Best Buy must have some smart people working for them. Maybe they haven’t done it officially but they are claiming that they have. A few days back BlackFriday.info posted a text-based list (Google Cache of the page) of the sale items that Best Buy will have for their “Day after Thanksgiving” sale. No big deal, right? There are all kinds of sites that have done this but it looks like Best Buy decided to target them. This is what BlackFriday.info has to say about the message they received:
BestBuy has threatened to file a take down notice with our ISP under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) due to our posting of the BestBuy Black Friday ad. While we believe that sale prices are facts and not copyrightable, we do not want to risk having this website shut down due to a DMCA take down notice. Because of this, we have removed the BestBuy Black Friday ad from the website as requested.
Best Buy is using the DMCA as their force behind making them take down the price list, which is essentially saying that the site is partaking in copyright infringement? I found that to be extremely amusing because there are many other sites with similar lists, such as BFads.net. Actually, BFads.net even has a full ad scan up in PDF format! Just in case the ad scan gets taken down I have gone ahead and uploaded it to MediaFire.
I think Best Buy should have just left things alone because what’s the worst that could happen by having your ad available to millions of people a few weeks early? Wouldn’t that just create more excitement and demand for the items they are going to offer?
What can’t you copyright these days? Especially if you’ve got money…
Your last sentence makes a lot of sense…but I think the real reason behind Best Buy’s actions is they are afraid the completion will under-sell them by having this info “leaked” out. However, they are really stretching it claiming copyright infringement.
Yeh, I agree. Then again from what I gather this Best Buy place is a rather large company and people would probably shop there regardless of sales or whatnot.
That’s true but I don’t know how any worthwhile company would be able to undersell them because by this time everyone would need to have their ads figured out and printed. When I worked at Target we would normally receive the weekly ads about 3-weeks in advance.
Unadvertised sale may be. When did you work for Target and was it in Iowa? I’ve been working at the financial services division in Tempe, AZ since 2001.
I worked at target for around 3 years but I quit 2 years ago for a job that paid better. 2 of those years that I worked their was at a store just north of Chicago, Illinois and the last year was here in Iowa. That was more than enough retail work for me. :)
Sounds like you left right around the time we seperated from Mervyns and Marshall Fields (now Macy’s).