Best Buy claims copyright, invokes DMCA on Black Friday price lists
Boing Boing is reporting that Best Buy has gone after BlackFriday.info, the site I mentioned last week, for posting their “Black Friday” price lists. Their weapon of choice? The favorite tool of overreaching asshats, the DCMA.
BestBuy sent a DMCA takedown notice to BlackFriday.info over a posting that contained leaked information about its Thanksgiving sale-prices. Takedown notices are intended to provide an expeditious means of censoring material that infringes your copyright, but there’s no copyright in a price-list — copyright only attracts to original creative works, not lists of prices.
ArsTechnica, who first reported on this yesterday, notes that Best Buy has been accused of abusing the DCMA before.
In November 2003, Best Buy issued a takedown notices [sic] to FatWallet over a Black Friday ad posted on the site. FatWallet responded by suing Best Buy for abuse of the DMCA. Such lawsuits are permissible under the DMCA if a company knowingly misrepresents a DMCA notice. FatWallet’s case was dismissed with the judge ruling that the bargain-hunting site had not suffered injury because of the takedown notice.
No strangers to dealing with bogus DMCA takedown notices themselves, the folks at Boing Boing have posted a mirror of the BlackFriday Best Buy page on their site.
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