Secret Sale Prices

The wickedly perverse Digital Millenium Copyright Act has spread its malignancy yet further as WalMart, Target, Best Buy, and Staples use it to claim that their sale prices are DMCA-protected trade secrets.

The big retailers have bullied special offer tracker FatWallet.com into taking down any advance discussion of their planned day after Thanksgiving sales, aka Black Friday.

Other sites that trade in consumer info have also received "take down" letters, the part of the DMCA that allows lawyers to scare the little folks into compliance without the messy need to go to court. As it was designed to do, the Net is trying to route around this latest damage to the free flow of information, but the trend is clear. The DMCA will continue to extend its shadow across the land until it is repealed, amended, or it covers the globe.