From: Randall <rvh40@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 4, 2005 7:13:50 PM PST
To: Dave <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, JMG <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Wonderful Things We Find on the Net
.... and the lawyers who kill them.
(from http://www.htdaw.blogsource.com):
==========
Some guy who has better connections than we do put up a wonderful
site -
http://www.bfads.net/, dedicated to printing pre-release ads and
rumors
about the items major retailers are planning to run for Black Friday,
the day after Thanksgiving, which is the start of the Christmas
Shopping
Season and is far and away the biggest day of the year for retailers.
You probably have guessed what happened next - attack of the lawyers.
On October 31, bfads posted several pdf scans of the upcoming Sears
ads,
and on November 1, news.com published this article
http://tinyurl.com/8mluw, about the supposed upcoming major Wal-Mart
sale (If the article is correct, Wal-Mart will be selling notebooks
for
$398.00. I'll buy one).
That got him some attention.
While page-views are the goal of vanity publishing like non-commercial
web pages (full disclosure: and this blog), Attention is not always a
good thing to get, especially when it comes from lawyers bearing
take-down notices.
Yep.
Three days later, we see this on bfads.net:
==========
As of 4:22pm, November 4th 2005, everything relating to the Sears
Black
Friday ad has been removed from our site. Sears Attorney's sent our
host
a 54 page fax with the message: "You have 48 hours." I haven't
actually
seen the complaint yet, but when I'll do, I'll be sure to scan and
upload every page of it. My host was kind enough to take a picture of
one of the main pages which basically outlines everything Sears wants.
Apparently, a Privacy Policy and Terms of Use page do nothing for a
site. On our terms of use, we explicitly state:
If you are a lawyer representing any of the companies we publish price
rumors for, leave the site and go play outside. If you have any legal
concerns, please email our legal team at legal [at] bfads [dot] net.
The attorneys did not contact our legal team, nor am I willing to bet
they went and played outside.
--