Re: [PLUG] OT: Spam

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Friday, October 17, 2003, at 11:27 PM, Art Clemons wrote:
> > For the record the data that I extract is pricing information of a 
> > clients
> > competition. I would be interested to hear what the list thinks of 
> > the moral
> > and legal aspects of what I am doing as admins and entrepanuers? None 
> > of the
> > information I am getting is available otherwise and I implement 
> > caching and
> > time delays (2 or 3 seconds usually) for requests. Just wondering.
>
> I'm not offering legal advice here, besides I'm not licensed to 
> practice law, but there have been suits over the extraction of things 
> like price lists (Walmart has been a major litigant) and websites that 
> showed the lowest prices have been sued for copyright violations.  At 
> one time I would have been cynical and said that the supposed IP 
> holders couldn't prevail this time around, but now, I can't honestly 
> say that.

In general, many brick and mortar retailers (especially) have been loth 
to have their "low-low-low" prices compared to others by various 
comparative pricing (aka personal shoppers) web sites... especially 
when those prices turn out to not be as low as advertised. ... 
sometimes by significant amounts -- and have resorted to various 
lawsuits to hide that information from the public.

They appear to be afraid that the Federal Trade Commission might notice 
that their advertising doesn't match the reality of their pricing.

As for "competitive shopping," that is a practice which has gone on in 
retailing since time immemorial. Today, it is also a function of the 
"Consumer Reporter" on the six O'clock news.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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