Akkam’s Razor

You officially suck.  And I hope you pay for it!

Black Friday ads are dancing like sugar plums in our heads, in a sign-of-the-times as sure as Bill O'Reilly reminding us that there is still a war going on, a War on Christmas.

In a fit of legal fury, BestBuy sent a strongy-worded letter to the site owners and ISPs of BlackFriday.info and BFads.net, threatening them with site takedowns and various other legal remedies.  The two sites, concerned with having their sites taken offline, have complied.  Of course, they'll still have to get Google to comply with their DMCA policy and remove the Blackfriday.info and BFads.net cache as well.

I wonder how this will be received in the blog (and forum) community? The DMCA-letter is a favored intimidation tool by those who have power and money over those that do not (see this bit of legalese regarding TechCrunch and YouTube, where the YouTube's lawyers' threats to TechCrunch are wholly contradictory to the terms-of-use of YouTube) as a tool to promote a "chilling effect".  The "letter" and the DMCA have also been used by the MPAA and the RIAA.

Being as the Blue-Shirts have been getting treated with scorn and senseless parody of late, it will be  interesting to see how this affects BestBuys Black Friday sales (both in volume and profit).  Black Friday sales are meant to lure people in on the loss-leader items, hoping that they either buy higher profit off-sale items, or that once the limited-quantity sale items are gone (ie. bait-and-switch) they can be convinced to take other higher-profit alternative selections.  Historically, Black Friday as a term and concept refers to the importance of the Christmas or Holiday shopping season and how the volume of sales prushes a retailer from the red (loss) to the black (profit) for the year, especially the day after Thanksgiving, which is typically the start of the shopping season.

Given that there are numerous alternatives to BestBuy, such as CompUsa, OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, Staples, and Circut City, and others, I wonder if the negative buzz will have a negative effect on the bottom line.  We'll see when the retail financials come in…