Walmart serves DMCA takedown over "3 consumer" powerpoint

[Macrobius]

Since I'm not a fan of DMCA takedowns, let's all do them a favour and spam the powerpoint presentation so we can all know exactly what three kinds of consumers Walmart markets to. Hey -- I don't see Paleos and White Nationalists listed. Does Walmart take Silver?

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/friday_blog_roundup_wal_mart_eavesdrops_on_new_yor k_times_reporter/



The Consumerist: LEAKS: Walmart PowerPoint On "3 Customer" Plan
http://consumerist.com/consumer/walmart/leaks-walmart-powerpoint-on-3-customer-plan-241939.php
We received what appears to be an internal Walmart PowerPoint presentation detailing its plan to break down it customers into three core segments, a strategy that announced last week.

There’s 29 slides in total. We enjoy slide 4. On it, Walmart classifies 14% of "The Shopper Universe" as being "Conscientious Objectors." We guess these are the people who refuse to shop at Walmart on principle.

These shoppers are defined as being "less loyal" to Walmart.

Price Value Shopper (16%) -- only group loyal to Walmart

Two groups targeted by Walmart:

Brand Aspirationals (29%)
Price Sensitive Affluents (11%)

SOL: Guess we'll have to shop elsewhere, esp. since we run websites
and don't want to be slapped by DMCA takedowns:

Social Shoppers (7%)
Trendy Quality Seekers (12%)
One Stop Shoppers (11%)
Conscientious Objectors (14%)

Related Thread:

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1905 (Winston Churchill comments on sweatshops)

[mwdallas]

What is "DMCA"?

[Macrobius]

What is "DMCA"?

'Digital Millenium Copyright Act' -- essentially, anyone who doesn't like what you write can claim they have it copyrighted and send a notice to the ISP or web hosting company. If they fail to remove the offending material, then they no longer have 'safe harbour' (legal protection) in a hypothetical copyright law suit. Nothing says the claim must be true, and most web hosting companies say in their Terms of Service they will comply -- they don't want to go to bat for customers. They'd rather censor and let it be someone else's problem to figure out how 'free speech' should work. Who can blame them?

It has primarily been used by large companies either to squelch bad news, or by the likes of the RIAA to crack down on mp3 violations.

If someone wanted to shut down OD, more or less all they would have to do is look at the news stories posted here, notice that they are not original content, and serve a DMCA takedown notice on the web host company. If we couldn't make them happy, the hosting company would shut down the site. Essentially, under current rules, just about any site can be shut down this way, unless they self-censor. The bigger sites, like Free Republic, self-censor for this reason.

The problem is essentially that copyright law has become unworkable, since the internet works by making thousands of copies of everything transmitted. The notices don't really work for their intended purpose -- no one can find all the copies. They just allow selective harassment from time to time. Mostly, they have all the value of nuisance lawsuits without any of the actual expense. Sending a letter from your lawyer and getting a third party to intervene on your behalf is cheap and effective, if you are inclined to harass. The only penalty is bad publicity -- which I propose Walmart should pay in this instance.