Wal-Mart Orders Internet Not To Tell People It Will Sell Wiis For $224 On Black Friday
Yes, Wal-Mart, you can put the genie back in the bottle! The problem, of course, is that the ad doing the rounds is a fake. A cease and desist letter went to CrunchGear, among others. Here's Arrington, pretending that he doesn't know what Photoshop is:
Walmart claims both that the ad is copyrighted and otherwise proprietary information. But they also claim it is inaccurate, which suggests that it’s fake. I don’t see how it can be both.
It's actually going to be $425, according to the Black Friday sites.
Walmart Wants It Both Ways. We Say No. [TechCrunch]
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takedown notice to BBG coming from walmart lawyers in 3...2....1....
You know, what good is a Black Firday Loss Leader, if you do not advertise it to bring people in? Honey, lets go line up at one of the 20 places we are going to try to shop, for some impulse purchases- you never know what we might find. Call me on the cell if you see something.
It would be interesting if not only was the price wrong, but there were no wiis to be had Period, as typical since the release. I did, however find mine at a rural walmart, during the scarce periods, because no one was looking to buy one in podunk, they were going to Game Retailers and mega Mall big box stores looking for them, dpeleteing the specialist supply as soon as available, while the outliers still had slower moving stock.
I'd bet more its viral marketing. Unless the price has been misquoted. Plausible deniability?
Anonymous has heard the "It's copyrighted! It's also fake!" argument before. We heard that argument years ago from the Church of Scientology regarding the Fishman Affidavit and other leaked internal documents.
It doesn't fly here any more than it did there. You can't argue simultaneously that a document is illicitly copied and that it is a false document. If they think it's fake, they really should be asserting trademark or outright fraud, not copyright.
They must have taken the weekend off :)
I wonder if WalMart seeded certain sources with various fake ads- and depending upon which fakes showed up on the interent, they at least narrowed the pool of people to chase down.
(similar to putting bogus words in your own dictionary.)
So in that case, I can really see how it's both "works of wal*mart" and "Not really what the advertised price is".
(Since technically, it hasn't been advertised yet.)
Of course, the real shit would hit the fan when a newspaper were to accidentally print the 'fake' version, and really just blow the whole world to hell.
Walmart is kind of used to getting it's way. The unreasonable way they abuse their suppliers is legendary.
A company I used to buy for tried to play these games too. I was asked to demand deep discounts, 60-90 day payment terms etc. Needless to say because we had about .01% the market share that Walmart has, most suppliers told me (nicely) to F off.
...Speaking of being told to fuck off, note that Crunchgear told Wal-Mart the same thing regarding their takedown notice. Good for them, because Freedom of the Press is more important than Wal-Mart's "surprises" being kept a secret.
@3: "You can't argue simultaneously that a document is illicitly copied and that it is a false document."
Why not? What if it was leaked and someone photoshopped the price to something else? That's real easy to do with an image now.
It's leaked. I can tell by some of the lawyers, and from seeing quite a few leaks in my time
Nora the Awesome.