Originally posted by: mechsiah
My
personal understanding is as follows:
- There would be no copyright violation to post a message that said "I heard that Best Buy is going to sell X for $xx.xxx". This information would be considered "common".
- Posting a scan or large portions of a scan or LINKS (by DMCA) to such scans would be a violation of copyright law.
- I believe the stores would argue that the information contained in their ads are proprietary until the point of publication, and the disemination of that information negatively impacts their business in the form of financial losses. The argument is weak, and may not make it past summary judgement, BUT, it is not frivilous.q]
I agree that that's what the companies are claiming, however under the DMCA
17 USC 107 Fair use clause, it seems that it would only be considered infringement if it had an effect on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Since the market, and the value of a sales circular is zero, then this can't be considered infringement under the DMCA.
I would like to see someone fight this, and take them to court if need be. I don't believe the corporations would win this.
Especially if the scans of the flyers themselves were not posted, which I believe is the case.