untitled
Apr 13 2003
Hm, technially, doesn’t Walmart provide a more extensive version of this
service? Surely, nothing prevents me from walking into one of Walmart’s
hideously colored, defective product selling, local merchant stomping, eye sores
and remembering the barcode for a tube of Crest toothpaste. It is something completely
different if I go home and print it out on my ink jet printer, walk back in the
store and put the sticker on a riding lawn mower and head up to the hand selected
idiot who runs the cash register intending to get an unheard of everyday low price.
So, given that Walmart, actually provides a more complete version of the service
provided by re-code.com (they have the barcodes of all products available for
public viewing), should they also be ordered out of existence by their own lawyers?
I have to admit that I am not a Walmart fan by any stretch. Their policy of undercutting
local merchants in rural areas so that they can later take advantage of a forcibly
establish monopoly is one that could reasonably incite a great deal of ire. To
have not accounted for public backlash associated with such a business plan is
a strategic mistake that is as susceptible to failure as one that neglects the
free market laws of supply and demand. My only response to Walmart is: enjoy the
legal fees. I would venture that those fees far exceed the price of starting a
new domain, so if all those you have angered purchased a disposable domain from
which to display barcodes, I would hope that you had budgeted for the excess legal
services. If you did not, I apologize, the world of free markets can be pretty
brutal.
P.S. The medal of shame in this goes out to Domains by Proxy, a domain registrar who unwisely takes responsibility for the content on their clients' sites.